Hello everyone! Reading a forum for a long time already and finally decided to create my own thread, maybe it will helps someone who is still looking for his way on Forex. I am full-time trader for almost 7 years now and has come a long way to become successful. For now I have my own trading school in my city and we are doing fine with just following the simple rules. I won’t tell you about all indicators and systems that I used and tried, because it will takes a very long time and a huge amount of pages J 99% of them are useless. I just want to give the idea of trading here and hope that it will be useful for some traders, especially newbies and those who are ready to give up on trading. I am not going to tell you about “special” indies or systems that gives you 100500% per day. No, no, no. We are not looking for the Holy Graal here, we are just learning to hold our emotions, stick to our trading plan, use the right Money Management and not to be afraid of our trades (especially losses). Yes, yes, I know – you have heard all that for hundred times already. But have you done all that? Or emotions are still taking over you? Believe me, there are only few simple steps and rules that you need to follow to become successful. But you should do it every day, every time when you start to trade! Ready for that? So let’s go, we are going to Learn&Earn on Forex!
First of all I want to show you some of my trades. There is no special system in there, no special Green or Red signals, no secret indicators that make decisions. Only YOU should make a decision, depends on market situation! And indicators can only help you with that. So all the indies that you will see on my charts are helpers. I trade very simple, using only visual support and demand levels and divergences, taking trades on breakouts. Also timing is very important! You should know your pair, you should learn it well to know when it moves the best. I use the start of London session mostly. So here is the example of my standard chart and one of my trades:
“So what?” – you will say. Noting special, right? So this exactly is the secret! Do not overcomplicate things! Your system with all your indies is only the small part of trading. I think it’s only 20% of general success. The rest are Money Management (MM), Discipline, Patience and Trading Plan. All this leads you to the right Psychology. Your entry is only a chance, it’s a probability, that depends on statistics. You know the situation, you have seen it before, and you know that more often it goes up in this case (for example). So you click a “Buy” button. That’s simple. But that’s the only beginning! There are a lot of fakes and no system will gives you great results just because of indicator signal. If you have the other needed qualities, then you can save your trade even after the worst entry. You should have the understanding of what you do, you should have the confidence of what you do. Ok, later in the process we will talk about this much-much more.
System/Entries
Your entry may depend on MAs or Oscillators – anything you like, just keep it simple. I use breakouts to enter the trade and found them less fake than other indies or patterns. MAs are great support/demand helpers, but I never use their crosses. Also I use Divergences – they are second great helpers for me. Also I take a view on candles form, trying to avoid candles with tails on both sides. On this thread we will use a lot of different pairs, it can be GBP pairs, EUR/CAD/AUD pairs or Gold, also I like DAX because of its high volatility. I use intraday trading on M15-H1 timeframes, on DAX I use M5/M15. So that’s all you need to know about technical side of my trading. It’s simple and brief. I will explain every chart that I post here. I use a lot of different tools, but in the second post I will show you very simple small system, which is a great helper to you tech analysis trading.
For Support/Demand I suggest you to put two MAs on your chart – fast and long one. For example, 89 (simple, close) and 21 (exponential, close). Also it’s great to use MA 200 (exponential, close) to see the long term trend. They work on any timeframes.
For Divergences I use standard MACD (12,26,9). Works the best on H1 and higher. There are some other great tools for Divs (especially for lower timeframes), but I will tell you about them later. Step by step. Also you can share here what works the best for you to see the Divs.
Money Management (MM)
It’s the MOST important thing in trading. It’s the only thing that can help you to earn more than you lose. MM can make any system to become profitable, and without right MM any profitable system will lead you to a big loss. Believe me, you can earn good money even making a few pips per day, if you have right MM and a good Trading Plan. Always set your SL, think about it BEFORE entering the trade, never risk more than you want to get, skip trades with huge SL. The best Risk:Reward ratio is 1:>1.5. Sometimes it can be 1:1, but never less! Sure, it depends on your ambitions and on your deposit size, but I suggest you never risk more than 2% per trade, but the best thing is to risk about 1% per trade. So your target is about 1.5% per trade. And we would have at least few trades every day. That’s a good math, believe me.
Exits/Managing trades
As I said before, all your trades should be considered BEFORE taking the trade. No rush, no panic during the trade. If you feel panic, then you do something wrong. Remember, your trading doesn’t depend on one single trade! One trade will never make you rich or poor. So always have a plan. Your trade can go well and reach the TP. But what if it goes wrong? Sure, you have to get some experience in your system and your pair. You have to feel it. But also you have to get your own rules. I never use a trailing stop, it makes my trading more complicated and I am not sure that TS makes my results better. If I see my open trade goes wrong – I have few ways to follow. If it goes quick, it can hit my SL – no problem. If price is slow and there is no volatility – I can wait until it decides where to go. If I see, that situation on market has changed and my signal is not valid anymore – I exit the trade! No doubts with that. It’s better to give few pips to market back, than to lose much more, while waiting and gambling. Also I can exit manually with green pips, if I see reasons for that – double tops/bottoms, divergence etc. I move my SL to breakeven when the price reaches about 50% of my TP. But this point can be discussed – it depends on pair and volatility. I always do my statistics about moving SL to breakeven to see what is the best moment for this. Market is always changing, what worked yesterday can fail tomorrow. You have to be ready. I suggest everyone to do his own trading book, where you can write all your trades, reasons to enter/exit, your thoughts and all your stats. It really helps to improve, to see your past mistakes and never do them again.
