How I found what (I think) works for me. (My appologies for the rambling and length).
When I first started trading Forex in August 2006 I did not know where to start. Although as a Yorkshireman I am very careful about spending money, I did the usual thing of buying systems and mentoring programmes. They nearly all seemed promising at first, but in the end I could not make them work for me.
Perhaps I was fortunate, but I don’t consider any of the ones that I tried to be rip-offs - they just didn’t work for me. The main problem was that I spent nearly as much money on losing trades as I did in buying the systems. Why was this? – It was because I could not take paper or Demo trades seriously - it was easy for me to live with a 200pip stop loss in Demo, not so when real money was involved (even at only £1 per pip at a UK Spreadbetting company).
I was fortunate to discover T2W, which led me to the Forex Factory where in May 2007 I discovered James16.
James16 says that you don’t have to go through hell to discover if you have it in you to become a successful Forex trader. I think that it really depends upon your personality.
I took everything James16 said to heart. I joined his Private Forum for 1 month, but could not justify the expense of continued membership at that time. He said you should demo first, and not trade shorter timeframes until profitable live in daily and weekly. I tried for 6 months to become profitable trading daily pin bars – could not afford the big stops for the weekly. This entailed never getting to bed before 01:00 hrs on Sunday through Thursday. I found this very hard, because I had to get up by 06:00 hrs and often found that it took me a good while to switch off after being on the PC looking at Forex. My other problem was in not having a means of determining a Take Profit target or a Trailing Stop method which backtested consistently. So I gave up and started to look for other systems because I did not (and still do not) trust 4hr charts because of the 4 different starts to the 4hr bar.
‘The_Wizard' said he ignored the advice about timeframes and found he had most success on the 1hr. He subsequently got a sufficiently good trade record as to get a job as a pro trader. But although tempted, I resisted the lure of PA off the 1hr charts.
But it took a long time before I found anything that backtested OK for me. I found that many/most indicator based systems were in actual fact just as discretionary as James16 Price Action and I could not get them to backtest consistently for me.
I discovered Jacko, whose method works but is discretionary, so I invested $500 in becomming one of his ‘turtles’. Unfortunately I found that I did not trust my own judgement and so found myself mainly just taking his signals. I am currently only at B/E after 6 months because I was away on Holiday when he had his biggest gains and I have been in all of his losing trades.
Then I came across FTI and Skunny:
FTI (who was a pro trader, then manager of traders for a major bank) said study ‘The Art of War’ and stay flexible in your thinking, but his method was ALL discretion and worse still used 5min charts and no stop losses – too fast and too dangerous for me.
Skunny said the longest timeframe universal charts are the 1hr, so thats what you should (mainly) trade from. He also said that if you draw a Fib between the correct S/R levels, and Price breaks (i.e. closes beyond rather than just pierces) the 0% or 100% line then it will continue until at least 38.2% beyond (within 5 pips for spikes and differing broker prices). I found that my backtesting worked best over large swings, where I could not afford the Stop Loss in a live account.
It was through Skunny that I came across Bobokus, whose Fibonnacci Trading method (again off 1hr charts) and Trading the Daily method (off daily charts) I have had some success with.
It was through the Bobkus threads that I heard about PeterCrowns (another pro trader) ,from Islander and discovered the DIBS method. And through Peter Crowns in the ‘No Free Lunch ....’ thread that I discovered Joel Rensink ako ‘TheRealThing’ (a pro trader for over 30yrs) and his ‘First Strike’ and ‘One Night Stand’ methods. He gives (for free), both the details of these and daily updates on progress at his Blog site.
*Update my results are shown in post #10.
I now have some methods which suit my personality, my capital and my timezone, and I can boost the returns by adding the flexibility of FTI, the Anti-Hedging of Jacko, the Fibs of Bobokus and Skunny and the PA of James16.
I truly believe that I am getting there!
Ian
P.S. If you want to find the details of methods mentioned above look up ForexFactoory the relevant FF username (I have highlighted in bold) and then search for threads started by them (or their posts) – or for their blog or website.
If you have a question then send me a PM, rather than post in this thread,since I do not look at it much.
