Who/WHAT do you trust?

After trading six months, I believe this is a question everyone here has had to ask themselves.

For starters, most people claim to be sucessful at trading FOREX. But I have read stats that say 90% fail. So, you have the liars who post there "sucess", mainly I think to make themselves feel better.

And actually, there are people out there that are SO SUCESSFUL, they quit trading (maybe they feel quilty about wiping out German traders....) and are willing to make you rich for only 3,000 dollars and two days of your time. (This always brings the question, "If you are so good, then why share? Why not make billions in the next year or two, and call it a day?")

There are trend traders, there are scalpers, there are swing traders....all claiming that they know the path to riches. Everybody is making money.

Oh, and the great systems. They all work in the pretty charts people post. There are at least a billion of them, all waiting to make you wealthy.

Some traders trade on fundamentals, some on TA, some on both....yet they all are either welathy, or on their way. (Although they fight non-stop about who's right.)

I am more of a TA guy...and can think of a trade I was once in that was wrecked by some idiot at the BoJ making an errant comment. Actually, it wasn't even him...it was everyone freaking out at the leaving out of two words or some such nonsense. Which at the time, I think we were trading USD/JPY around the 118 mark. Went down.....all the way to where we are now....121. Thanks, if you were going to panic in and out of the trade...then stay out. Some of us think about it first, and you wrecked it.

I hear there used to be real volitility in this market, and that I havent seen it yet. Maybe so, I don't know. That could be a lie too.

So veterans, if this rambling of mine makes any sense to you, by all means chime in. Tell me I am right, wrong, or and idiot...And by the way, the idiot part wont bother me. Because you trade FOREX, therefore you lie. lol.

;-)

I'm sorry that I don't have enough time to give you a detailed answer but I had to say something. After 2 years of trading and still not a great success, I will not quit. You are a mid-year freshman in a graduate degree course with 4-5 years to go. Most people fail because: they blow up their accounts, too greedy, don't read any books on self improvement, don't have trade journals, don't ask other traders at their level, don't have a trading buddy to talk to, the market has been quiet for a few weeks, shall I go on? I know you are frustrated as we all were at your level. Let me give you another stat: 95% of people ARE going to retire broke. so if you want to be successful it is really easy. Find out what everyone else is doing and do the opposite. that is why we are all here learning to trade forex. Read Mark Douglas' Trading in the Zone.

Read any successful person’s biography and it goes like this: struggle, struggle, struggle, small success; struggle, struggle, struggle, small success; struggle, big struggle, struggle, BIG SUCCESS. See setbacks as proof of your future success. What makes anyone think that trading is any different?

there are some that post their trades and account results thus providing a track record. I think most of them you can believe.

the rest is up to your judgment. even a bad system or a liar about wealth can have some good points in it that you can take and add to your own trading.

There has been plenty of volatility around...Were you trading in late Nov? Early Mar?

I do agree with you on some of your points though...For those starting out in this business it is hard to know who to trust...

I guess the answer is read what everyone has to say on these forums and then do your best to have it confirmed in other sources...

Pip Pirate said it very well. I could go on and on, and sometimes do.

People who would try to trade for a living are usually high-spirited, entreprenureal, intelligent, confident types. (I might get a lot of argument on the "intelligent" part).

So when trading, we tend to be impulsive, optimistic, stubborn, overconfident. I think that's why we have to learn the lessons painfully -- it takes a lot to temper those traits. Until then, we blow accounts.

Read, learn, trade, repeat. Keep it small until you're consistently profitable. Use proper money management and you won't blow your account.

Ultimately you WILL find your OWN trading method / style if you don't give up. It will be a combination of what you've learned plus your own experiences and personality.

P.S. I am not consistently profitable. I am improving.

There is a lot of bull posted here and on other forums. At times, my own musings included. I have been viewing FF threads and Cable in particular since last November and on the whole it has afforded me a great insight into different trading opinions, approaches and systems. Of course, there is a lot of nonsense mixed in with the good, and it takes a while to sort out the wheat from the chaff and to identify posters who actually seem to know what they are talking about.
As an earlier post pointed out, it takes many years to succeed as a trader and like him/her I also intend to stay the course and not let it beat me. I will read as much as I can, learn from my mistakes and develop the self-discipline required to make it.

As for the market itself, I admit to similar frustrations with it's frequent idiosyncratic reaction to fundamentals. Just when you think you have all the ducks in a technical analysis line and the news is predicted in your setups favour you get blown out of the water and several days profits are wiped out.
You just have to get back on the bull or bear and keep at it.

For me, forex trading is not a matter of trusting individuals or systems, instead it is a continuous journey of learning. Determining to your best ability what to expect today, and how to act accordingly with a given set of related fundamentals and external influences, using whatever system you are continually fine tuning and are most comfortable with.

