New Guy Making A Fool of Himself

Hi All, a couple months ago I decided to take the plunge into Forex trading because I cant trade stocks with my 9 to 5. The leverage is nice too

Feel free to leave feedback on my trades/ strategy etc. and I hope to eventually meet some people to toss ideas around with on aim.

I started a practice account to practice and try to test some ideas while I save to get an actual account going. I started with only 3k in the practice account to simulate the actual amount I will be starting with. After a few trades in and out to get used to metatrader 4 I set up some pending orders based on 4 hour charts with an eye on the daily for market direction.

Trade #1
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c2...er/5-26-01.jpg

On this trade I noticed the USDJPY and placed a range trade as seen in the pic. It was triggered today and Id like to take profit but didnt see it until the market closed.

Trade#2
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c2...er/5-26-02.jpg

This trade is using simple trend following strategy ive been tinkering with using the 14 period moving average.

I traded one contract on each of these trades for a current total gain of 2140.43

Since its the weekend and I cant really do much Ill tell everyone a little about myself and how I ended up here. I read the book Millionaire traders and the thing I found most interesting was the paths different people had taken to become traders. Maybe one day if I become successful in this venture this will be of some interest to another person looking into trading.

I am one of those come from nothing stories that statistically should not be where I am today. I am by no means wealthy, but I have laid myself a solid foundation being in my mid twenties. My first interest was in stocks when I was exposed to them in high school during one of those "trade stock for a semester and see who makes the most profit competitions" I dont remember how I did and I definitely had no idea what I was doing but the seed was planted. I went to a southern state school with the illusion that I just needed a degree in finance and I could start trading somewhere. By my senior year I found out this is not how it works unless you were in a top business school. I did land an interview with an major oil company in Houston for their trading program. I did the on campus interview which was a basic trading scenario and some logic tests. The next day in class I was getting congratulated by my professors for something about my interview. I was later told by our career center that the interviewer said I did the best on these tests out of all the people he had ever interviewed. So I was flown to Houston for their second stage of recruiting which was an all day battery of team trading games. My team had the best scores but I was the only one not hired. I was pretty demoralized by this and saw it as my only chance to get into trading. I since have realized that the most likely reason I did not get hired was because I was swinging for the fences on every trade and did not manage risk.

I ended up getting lucky and landed a job at a large consulting firm where I am today. I wanted to trade for myself but there was no way to trade stocks when I had a 9 to 5 job and found out that Forex traded 24/7. I started reading everything I could to learn as much as possible and ended up where I am today on this forum with a practice account.

Goals:
1. I need to learn the fundamentals of what drives FOREX markets such as news releases and economic drivers. I currently am only trading technically and this makes me uncomfortable.

2. Eventually I would like to be making enough to become a full time trader

3. Learn a bit of programming to set my alerts etc.

4. Meet others who are as determined as me to become a trader or already have.

5. Absorb as much information from people who are much more knowledgeable than I am.

6. If I could find a mentor that would be great.

Thats all for now, everyone have a great weekend

Have fun learning this stuff. I sure do. I would say good luck but we know that luck favors the prepared

Rufus

As a new trader you might take a look at AUS/USD. As of today, Sun 28 March, it is clear the AUS/USD has bounced off a resistance trendline, lower highs and lows, and will be making it's way down for awhile. You might sell this pair for an intermediate term trade. Set your stop about the high last week and either set it as a trailing stop or move it down as this pair sells down.
Commodities in general are beginning to decline and the AUS/USD pair looks like a better trade than either the NZD or CAD.
Good luck, le' General

Thanks for the input, however, I dont know much of anything about australia or how its economy works so as Im learning I want to use the pairs that I can relate to such as usd, eur, or gbp. Im about to post a summary of a fiasco I pulled today if you would like to help me out, or just call me an idiot lol.

I decided to place some trades last night around the JPY/USD to take advantage of a breakout from a range. I put a buy just above the range and one sell below with another sell below at a lower level of resistance. The first sell was triggered and i could have taken profit of 10 pips but thought it would go further, when I went to bed last night it had just triggered the lower sell also, so I put a trailing stop of 25 pips and went to bed.

I got up this morning and had a 60+pip loss on each and was not sure why my trailing stops didn't kick in. Maybe I didn't input them correctly on Metatrader 4, another reason Im doing a practice account.

So I close those two positions and almost immediately witness a run up to my remaining buy order and then watch as it jumps right back down. At this point I realize I just need to sideline myself and close out my positions leaving the three losses in the attached file.

Anyone have any input or advice on how to trade a range, or the breakout? When I try to corral them in I have the stock touch my order then go back into range leaving me with a loss. However, when it works it works well. Maybe move my orders farther from the resistance lines so it really has to push through to reach them?

In case anyone was actually following this, I'm still around, I am just doing more learning/reading than trading right now. Theres a lot of good info on this website and some really bright people