Need Step by Step guide for a beginner and have some questions?

Hi,

First of all I want to thank you for all of you to share and guide useful information. I know that I am not asking new questions but please I need answers for my satisfaction and made a bold decision.

1- Can I make it my living from this trading as an alternate of my job.
( I am a programmer and can spend 18 hours a day on computer to learn it and can set my disciplines with patience and not greedy to ear a lot just enough to live well and alternate of my job. I am getting 4000$ after tax per month.) I love to work on computer .... my own work no boss.

2- What are the steps to learn, should I read some book, this forum or take some expensive course...?

3- What is trading station and which one I should I used? Last year i opened demo account Forex-FXCM and download their trading station and lost all money in one week.

4- How to set the charts, trends, indicator.

5- Which strategy is safest ( safest in a sense, less profit, less loss but more chances to get profit)

5- What is the minimum amout should I start with e.g in initial 500$-1000$ are more than enough for me in initial.
6- What are the peak times should I consider more to get better chance to make money.
7- What are the reliable currency pairs should I consider in beginning.
8- Should I setup 2 or 3 computers with different screens to see the charts or buy a big screen?? I saw one person with big screen and laptop to input the entry but he was suggesting to put six screens and clock with differt timezones on the wall....is it worthable? how a professional person works?


Thanks in advance again for everybody.....

1. Yes, but you need a good sized balance and it will take a lot of hard work, time and discipline to be able to be in that position

2. Don't bother spending money. Read this forum, then read it again

3. try a few, see which ones u like

4. experiment and see #2

5. impossible to answer, see #2

5. As much as you can afford to lose

6. see #3

7. see #3

8. see #3

I wouldn't suggest making it an actual profession even though many people do this because no matter what your income won't be guaranteed so you'll need some kind of backup.

I know where you are coming from. I only recently discovered forex trading. I would love to quit my day job also.
From my limited experience, i would suggest trading a demo account for a few weeks/months. It is a great way to learn to trade, discover the currency pairs that suit your trading style, find out which indicators, charts and timeframes give you the information you need.
Read as much as you can about what everyone else is doing. Sift through it all, find what is useful and what is junk. Add to your own skill set. Set standards for yourself. Try not to compare your results with others - there are bound to be more successful people out there and some less successful. Pay attention to announcements (economic and political) as they can have profound impact on currency fluctuations.
Take it slowly. Its an investment in not only money but time also. Only time will give you the experience that you need to become successful.
I hope that you find what you seek.

Thanks for your time. I agree with your comments. For the first step tell me....
- one trading system to start
- one or two indicator
- one or two currency pairs.

I will spend time to read stuff. Thanks for guiding me.

I would look into James16 Charts on this forum for an idea of systems.

Indicators are all lagging, unless you feel the need to be shown where price used to be, they will do nothing but make you feel better about taking a trade. (This comment is bound to start an argument here, but I have found it true.)

My biggest concern is that you blew a demo account in a week. That's not easy to do. Not at all. Do not go live with money for the first few months.

As far as making a living at this, your 500-1,000 dollar balance won't be enough anyways. Worry about getting good at this first. (Many of the best funds out there only get a return of about 15-25% a year. This would never be enough to validate quitting your job.)

As far as currency pairs, there are a few things to consider: If you need something that moves slow, try EUR/CHF. It's a slow mover. If you want to know if you are right or wrong quickly, try GBP/JPY, it will let you know.

I will let you in on a dirty little secret: With correct position sizing, the pair you trade makes no real difference. It took me a long time to realize this, but I finally did.

I started to keep a spreadsheet of my trades, and found that the GBP/JPY is good to me, and I used to be scared to death of it. At the same time, I found that EUR/JPY isn't all that good to me. (and I loved that pair.) Go figure.

But at the end of the day, I couldn't care less if I make Swiss Francs, US Dollars, or British Pounds....it's all profit.

Best of luck, and take your time.

Clockwork71

From where I can download or install the chart. I made a mini practice account on fxcm?

Hi 786,

A decent and free charting package can be had from "North Finance"
it is a MT4 charting package. It seems never to expire. Just sign up for a demo account.

My choice would be the eur/usd pair to start off with.

Your practice account with FXCM will only last 1 month, though you can get a new one every month....My choice,, and also my main broker is Oanda. The practice account, FXGame, never expires....and you can trade less than 10k, also the eur/usd is .9 pip spread....just beware news time. Check them out.
eur/chf is between 1-3 pips depending on time of day. During London is 1 pip.