JM2C

The quote at the end of the 'pip pirate 2' posting (see below) is the best way to summarize what most newer traders seem to forget - success as a trader cannot be measured in the first few months.

For me, May has not been a good month at all, not sure why, but just one of those periods where I cannot hit a mules a*# with a snow shovel - in the long run though, just a blip on the radar screen. I keep trading but always keeping risk consistent on a per trade basis to ensure no big flame out.

Is it June yet?

Read any successful person’s biography and it goes like this: struggle, struggle, struggle, small success; struggle, struggle, struggle, small success; struggle, big struggle, struggle, BIG SUCCESS. See setbacks as proof of your future success. What makes anyone think that trading is any different?

Someone once told me that you could take any method or indicator, study the crap out of it for several months, find out when it works and doesn't work, and you could make money off of it. People who used XYZ method and have been successful with it are going to tell you their method is the best, because it worked for them, personally.

Woodie's CCI Club is one such example of taking one indicator, finding all of it's nuances and using it to become successful. Their site and info. is free, but it is focused more on futures, and if you go there, expect to do a lot of studying.

There are a thousand different ways you can make money in this market, but unfortunately, there are a million different ways you can lose money in this market. New traders often latch on to one indicator, tweak it to try to make perfect trades every time, and then give up not even a week later to jump on the next system/indicator that comes down the pike. They don't even bother trying to understand the indicator, yet they try to make it the perfect indicator, and wonder why they keep losing (see my sig).

A lot of those who charge a lot of money for advice are making more money from you than the market. Some of them don't even trade (one example is RS of Houston, who have been caught a couple of years ago by the CFTC for giving out futures trading advice with absolutely no evidence of trading). People buy into it because they think it must be worth something if they have to pay a lot of money for it. If a trader gave out his info for free, most people won't take the serious time to study it because they didn't have to pay for it so "it must not be worth much".

The measure I use to determine if a trading adviser is charging too much or not, is what I call the "porno factor". Pornography is the largest business on the Internet, and I'm guessing (no... really! ) that some of the higher end sites charge something like $40-$50 per month for membership. Granted that since there is a huge supply of pornography, the price is probably going to be cheaper... so let's say it's cheaper by a factor of two to three. Therefore, if any trading adviser charges more than say $100-$150 per month for a website membership to tap into his secret strategies, he's probably using that, instead of trading, to make money.


As for myself, I've been trading for almost four and a half years. Started with stock/equity options, and still trade them. I dabbled in futures once, and have been on/off interested in FOREX. I make enough to get by each month without having to work, but it's like living from paycheck to paycheck. I'm just trying to find a way to "give myself a raise".

Sorry if I implied that I was going to quit, I am not. But sometimes after reading through a lot of FOREX-related material on the net, I feel I need a shower. LOL

Besides, I can't quit now, these idiots in the market (i.e., everyone on the other side of the trade) still have some of my money! LOL

you do realize you just called me an idiot right.

I hope you continue your journey climbing the learning curve so you can get high enough and look back down at where you were and laugh at some of the things you may have said or done and congratulate yourself on climbing higher up the curve.

Something to remember though, the higher you keep climbing the more lonely it seems as more and more people fall out of the climb and the more tedious it may seem to become. You find yourself doing more self teaching and trying to discover new paths as you start to accumulate so much knowledge. It's not that other people are dumb, you just already know what they're trying to teach you. You may feel frustrated with your constant battles now, but there's a good chance you'll get frustrated with being bored as a consistent trader. Sounds funny/idiotic I know, but trust me, it happens.

I'll admit it, it's hard for me to get excited about my trades anymore. But...trading, like any other job, is just that, a job. It gets boring after a while and you just slip into "the twilight zone". At the same time, like any other job, you get the promotions and the raises for working harder and smarter; for improving your job performance. Besides, the pay out on this job surpasses most others I know about, and I'd rather not get sued for somehow leaving a scalpel in someone's chest cavity.

Just hang in there man. We all have to start in the mail room.

Bravado - You are not always an idiot just when you are on the other side.

When we are both long CABLE, then you are finally thinking! LOL

Anyways, yes, I know....frustration is a big part of this. Truthfully, I learned a couple foreign languages, learned to play guitar to travel a 15 state region, leraned to skate and play ice hockey in the past. (All of which I did pretty fair at.)

But I have to admit, this has been the hardest thing.

However, as I get better, I have come to realize something: It seems the simplier you keep it, the better you do. Thinking too much can actually be a bad thing, thus getting you involved in the "noise" everyday.

I think maybe my biggest beef was simply there is so much noise out there. Not only noise in the market, but noise from people claiming to be market wizards. There are a lot of complaints about bad brokers, banks stop hunting, and on and on. I am starting to get the feeling that the truely sucessful people don't listen to any of it. They just react to price action, and don't sweat the rest of it.

