Introduction and a Realization (plus a question!)

[Ryebucket]

Hello everyone!

This site is phenomenal. A real wealth of information and a collection of great minds. I've learned a lot in my time lurking this site over the last few months. I'm on my way through Sive Morten's Forex Military Education currently... Very easy and informative read.

I'm certainly a greenhorn and have made my share of beginner mistakes (which I have learned from). I've always had an interest in investing and once I came across Forex, I knew it was something I'd love to get into. I saw a brand new "revolutionary" EA had been released and saw all it's very enticing claims and jumped aboard. Had good weeks and bad weeks and eventually came out on top after a few months, but my end conclusion is robots are simply not good income machines... News is such a major factor and an EA is just a coin flip in those times. Making money by doing nothing always sounds good... Too good maybe?

I've followed signals which have led me to profit, but I really want to be a independent trader... Free of all third parties. I want to be able to hop on my PC at the start of the trading day and know systematically when and where to put on trades and completely understand the system from top to bottom. So, on to my realization;



According to sources on this forum, only about 2-5% of Forex traders are making money and I know there are some serious high earners. Knowing this, I find it hard to believe there are so many failed 'revolutionary' systems and robots...
If I was personally one of the high earners, I would certainly have my strategy in plain text for everyone to see... I can't be alone in thinking this?

Considering the truly small percentage of actual earners trading the Foreign Exchange, there must be an even smaller number of truly profitable and reliable strategies... Don't get me started on the baffling amount of failed and unreliable systems.

My question is: What is the need for all these new strategies and systems that simply don't perform? I can understand people trying to market their products to make some cash, but I just feel like there should be a handful of well known truly reliable systems in plain view, that if you buckle down and learn from back to front and then put the hard work in the field, you will reliably make an income. Instead, we have thousands of people fishing through hundreds of strategies and robots trying to find their life changing routine. I find it primitive and confusing.



So... that was what I have been thinking in a nut shell. All opinions, corrections and direction pointing is most welcome.

Thank you for reading

 

[vic84]

some people who are selling these systems claims that they are giving it for for free or for a lesser value, i think why are they selling if they have developed a strategy that works very well, then should have turned in to Forex King....

 

[UncleSteve]

I have only had 1 profitable month so far.

I'm certainly a greenhorn and have made my share of beginner mistakes (which I have learned from)

Welcome aboard; and welcome to that particular made-mistakes-and-learned club. I am newish (July 2013) and have learned a lot. In the past couple of months I have also realized I need to document what I learn. .

I spent a lot of time trying different things and realized in December that all my knowledge gained was wasted, because I really hadn't followed any kind of procedure, and couldn't really remember what I had tried.

This came home forcibly to me when I found an interesting script on the interweb and downloaded it, and it offered to save itself as NextBigThing(1).ex4... yes, I had already downloaded it before!

So I decided to run all my trades through a pivot table and see what worked best. This led me to create a plan that I followed, and I doubled my account in January. Unfortunately, I also bought a robot for it's steady stream of tiny gains... and learned that robots aren't reliable, and news kills them, and started February with exactly the same account as January. I am now confident I can learn to trade well over time, and I won't do any more experiments on real money.

.... Making money by doing nothing always sounds good... Too good maybe?...

There are people who will tell you it's just a question of having a diverse stable of EA's, realizing nothing works forever, and keeping an eye on results. There are some guys making serious money this way... but frankly I think they're working pretty hard.

Better to learn the trade, I think, because in the long run that leaves you independent.

On the other hand, I realize you can do too much, and trading without a plan is the best way to overtrade and feed your broker. "My broker and I are working on a retirement plan... unfortunately it's his!"

So no, a living without work isn't available, but it can be fun and relaxing work. Don't know about you but without a job I'd probably die of cirrhosis of the liver in about a month...

I really want to be a independent trader... Free of all third parties.

With possibly rare exceptions, I think that most third parties, if they really had anything of value, would be using it to better advantage than they gain from selling it...

If I was personally one of the high earners, I would certainly have my strategy in plain text for everyone to see... I can't be alone in thinking this?

No, you're not. But there are some who say "if everyone does what I'm doing, after a while it'll stop working" This is often followed by "...which is why I'm not giving this away for free..."

This is a twisted bit of logic. It is true, but so is "If everyone paved their roads with cement, gravity would always pull downwards". After a while any given strategy stops working, and gravity always pulls downwards. No link to cement roads or others using the same strategy. In fact, I wonder, if everyone buys when I buy, wouldn't that push the price up the way I'd like it to go?

Expose your ideas to approbation or ridicule, and you'll learn more for free than any course, whether you're a high earner or not.

there should be a handful of well known truly reliable systems in plain view, that if you buckle down and learn from back to front and then put the hard work in the field, you will reliably make an income.

I think there are, but the individual variations in traders' lifestyles, time zones, psychology, experience and needs make for almost infinite possibilities.

You will have to develop your own. People sometimes say "If I can trade so well, why am I selling this for free? It's because I care about you and I know that people will take things more seriously if they pay for it. Besides, I put a lot of work into this so it would be accurate... would you really want to stake your cash on something you found for free on the internet?"