Note that I may post anonymised PMs and replies in this thread.
When I first started trading Forex in August 2006 I did not know where to start. Although as a Yorkshireman I am very careful about spending money, I did the usual thing of buying systems and mentoring programmes. They nearly all seemed promising at first, but in the end I could not make them work for me.
Perhaps I was fortunate, but I don’t consider any of the ones that I tried to be rip-offs - they just didn’t work for me. The main problem was that I spent nearly as much money on losing trades as I did in buying the systems. Why was this? – It was because I could not take paper or Demo trades seriously - it was easy for me to live with a 200pip stop loss in Demo, not so when real money was involved (even at only £1 per pip at a UK Spreadbetting company).
I was fortunate to discover T2W, which led me to the Forex Factory where in May 2007 I discovered James16.
James16 says that you don’t have to go through hell to discover if you have it in you to become a successful Forex trader. I think that it really depends upon your personality.
I took everything James16 said to heart. I joined his Private Forum for 1 month, but could not justify the expense of continued membership at that time. He said you should demo first, and not trade shorter timeframes until profitable live in daily and weekly. I tried for 6 months to become profitable trading daily pin bars – could not afford the big stops for the weekly. This entailed never getting to bed before 01:00 hrs on Sunday through Thursday. I found this very hard, because I had to get up by 06:00 hrs and often found that it took me a good while to switch off after being on the PC looking at Forex. My other problem was in not having a means of determining a Take Profit target or a Trailing Stop method which backtested consistently. So I gave up and started to look for other systems because I did not (and still do not) trust 4hr charts because of the 4 different starts to the 4hr bar.
‘The_Wizard' said he ignored the advice about timeframes and found he had most success on the 1hr. He subsequently got a sufficiently good trade record as to get a job as a pro trader. But although tempted, I resisted the lure of PA off the 1hr charts.
But it took a long time before I found anything that backtested OK for me. I found that many/most indicator based systems were in actual fact just as discretionary as James16 Price Action and I could not get them to backtest consistently for me.
I discovered Jacko, whose method works but is discretionary, so I invested $500 in becomming one of his ‘turtles’. Unfortunately I found that I did not trust my own judgement and so found myself mainly just taking his signals. I am currently only at B/E after 6 months because I was away on Holiday when he had his biggest gains and I have been in all of his losing trades.
Then I came across FTI and Skunny:
FTI (who was a pro trader, then manager of traders for a major bank) said study ‘The Art of War’ and stay flexible in your thinking, but his method was ALL discretion and worse still used 5min charts and no stop losses – too fast and too dangerous for me.
Skunny said the longest timeframe universal charts are the 1hr, so thats what you should (mainly) trade from. He also said that if you draw a Fib between the correct S/R levels, and Price breaks (i.e. closes beyond rather than just pierces) the 0% or 100% line then it will continue until at least 38.2% beyond (within 5 pips for spikes and differing broker prices). I found that my backtesting worked best over large swings, where I could not afford the Stop Loss in a live account.
It was through Skunny that I came across Bobokus, whose Fibonnacci Trading method (again off 1hr charts) and Trading the Daily method (off daily charts) I have had some success with.
It was through the Bobkus threads that I heard about PeterCrowns (another pro trader) ,from Islander and discovered the DIBS method. And through Peter Crowns in the ‘No Free Lunch ....’ thread that I discovered Joel Rensink ako ‘TheRealThing’ (a pro trader for over 30yrs) and his ‘First Strike’ and ‘One Night Stand’ methods. He gives (for free), both the details of these and daily updates on progress at his Blog site.
*Update my results are shown in post #10.
I now have some methods which suit my personality, my capital and my timezone, and I can boost the returns by adding the flexibility of FTI, the Anti-Hedging of Jacko, the Fibs of Bobokus and Skunny and the PA of James16.
I truly believe that I am getting there!
Ian
P.S. If you want to find the details of methods mentioned above look up ForexFactoory the relevant FF username (I have highlighted in bold) and then search for threads started by them (or their posts) – or for their blog or website.
If you have a question then send me a PM, rather than post in this thread,since I do not look at it much.
Note that I may post anonymised PMs and replies in this thread.