How to manage Part-Time trading????

Ok so i've blown 3 accounts.... I went with a company that did it for me and well with the market being bad and what not it went KABOOM!! Some of it was my fault some was the markek but i'm over it. So I read as much as I can on here and I see everyone as mostly being a day trader. I on the other hand find myself out in the construction field all day clueless on what's happening with the Forex markek. I see everyone working these 1 min 5 min 30 min charts and I just can't do that. I get up at 4 and get home at 7 So can you guys help me with some suggestions on what to do? I'm currently ripping through babypips and trying to understand it but some parts confuse the crap out of me. Am I out of place to ask really dumb questions on here? Thanks for reading guys.

JJ

The only dumb question is one that isn't asked.

Alright First one

This is the basic of the basic but I must ask.....

Goin short is selling

Goin Long is buying

But you just go Long before you can go short correct?

You cant sell something you do not already have...?

You are "borrowing" it from someone else at your brokerage that really owns it.

Investopedia is also another good place to check if something at baby pips confuses you. Here is what they have to say about shorts,

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/short.asp

So I use GFT... If I put in a limit order to sell 1 lot if a pair goes low enough with the expectaion of it going lower....... I would sell 1 lot of EUR/USD at 1.300. If it drops to 1.290 and I buy a lot I would be even and gained 10 pips. Correct?

Basically

My suggestions are to...

1. Stop trading real money until you have a solid strategy
2. Research, Read, and Understand Forex
3. Develop a Trading Plan and use a paper account until it is profitable.

If you cannot sit in front of the charts, try using the longer time frames such as the 4 hour or daily charts. Find a system you are comfortable with using these time frames and learn it. Go slow, learn and practice. If you are using the longer time frames you will not have to worry about what the price is doing at any given moment. I will bet you will sleep better!

Much success in your trades!

Ok thanks so far you guys. Your of great help. Next question. What are the steps of lot sizes. Example... it I have 5,000. What would my lot size be? If I have 1G... etc. Is there a way to figure this out. Also when it comes to Leverage... How does that effect my lot size? Easy on the termanology pleeease

Good suggestions so far.
Try different systems/methods that fits your personality and lifestyle. You might be interested in OzFx "Daily" system since it place trades 7:00PM EST or 00:00 GMT daily.

Good luck,
Rick

You need to determine what amount of your account you want to put at risk at any one time. Most people work with 1-5% in the market at any one time. So say you have $5000*5%, that means you would be risking $250. Then you need to find out what your stop loss will be, and this can change depending on a lot of factors but lets just say you will have a 50 pip sl so $250/50=5 so 5 mini lots is what you will want to be trading.

Hope this helps some

Ok so....
If im trading 400:1 ratio
And im trading in lot sizes of 1,000
that means for every thousand dollars invested I could use 400 lots
And each of those lots would count as 1k in the market ( not in my wallet)
and if I have 10,000 invested at a 400:1 ratio and invest at a 10% margin...
I would then be playing with 400 lots?


This stuff is more complicated then I had pictured :/

Wow JCM,

You're very green. I hope you've stopped trading for now.

Everyone has to start somewhere.

You can open up a demo account with many brokers. Go to www.InterBankFX.com and download their demo to practice on.

You get to play with pretend money for a while.
You'll learn a lot by pushing buttons and watching how the account equity, margin and balances are affected when you go long or short, etc.

By the way. If you get a heap of winners on Demo and double your account or something, don't go thinking "Awesome! I can make a killing doing this!".
It's totally possible to fluke a good run! And 95% of traders supposedly fail.

When the 30-day demo is over , you can register for it again as many times as you like!

You'll learn quick anyway, In six months time you'll know the talk and walk the walk. Well at least enough to figure out what everyone here is talking about.

EDIT: And you can be successful trading end-of-day only, if you're too busy for intraday trading.

Oh I am the first to admit I am very green haha. Put on your sunglases boys. I am going through babypips but some things confuse me. I don't want to just read on. I need to understand what i'm reading. That's why im asking the best of the best. MUHAHAHAHA

ok I understand the 5 % and everything.. but what is one lot worth in that scenario. I only ask this because baypips uses the example for 1 lot = 100,000. Does that hold through for this as well? 50 x 100,000 = a lot.....

Typically 1 lot is 100,000

1 mini 10,000

1 micro 1,000

So 5 mini's would be 50,000

what determines what size lot you use though?

Lot sizes stay the same, its just whatever broker you use. Some brokers allow you to trade mini lots and micro lots.

The amount of money you have in your account and your risk capacity. If you're going to risk 2% of your account and have $1000 equity then that's a $20 risk per trade. Lets say you're using a 40 pip stop loss, that's .50 cents per pip of risk that you can tolerate ($20/40). Assuming you're trading a USD-based pair, that's a half (.5) of a mini lot or 5 micro lots. In order to make that trade you need to have a mini account that supports micro lots, or a micro account that lets you have $1k cash in your micro.

If you start trading with a higher risk % then you dramatically decrease your odds of success. You won't give your system a chance to play.

You can read more about money management on dialist's thread...
http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=6948