Ok, so let’s just start to Learn&Earn! Use simple rules of tech analysis, but pay much attention to our discipline and psychology. Post your charts here with description of your trades, everyone is welcome! Let’s get successful together.
P.S. Sorry for my English, it’s not my native language J
First of all I want to show you some of my trades. There is no special system in there, no special Green or Red signals, no secret indicators that make decisions. Only YOU should make a decision, depends on market situation! And indicators can only help you with that. So all the indies that you will see on my charts are helpers. I trade very simple, using only visual support and demand levels and divergences, taking trades on breakouts. Also timing is very important! You should know your pair, you should learn it well to know when it moves the best. I use the start of London session mostly. So here is the example of my standard chart and one of my trades:
“So what?” – you will say. Noting special, right? So this exactly is the secret! Do not overcomplicate things! Your system with all your indies is only the small part of trading. I think it’s only 20% of general success. The rest are Money Management (MM), Discipline, Patience and Trading Plan. All this leads you to the right Psychology. Your entry is only a chance, it’s a probability, that depends on statistics. You know the situation, you have seen it before, and you know that more often it goes up in this case (for example). So you click a “Buy” button. That’s simple. But that’s the only beginning! There are a lot of fakes and no system will gives you great results just because of indicator signal. If you have the other needed qualities, then you can save your trade even after the worst entry. You should have the understanding of what you do, you should have the confidence of what you do. Ok, later in the process we will talk about this much-much more.
System/Entries
Your entry may depend on MAs or Oscillators – anything you like, just keep it simple. I use breakouts to enter the trade and found them less fake than other indies or patterns. MAs are great support/demand helpers, but I never use their crosses. Also I use Divergences – they are second great helpers for me. Also I take a view on candles form, trying to avoid candles with tails on both sides. On this thread we will use a lot of different pairs, it can be GBP pairs, EUR/CAD/AUD pairs or Gold, also I like DAX because of its high volatility. I use intraday trading on M15-H1 timeframes, on DAX I use M5/M15. So that’s all you need to know about technical side of my trading. It’s simple and brief. I will explain every chart that I post here. I use a lot of different tools, but in the second post I will show you very simple small system, which is a great helper to you tech analysis trading.
For Support/Demand I suggest you to put two MAs on your chart – fast and long one. For example, 89 (simple, close) and 21 (exponential, close). Also it’s great to use MA 200 (exponential, close) to see the long term trend. They work on any timeframes.
For Divergences I use standard MACD (12,26,9). Works the best on H1 and higher. There are some other great tools for Divs (especially for lower timeframes), but I will tell you about them later. Step by step. Also you can share here what works the best for you to see the Divs.
Money Management (MM)
It’s the MOST important thing in trading. It’s the only thing that can help you to earn more than you lose. MM can make any system to become profitable, and without right MM any profitable system will lead you to a big loss. Believe me, you can earn good money even making a few pips per day, if you have right MM and a good Trading Plan. Always set your SL, think about it BEFORE entering the trade, never risk more than you want to get, skip trades with huge SL. The best Risk:Reward ratio is 1:>1.5. Sometimes it can be 1:1, but never less! Sure, it depends on your ambitions and on your deposit size, but I suggest you never risk more than 2% per trade, but the best thing is to risk about 1% per trade. So your target is about 1.5% per trade. And we would have at least few trades every day. That’s a good math, believe me.
Exits/Managing trades
As I said before, all your trades should be considered BEFORE taking the trade. No rush, no panic during the trade. If you feel panic, then you do something wrong. Remember, your trading doesn’t depend on one single trade! One trade will never make you rich or poor. So always have a plan. Your trade can go well and reach the TP. But what if it goes wrong? Sure, you have to get some experience in your system and your pair. You have to feel it. But also you have to get your own rules. I never use a trailing stop, it makes my trading more complicated and I am not sure that TS makes my results better. If I see my open trade goes wrong – I have few ways to follow. If it goes quick, it can hit my SL – no problem. If price is slow and there is no volatility – I can wait until it decides where to go. If I see, that situation on market has changed and my signal is not valid anymore – I exit the trade! No doubts with that. It’s better to give few pips to market back, than to lose much more, while waiting and gambling. Also I can exit manually with green pips, if I see reasons for that – double tops/bottoms, divergence etc. I move my SL to breakeven when the price reaches about 50% of my TP. But this point can be discussed – it depends on pair and volatility. I always do my statistics about moving SL to breakeven to see what is the best moment for this. Market is always changing, what worked yesterday can fail tomorrow. You have to be ready. I suggest everyone to do his own trading book, where you can write all your trades, reasons to enter/exit, your thoughts and all your stats. It really helps to improve, to see your past mistakes and never do them again.
Ok, so let’s just start to Learn&Earn! Use simple rules of tech analysis, but pay much attention to our discipline and psychology. Post your charts here with description of your trades, everyone is welcome! Let’s get successful together.
P.S. Sorry for my English, it’s not my native language J