Frankly, yes. I have paid for a few things in Forex and have later found them for free on line. Everything. I think the key is to read a lot, design an experiment, try it in demo (more on this in a minute) and evaluate your results and adjust accordingly. This is the Deming cycle (google it).

All the info is out there; but it only sticks in your head when you use it. People do tend to only use the info they have paid for; but that's a choice you can make for yourself.

As I said before, I decided to only work the planned system I know on real money, and save my experiments for demo. Accordingly in Dec & Jan I experimented happily to myself in Demo, only to realize now that any experience I gained that way is lost, because, just like on my real account last year, I had no plan and didn't document anything.

So my latest decision is, no more unplanned experiments ANYWHERE. I will have at least 2 trading plans from now on. My real one, which will list the pairs, timeframes, days, times, signals, lot & risk management, etc for my real account; and separately, a plan or plans for my latest experiment on demo.

At the end of the day, wasted time is pretty expensive.

Thank you for reading

Thank you for writing. Very few people actually discuss what they're doing in detail.

Final lesson: verbosity isn't everything. I have written a long article with an authoritative tone, but go back and read my first sentence...!

 

[LoRio]

Hello everyone!

This site is phenomenal. A real wealth of information and a collection of great minds. I've learned a lot in my time lurking this site over the last few months. I'm on my way through Sive Morten's Forex Military Education currently... Very easy and informative read.

I'm certainly a greenhorn and have made my share of beginner mistakes (which I have learned from). I've always had an interest in investing and once I came across Forex, I knew it was something I'd love to get into. I saw a brand new "revolutionary" EA had been released and saw all it's very enticing claims and jumped aboard. Had good weeks and bad weeks and eventually came out on top after a few months, but my end conclusion is robots are simply not good income machines... News is such a major factor and an EA is just a coin flip in those times. Making money by doing nothing always sounds good... Too good maybe?

I've followed signals which have led me to profit, but I really want to be a independent trader... Free of all third parties. I want to be able to hop on my PC at the start of the trading day and know systematically when and where to put on trades and completely understand the system from top to bottom. So, on to my realization;



According to sources on this forum, only about 2-5% of Forex traders are making money and I know there are some serious high earners. Knowing this, I find it hard to believe there are so many failed 'revolutionary' systems and robots...
If I was personally one of the high earners, I would certainly have my strategy in plain text for everyone to see... I can't be alone in thinking this?

Considering the truly small percentage of actual earners trading the Foreign Exchange, there must be an even smaller number of truly profitable and reliable strategies... Don't get me started on the baffling amount of failed and unreliable systems.

My question is: What is the need for all these new strategies and systems that simply don't perform? I can understand people trying to market their products to make some cash, but I just feel like there should be a handful of well known truly reliable systems in plain view, that if you buckle down and learn from back to front and then put the hard work in the field, you will reliably make an income. Instead, we have thousands of people fishing through hundreds of strategies and robots trying to find their life changing routine. I find it primitive and confusing.



So... that was what I have been thinking in a nut shell. All opinions, corrections and direction pointing is most welcome.

Thank you for reading

When you find your unicorn its highly unlikely the first thing in your mind is going to be "i have to share this"
The only reason to share a strategy would be for it to become mainstream ,and by it becoming mainstream you automatically make it more profitable.

The reasons for all these robots and strategies is commisions,refferal programs ,introducing brokers.
Most times the bigger the traders transaction (the one you reffered) is , the bigger a piece of the pie you will be served(as the IB/affiliate).
In the past strategies that traded your full funds (and even in the present) were everywhere , they simply traded on the maximum possible risk/volume in combination with the highest offered leverage.To them , what became of a traders account did not matter.Win or lose , they made money(the IB's).

There are several signal hosting services though that bind the signal providers to not get their monthly commisions if their trading signal has a negative turnover for the running month.

 

[LoRio]

Almost forgot.

Read "Mark Douglas - Trading In The Zone"
Or
Watch the video seminar.

Heres a little extra

[video=youtube;GhKJ9P3agRc][/video]

 

[UncleSteve]

yes - I forgot to thank you for pointing it out to me a few weeks ago. I did get it and it is very relevant.

 

[Pharaoh]

The worst marketers either rehash some free system or else buy an EA from an online coder. Either way, they then write a BS story of how it was developed and how the creator made tons of money. The money made from these is primarily through sales.

As you get deeper into Forex Military School, you'll start reading about fakeouts, stop-runs, etc. These are done to nail people who use "time tested" strategies that would work - if only everyone didn't know about them and know right where most of the SL orders are sitting.

Even without bigger traders going up against well known systems, the market changes over time. What worked beautifully 5 years ago could be a total failure today.

Your best option is to created a system of your own and keep slowly refining it. If you really develop a cash cow, hare the big picture if you want to help others, but don't give all the finest details away to the general public.

 

[GOR FX]

The so called robot creators often forget a number of important points:
1. For a robot to work in most market conditions, it must be tweaked at all times,,,,,, ( the seller must be a programmer and trader too.)
2. It is sold in the general market......then it isn't as good as they say