I had a 48 pip profit on a trade recently that I put no more thought into than "Hey, we are at the top of a downward channel on the 4 hour chart. Maybe I should set stop losses at 20 pips, and my take profit at 50 pips." (Actually, it turned out to be 48 only because I set it at 53, therefore avoiding the 50 psychological barrier.)

I went and painted a house, came home, and found 48 pips. It turned out that they were hiding in my computer the whole time. (Yes I am a painting contractor, and have never traded anything before FOREX. I figured this would be a challenge - guess what? I was right. ) Besides, it is a commonly accepted fact that all of the world's great currency traders got their seed money painting houses....

Anyways, thanks for the input, and I really do appriciate it.

wipe that smile off your face.

I started my own website and chat room at the urging of family and friends.

As I began contemplating the idea of showing my trading method with others thru a website, I researched others who were teaching and found forums like this one where members posted their ideas about people who teach their method.

I read many posts…some positive and others negative. Both have very valid points.

During this time, I was showing family and friends my trading method , for free, in a chat room that I paid for out of pocket.
It didn’t take long for more people to ask to join.
These are the same people who urged me to start a website to teach how to trade (my trading method).

After enough reading, I decided not to start the website to teach others. I felt bad for all the people who posted their complaints and disappointments in regards to the trading methods they learned or in the people teaching them.

Then I found other sites with posts from individuals who genuinely want to learn to trading and truly wish to trade for a living.
I also met a man who was about to get married and he told me of his wishes to learn to trade so that his new wife could quit her job and stay home and raise a family.
He felt that he would be able to do this thru trading.

I realized that there are many people out there just like him. They truly have a deep desire to learn to trade and make a living from doing so.
I also remember how desperate I was to find someone who really knew how to trade when I began. I was just like one of those people out there hoping to give my family a better life.

Unfortunately, I had to learn the hard way.
It would have certainly been a lot faster to learn trading if I had a successful trader with me to tell me why to take certain trades and when to get out of certain trades. And what to think about while I was in my trade.

So this is what help make my decision to teach others.
I realize that some people will react negatively and others in a grateful way.

My point is… like all things in life that we aspire to do… we have heroes … like sports heroes, celebrities, wealthy entrepreneurs and great traders. These are the people that can teach and motivate us to a higher level.


Why would a really good trader share his or her trading method?

Because it feels good to help and connect with someone who recognizes your success, shares the same interest and asks for help. And all of the really good traders will never forget how hard it was to learn, the personal sacrifice they made and the financial pain we have to go thru to make it.

L.C.

It's funny, but I have studied many different systems, methods, tools and points of view throughout the last years. But, ultimately, nothing has worked as well for me as my own system which is the one I trade in my live account. I have demo'ed a number of different ideas from other traders and I could never scores the results I score with my own system.

So perhaps it's not about the systems but about what you feel comfortable with. That's why I believe a trader must develop his own trading methodology to be truly successful.

L.C., I'd say you are one of the good ones out there.

I find there are two main reasons why people fail in this or any other trading type business.

1) they don't have the ability or patience to LEARN what they're doing. They don't want to take the time to understand the fundamentals of the market as they just want to be a millionaire tomorrow.

2) they aren't highly capitalized. The more money you are able to start with the better chance you have of becoming very successful. To many new traders get into this field with a "rags to riches" idea in their head. They heard about one guy who turned $1,000 into $10M in a year and they think that happens all of the time. It doesn't....obviously.

Starting with a small amount of money gives way to taking bigger risks because they're searching for that home run every time. If they had $1M to start with, 10 pips per day would equal $10,000 to $20,000 per day depending on their MM strategy. Big difference and much easier to accomplish.

So you are telling me all I have to do is deposit a million? Well hell, if I knew it was that easy, I would have done it.

But yes, point taken.

Why would you trust anyone else in Forex other than yourself {or a Mentor}

There are numerous members right here @ FF that have negotiated the maze of the Pip Grinder and came out the otherside as survivors or successfull beyond their dreams.
Most will fall below this level and all who do will either be unsure of themselves, incompatable or selfish.

Are any of those masters frequenting FF today? AND If So; Why:
No Trumpet blowing or horns in the background but seriously folks; there are presently a minimum of 20 Members of FF {by my estimation} that come by here on a daily basis {because their trading style allows them to} not looking for advice but moreso; reading the questions to see who might be next to join the fraternaty of Forexhonorated and perhaps cast a clue or two.

PS: I very much doubt that any of "the 20" are trading the exact same or possibly even similar styles.

By Bemac

Absolutely Bemac. And you don't have to be around here long to know who a lot of them are. If someone takes a cheap shot at them they let it roll off and just keep moving around the forums leaving advice where it is needed. That's wisdom and maturity at work!