What was it like when you started? Don't know what's gone wrong!!

Hi, I started demo'ing Forex at the start of December 2012. I'm very new to it as I didn't even know what Forex was until a few months ago. Been putting in lots of hours researching, reading.Started just watching the pairs and started with a few trend strategies using EMAS, mainly intraday/overnight trades. I have been adding to and adjusting/ mixing strategies, and now slowly learning about price action and a more indicator free approach (which I'm finding difficult TBH)

It's been hard to keep track of exactly how I have been going, because I have tried different brokers and platforms, and was using brokers with too big a spreads in the first month. Settled on MB trading to demo with.I have been having problems with stuck trades with MB, so just as the account was making profit, I had to get it deleted and move on to a new account. This has happened on 2 accounts so have given up with MB, so have opened Alpari ECN demo, so I keep going back to square one starting from scratch with starting balance !!

All the accounts I had either made a profit or were fairly close to the starting balance,If I did get a big draw down I seemed to have the ability to get the balance back or not far off, even with making loads of mistakes, some on purpose to see what happened by not following correct lot size etc.
The accounts were down over Christmas a bit, as I traded over the holidays, advice later was not to trade when the pro/session traders are on holiday/public holidays.In Jan soon got back on track. I feel like I've learned a lot in a short time, but knew it was going to take months/into a few years to really become competent,

I have been taking roughly 50 trades a week ( a lot I know, but trying to get a feel for it as it's demo ) between the MB/Alpari accounts. On average 35-40 make profit, and 7-13 make losses.
Thought it was a reasonable start and thought the potential was there.........until now.

Since early this month (Feb 2013) It's been going wrong. It's like as soon as a enter a trade it goes the opposite way, even if the trend for all time frames is going the way I've traded! I keep a journal/diary and have reduced the mistakes I'm making to very few now, which makes it worse!

I'm treating the Alpari as real account and following strict money management. These last 2 weeks have really deflated me, major drawdown on both accounts (Alpari from £5,206 to $4,377) and a grand down on MB.

Question to more experienced traders/and those who have gone live.....How did your first few months go for you, what systems did you start with. Did you want to give up, did you feel like I do now...,how did you overcome the negatives, come through it and end up going live If you did?

I'm not doing it to get rich quick, but was hoping to get to a point where I could get a part income from it. Should I call it quits and jack it in? Any advice would be great. Any systems/approach to trading you could recommend to help get through this, or a fresh tactic?

If you are entering 50 trades a week then it is almost certain that you are trading on the 5 minute charts.
Personally, I find it very difficult to trade the 5 minute timeframes, mainly because there is more noise on M5.
There will be periods of ranging or worse, periods of higher highs and lower lows that simply don't exist on the H1 chart.
Earlier in the year, especially Yen pairs, there were some good breakout trades on M5, but more recently, consecutive failed breakouts.
Possibly you have been trading breakouts and after 2 or 3 failures, decided not to take the next one, only to see it zoom off without you?
You also say that you have been trading with various strategies, probably best to stick with one or 2 at a time unless you are making a trade log for each strategy.
Your drawdown on your Alpari account is what, 16 or 17%? That's not the end of the world. I am sure that even highly successful traders will have similar drawdowns from time to time. At least on demo, it has cost you nothing.
You've been trading for less than 3 months, so a bit of a dent in your confidence is not such a bad thing. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, so they say

try a trading simulator.

Thanks for the posts guys. I have been over trading on the demo, 50 trades a week is too much. Just trying to experiment as much as possible and had some time on my hands. I have kept it simple with basic trend strategies, using EMA's MACD. Not really been going off M5 charts Gumrai , more intraday M30/H1/H4, going with the day/week trend. Also tried a short TF 2 EMA crossover on M15/M30.
Experienced advice is get rid of lagging indicators and use price action, which I am trying to move to and learn, but as a beginner it's not that easy to grasp. This is what I 've started with below, keeping with an approach I understand until I gain more knowledge , which has been good for the 2 out of the 3 months. If anyone can explain why these strategies like in the link fail....

