My Own Forex Journey

[trumpeter]

How many strategies does the market need?

Your not alone RahmanSL, the vast majority of new traders out there have difficulty with discipline and changing their thought patterns from gambler to trader.

Discipline in trading is helped by having a strategy with strict rules that you follow no matter what your "instinct" is saying to you. In fact instinct is just your ego in disguise.

I think it will do this, or I think it will do that, is just guessing and will ultimately fail.

Take off all your indicators and try to look at your charts structure, and learn how the price moves in certain ways. Identifying what the market is doing is rule N°1, trending or consolidating? only then can you start to look at the probability of something happening..... trading is all about probability, trade only with high probability and your on your way to making this work.

Something I have never understood. If you trade eg EURUSD, then why would every individual trader need their own strategy. We're dealing with one market. There should be one strategy for this market that will make it profitable for the trader, regardless who it is.
I've never understood why trader personality becomes involved! There should be one optimized workable strategy, that will make money when trading a specific currency. Yeah, I already know the answer, it is an "art form". Bull. The market has a pattern. Any trader should be able to use this pattern that the market is exhibiting, and profitably trade accordingly. Why does this require my personality input?

If one watches price movement, just tell me what kind of movement will precede the next price. Actually, no one knows, which is why we have to talk about probabilities.

Tell me what is the price pattern that gives me a clue as to price direction, or not, and all of us can trade profitably.

I never get straight answers. We are always given a multitude of choices
What is difficult for me to swallow, is all of us traders each need our own methodology. But we all see the same charts, and price movement!!

I keep hearing that we all need to arrive the hard way by applying our own personal trading method. This is just a smoke-screen for the experts, in that they really don't have an answer.

Basically it seems that you will never know what the market will do after you put on a position, so it is a matter of baling when losing; and deciding how much profit is enough, when winning.

I would just like to observe a very successful trader verbalize his thoughts, when he/she is doing the decision-making. By carefully listening to how this trader arrives at a decision, should be a big help.

trumpeter

 

[Ricex]

Different strategies are needed to trade different market conditions. You don't use a trending strategy on a ranging market for example.
Different strategies are needed for different styles of trading. Long term, medium term swing trading, scalping all use different strategies.

Some traders have time to watch the market and manage their trades, others don't. One strategy will not fit all things at all times. This doesn't mean that you have to change everything dramatically but certain adjustments will enevitably have to be made somewhere to account for the variation.

Your trading psychology is key to your trading just as the collective psychology of all the other traders is to the market. Humans move the market, it is human sentiment that opens and closes trades, and humans are full of emotions.

You can look at all the patterns and charts you like and believe that the probability is high etc. etc. but it's you and your personality that have to pull the trigger in the end and when your dealing with your own hard earned money, that can sometimes be more complicated than your giving credit for.

Nobody knows what's going to happen next obviously, so our only chance to make money is to trade only when the probability of profit is high. Looking for those high probability trades is the work of a trader, that's what I do every day just like traders all over the planet, and it is work. Nothing is going to fall into your lap, your up against some pretty tough opposition in this game.

 

[trumpeter]

Different strategies are needed to trade different market conditions. You don't use a trending strategy on a ranging market for example.
Different strategies are needed for different styles of trading. Long term, medium term swing trading, scalping all use different strategies.

Some traders have time to watch the market and manage their trades, others don't. One strategy will not fit all things at all times. This doesn't mean that you have to change everything dramatically but certain adjustments will enevitably have to be made somewhere to account for the variation.

Your trading psychology is key to your trading just as the collective psychology of all the other traders is to the market. Humans move the market, it is human sentiment that opens and closes trades, and humans are full of emotions.

You can look at all the patterns and charts you like and believe that the probability is high etc. etc. but it's you and your personality that have to pull the trigger in the end and when your dealing with your own hard earned money, that can sometimes be more complicated than your giving credit for.

Nobody knows what's going to happen next obviously, so our only chance to make money is to trade only when the probability of profit is high. Looking for those high probability trades is the work of a trader, that's what I do every day just like traders all over the planet, and it is work. Nothing is going to fall into your lap, your up against some pretty tough opposition in this game.

Thanks, Ricex

 

[Forexwatchman]

Something I have never understood. If you trade eg EURUSD, then why would every individual trader need their own strategy. We're dealing with one market. There should be one strategy for this market that will make it profitable for the trader, regardless who it is.
I've never understood why trader personality becomes involved! There should be one optimized workable strategy, that will make money when trading a specific currency. Yeah, I already know the answer, it is an "art form". Bull. The market has a pattern. Any trader should be able to use this pattern that the market is exhibiting, and profitably trade accordingly. Why does this require my personality input?