Best hours to trade.....London open til close.....mainly for me, 2am to 12pm EDT.

Always be aware of News releases!

Can you make a living at trading....YES....though not with $1000Cad....my advice.....no less than 25k at the bare minimum.

Break it down....just an example for thought, as I do not know your taxes in Canada....if you are Netting $4000Cad/mo. , look at your gross income....that is what you will need to earn to "maintain" your current life style....Consider computer updates and the such also....I spend approx $1500usd per year on avg.

The learning curve is long....do not expect overnight results. You most likely did not learn your current vocation overnight.

FYI....Don't listen to those who say you cannot trade for living....just don't start out undercapitalized and uneducated. This is the most cut throat of business'.....many never grasp that concept.

Hope any of this helped
Fxj

FXJ - nice summary, IMHO.

786 - welcome to the forum. I don't know if it's any help, but you might like to read my post here, as a starting point:
http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?p=1555556

Good luck
David

Yes you can make a living out of the forex but even if you are consistently making money while having a day job it does not mean that when you will leave your day job you will continue to make money.

Having a day job is definitly safer even if it is boring as hell and not veyr rewarding so even if you lose money on an account, your mind still knows that your are safe for the month.

I plan to quit my job in the future but i will definitely use a french procedure that allow you to go back to your company after a year. I make money today but i really beleive it's different when it's your only job and if you are not sucessfull then you are screwed for the month without any revenue...

Just remember that forex is a damn hard market to trade/make money from. If you have been making steady/consitent profits for a period of about 3month on demo, you might consider opening a small live account, after another 3month of making steady/consitent profits, you can consider scaling the whole opperation up. By that time you should have a pretty good idea of what can be done, hence you will be able to make an informed decision about staying/leaving your day job...

Best of luck,

Vlad

Thanks for all you guys. You had explained a very difficult thing in very simple way. These are really very useful tips. I will try to follow these guide line. I understand it is not short term project but I am serious and will try to be committed for long time.

Thanks for every body...thats what I need and you all guys provide me perfectly. That is true that it is great forum and this is great due to all of you guys. I thank you of all of you again from all of newbies like me.

Wish you good luck.

Hello,
I am wondering what books have you read and how much time have you spent trading. Try searching for Martin Pring's books or Steve Nison. THey are both great authors. There are some good sites though, that got me started. Stockcharts.com is a very good one, another one is forexpreparation.com, which has video tutorials on it showing how to use different indicators and actually all essentials for forex trading.
Cheers

8. no, make your trading way as easy as possible, (even just remembering your user name and password and trade in your friend place may suit you).

7. most people will start with the smallest spread currency they may get, such as eur/usd ,usd/jpy & gbp/usd, but most of the time with position size adjustment, it doesn't matter. (smaller spread= better liquidity)

6. when you're awake , up and running. violating sleeping time is not a good idea.

5. it is seasonal,
4. read the platform help section, can't copy paste help to this thread
3. try smaller lot (1 cent a pip or less), at least it takes more than a week to lost the money (hope not)

2. no step, just do it, back and forth, market behavior change over time, we need to constantly learn and adjust the moving average

1. let's do our best, can't decided by somebody else.

0. good luck

786, there's obviously a mountain of good info on this forum but the school at babypips here is an excellent place to start

I had one more question. I had an auto trading expert advisor program which runs on meta-trader chart and their system.
Can I run this to other systems? If yes can you please tell me which systems, and if you can suggest some good systems...it will be great.

Thanks

One of the best books I have read is Reminisences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefervre. Read that before you start. It will get your head in the game.

After a year of trading, I finally got this book. Buy it, and now. Read it, and re-read it. Over and over.

I cannot tell you how much this book has helped.

Thanks! Its totally awesome. I just bought Fooled by randomness too by Nick Taleb. It is all quite good.

Read THE BLACK SWAN next.

To win the trading game you must not follow the crowd. You don't need to spend money on software, education or gurus.

Here's what you need to know:

RISK = STOP LOSS * POSITION SIZE. Most say risk no more than 2%. That will work. If you start with $1,000 that's $20 per trade.

THE REASON YOU ENTER HAS NO EFFECT ON THE OUTCOME OF YOUR TRADE. If this was not true, trading would no longer exist. Don't be fooled by the latest system hype.


GBPUSD moves over 100 pips per day on average from open to high and/or open to low. If you enter at the daily open, price may hit your stop or net you over 100 pips. You may have a risk/reward pay out over 10 to 1. How many days per week or per month do you need to win to come out ahead?