http://www.forexstrategiesresources....asfx-strategy/

Thanks pemully, looking into this now

When I first started I thought I had this thing in the bag. I get enough indicator confluence how can I go wrong?! Well...it's not that easy. Save yourself a year or more of frustration and ditch every single indicator, including the moving averages. Look at how price behaves, but don't be under the illusion that you can predict every move. You can't - but there are some things that are repeated in the markets over and over. Keep an eye on the big picture and don't focus too much on what one candle is doing. Since you're brand new I would focus on breakout trading and focus on that intensely. It isn't the holy grail but it'll lead you in the right direction.

I have been doing Forex for a little bit on and off! finding it hard to start off with out any guidance! i have read books and done seminars !
One thing i am wary of is those so called financial education companies which drive a hard marketing team and almost harrass you to go to this and that! $5k just to do a course im sure there are other ways to learn other than fork over money for no guarantees. Mentors are hard to come by or just people with the same passion. Are there people out there that are doing weel from Forex or does every one just talk s**t and say how well they are but are not doing well at all.

Believe me, we have all been there, wondering what went wrong..think of it as a initiation process.
Do not pay up for any course, not at this point. And as to what you are doing wrong, well, you may want to opt for larger time frames or perhaps, it is your strategy. Either way, we can only point you back to demo and revisiting some of the beginner courses..believe me, it takes a while to get it right.

The question was, "Just wondering what exactly do newbies do to lose?" (this is from other thread, but relevant to your question)

My answer, What they do is trying to "trade."

When I started forex years ago, I rarely lost because I didn't "trade" per se. What I did was, I go short and long at the same time on the same pair (hedging), and take profit when I "feel good" about getting 200 or 300 pips. Then, I go short and long again from there, keeping the losing position. Then, go on and on and on. I ignored all common sense, such as SR, news, and STOP LOSS. Yes, this way I had to keep lots of positions all the time, but somehow I could manage not having too many positions.

I did it on a live account for about 6 months and made a certain profit (pretty good actually). Oddly enough, I didn't get a huge drawback -- maybe -500pips in every 2,000-3,000pip profit.

As I studied about trading, all the sudden I got scared of doing it. Yes, I was sucked into the "dark side" in that moment. I quit doing it and started "trading" on a demo account, which I blew numerous times. It took me a couple of years to get on a live account again.

The more you know (about trading), the more you don't know, may be true...

The last post just reminded me of the double slit experiment (where the end result is affected by the very act of observation). Applying it to the forex market, the more you learn, the less you know..yup! Knowledge does provide you with that edge you need or confuse you further with obvious results..

yeah so much to consider there is no right or wrong way now is there! they hardest thing is that there is no manual for this stuff and going off what people say u have to take is legit. alot of people trying to make money off what you while u are trying to get a ahead and learn. Trial and error on a demo account to learn patterns and how the way it works i guess will be the way i try to learn untill i find a better way lol

Well, that's one of the top reasons as to why so many snake oil sales pitches get thrown about, "purchase my EA for $19.99 and make millions overnight"..
Seriously, we should start a list of all the forex sales talk, esp those with unreliable promises and a propensity to scam you out of everything you have.

Hi there, and welcome to Forex! Your start sounds very similar to what mine was. I tried several different things until I arrived at Price Action trading; like you! Personally, I love it. It is also very useful if you decide to learn other aspects of trading; like if you wanted to scalp for example. Many of the principles are still applicable as you're interpreting what the charts are telling.

If you're still looking for a good broker; I use MahiFx.com. I used OANDA for awhile starting off but moved for better spreads.

Anyway. Here's the problem with trading Price Action on low time frame charts- it's not nearly as clean and accurate as on higher time frames. Once you get under the 4 hour chart you start getting a lot more false signals. The signal is there, but it may not have the strength to carry forward that you would expect on a higher time frame chart.