The market does have a pattern, but it’s one that is incredibly more difficult to read before it happens than what hindsight might suggest. The fact that we are dealing with a multitude of constantly changing data that can be interpreted differently coming from global events, bureaucratic semantics, economic data, not to mention the varying trading strategies that are out there make the outcome impossible to predict with any high degree of certainty. Rather what you hope to achieve is a way of filtering out all the possible scenarios down to the highest reward/risk scenarios and then only trade those types of setups.

Tell me what is the price pattern that gives me a clue as to price direction, or not, and all of us can trade profitably.
I never get straight answers. We are always given a multitude of choices
What is difficult for me to swallow, is all of us traders each need our own methodology. But we all see the same charts, and price movement!!

How perfect would that be, but that’s never gonna be the case so lets just deal with logic and reasoning. What are the most popular and successful trading indicators that translate across markets (forex, futures, stocks, commodities, etc.) and out of them which ones do I personally trust the most, since I’m the one who’s got to use them to ultimately make my trading decisions day in and day out. I can give you a straight answer to this, and I teach it over at my website for free. I’ve found support/resistance in the form of both manual ones that you draw on your charts and pivot points that are based off of time tested and simplistic calculations that predict future support/resistance lines, as well as Fibonacci lines work the best for T/P or S/L levels. Then throw in some moving averages, envelopes, and good ol’ fundamental analysis so you can predict exact points at which price action could get volatile and you have yourself one strategy that has worked very well for me.

I keep hearing that we all need to arrive the hard way by applying our own personal trading method. This is just a smoke-screen for the experts, in that they really don't have an answer.

I said the same thing in my early days, but let me rephrase or give more insight into the undercurrent of such a comment. Until you have been put through the fire of live trading with large amounts of your own hard earned money on the line, and you have also been successful enough to go back to that same set of decisions and trade setups and still consistently arrived at the same conclusions as well as the same result, then you will never truly believe in yourself as a successful trader. Traders who jump ship the minute one method fails them, or attempt to justify their own undisciplined actions through blaming the system when a simple greed or fear explanation on their part would have sufficed, account for the 90% failure rate in this business. It’s just easier to claim you were a victim of someone else, than to admit you failed at sticking to your system and thus you failed yourself in the end.

Basically it seems that you will never know what the market will do after you put on a position, so it is a matter of baling when losing; and deciding how much profit is enough, when winning.

I would just like to observe a very successful trader verbalize his thoughts, when he/she is doing the decision-making. By carefully listening to how this trader arrives at a decision, should be a big help.

You are right, that is the best way to make light-year gains in this industry, but it’s not free. The closest you will get is through finding trusted sources, studying what they have to offer, and religiously applying that until you either trade like them, or at least learn enough to go on to do your own thing. You definitely do need someone to help you along the way, but I suggest finding it for free first. Good luck to you!

 

[trumpeter]

The market does have a pattern, but it’s one that is incredibly more difficult to read before it happens than what hindsight might suggest. The fact that we are dealing with a multitude of constantly changing data that can be interpreted differently coming from global events, bureaucratic semantics, economic data, not to mention the varying trading strategies that are out there make the outcome impossible to predict with any high degree of certainty. Rather what you hope to achieve is a way of filtering out all the possible scenarios down to the highest reward/risk scenarios and then only trade those types of setups.




How perfect would that be, but that’s never gonna be the case so lets just deal with logic and reasoning. What are the most popular and successful trading indicators that translate across markets (forex, futures, stocks, commodities, etc.) and out of them which ones do I personally trust the most, since I’m the one who’s got to use them to ultimately make my trading decisions day in and day out. I can give you a straight answer to this, and I teach it over at my website for free. I’ve found support/resistance in the form of both manual ones that you draw on your charts and pivot points that are based off of time tested and simplistic calculations that predict future support/resistance lines, as well as Fibonacci lines work the best for T/P or S/L levels. Then throw in some moving averages, envelopes, and good ol’ fundamental analysis so you can predict exact points at which price action could get volatile and you have yourself one strategy that has worked very well for me.




I said the same thing in my early days, but let me rephrase or give more insight into the undercurrent of such a comment. Until you have been put through the fire of live trading with large amounts of your own hard earned money on the line, and you have also been successful enough to go back to that same set of decisions and trade setups and still consistently arrived at the same conclusions as well as the same result, then you will never truly believe in yourself as a successful trader. Traders who jump ship the minute one method fails them, or attempt to justify their own undisciplined actions through blaming the system when a simple greed or fear explanation on their part would have sufficed, account for the 90% failure rate in this business. It’s just easier to claim you were a victim of someone else, than to admit you failed at sticking to your system and thus you failed yourself in the end.



You are right, that is the best way to make light-year gains in this industry, but it’s not free. The closest you will get is through finding trusted sources, studying what they have to offer, and religiously applying that until you either trade like them, or at least learn enough to go on to do your own thing. You definitely do need someone to help you along the way, but I suggest finding it for free first. Good luck to you!

Thanks much for your input, forexwatchman.