I am a Newbie Trader - My dream is to be able to make a living from trading so I work to live not live to work. I use the mixture of Big Picture with technical analysis to raise my profitability. VanTharpe's books and my analysis proved to me that I needed more opportunities than what equities and futures could offer me in order to make a living from trading - this is how I stumbled across this site. I also experienced trader psychology first hand and found out that planning and disciplne = no/low stress trading. Stress now only occurs when I make mistakes and deviate from the plan. I have 4 documented plans with return results which won't let me quit my day job so I am seeking better strategies than what I have now. I then read the book Mechanical Trading systems and thought this would help maintain my discipline - automating my entries, position sizes and exits within well specified parameters. That was when I looked at different trading platforms and found out about metatrader and am using the MT4 tool to alert me of opportunities, provide position SL and TPs on a specified risk to reward ratio. I enjoy pulling apart trading strategies to better understand what they are; the risk to reward ratio, and the best market scenarios to use them.

I still do not understand the business model of bucket shops, spread betting and other OTC products/firms and am very wary of them - I believe this lack of transperancy is their edge not ours (mine) - I have read on this forum that there are US regulatory agencies they will help make these products better for the retail guy. Hopefully that will trickle down to other countries.

I wrote this as a time stamp of my current thoughts and will update once I make more progress.