From the tone of your post; you sound very frustrated. That's bad. Your trading needs to be as emotionless as possible. Take a step back for a couple of weeks and clear your head. The markets will be waiting for you when you get back. There is such a thing as over-trading and it causes you to make mistakes.

I would also recommend checking out www.learntotradethemarket.com . It's a pay for mentor site but the owner puts up an absolute truck load of free articles and videos about Price Action trading. They are well written, very easy to understand, and more importantly; easy to implement in your own trading. His work was a major contributor to turning the corner into making profitable Price Action trades on naked charts.

How long did it take you to find your edge?

There I had the Heureka, I have a few edges! As you can see it takes 1,2 even 6 years to find an edge. Which will have timeframe and money management definitions to.

Just play with those edges, where are they apply and than is easy. For me it was very hard until this point, but now...easy

this week my only strategy was to find a trend find an entry point between channels and using stochs ea, put a trade on and then wait till i wake up. this week has been successful and only one trading hitting stop loss which is completely my fault because i did not set it lower enough other wise it would have come good. i will continue this until i find out other ways through research but i kinda like the wake up to money in the money and not stressing over graphs does any one else have similar strategies?

Program an EA for that and backtest it. You'll be disappointed.

Sounds like you haven't got a clue what you are doing. That might sound a bit harsh. It is, but it is time to wake up and admit you have little or no experience of the markets.

So where from here? First and foremost, don't be hard on yourself. Simply admit you haven't got a clue, yet...

So far, I would say you have learned a bit about platforms and how demo account servers don't get the attention they should. You have also learned that you know little or nothing about margins or money management. You have also learned a little about indicators.

It amazes me that in the Trading Systems forum so many rookie traders swear by indicators and yet, if you look at a chart with indicators, the little "GO" arrow pops up well after the price has set off. Don't get me wrong, it is possible to trade with indicators. It's just that traders wearing these concrete boots eventually learn a little bit about support and resistance, confluences, times of day to trade, consolidations and price action.

My advice is, again, firstly, don't be hard on yourself. Learn a little bit about horizontal support and resistance and observe price action around those areas, especially price action that reverses off the lower time frame trend into the higher time frame trend. Oh, and decide how you will define those trends. You can decide that, or alternatively, get into endless arguments on these threads.

Work hard and you will get lucky.

On a lighter note: N.B. – Do not attempt to answer more than one question at a time. Do not on any account attempt to write on both sides of the paper at once. (1066 and all that).

Hi Kanzler,

I have a strategy I'd like to backtest over several pairs over one month, or two or maybe even six, depending on how easy it is to backtest with an EA.
Where do I find these expert advisors and how do i go about setting one up to backtest my strategy?

Thanks for your help

Lance

Hi Lance,

Running the test itself should be straightforward and any good platform will have the ability to do this - I would suggest you download MT4 as it's the most popular software program used for this type of thing, and you'll find plenty of documentation and community support on how to do your backtesting. It's writing the code that might be challenging. Depending on the platform you use, there are different methods you have to follow to put an EA together. Often the language isn't hard to learn as the API you're provided is pretty straightforward, and any previous programming experience will lend itself applicable. If you're not comfortable programming your strategy you can look for a similar strategy for download (google will help you there, although MQL4 is a popular source) or you can ask someone to write it for you. I believe someone in the platform tech forum offers to do that for free, although I don't know whether the thread title is still accurate after being around so long. I know I haven't been much help but this is a broader topic than it might initially appear.

As a last note for this post I want to say this - don't get trapped in the search for the holy grail with these EAs. They all have a catch and none of them work under all conditions....take a look at them for the purpose I'd outlined earlier and then move on.

Kanzler

So called Expert Advisors are definitely not the way to go. Unless you are a programming expert they will do nothing worthwhile in your understanding of the market and only serve to confuse.

Think about it. If it were that easy there would be no human traders. If the programming and testing resources of the major institutions have not yet cracked it, what chance do you have?

Not only that, but the long "GO" arrow often appears just below resistance or the short signal just above support. In an extended period of ranging, indicator lovers will find their confidence fading.