Noobs on a mission. My journey back to a thousand.

Well hello everybody and welcome to god knows will probably be an interesting journal. First off I would like to say if your looking for the kind of advice thats going to make you rich, you're probably looking on the wrong side of "Forex" Town. I created this thread because I figure that maybe I can meet some interesting people here, share some ideas, and hopefully learn a thing or two. Along the way I'll probably share my journey with you to let you know my progress. Plus I'm hoping that if someone figures out how the he-- this forex thing works, maybe you'll be nice enough to share it with me. You know "keep it in the family". So anyway, a little about me ... and how I got involved in the world of Forex...... We'll, some time ago .. I tried my hand at day trading. LOL..... yeah ... read a couple of books you know. I figured ... how hard can this stuff be. I'll just do everything the book sais and I'll Be Rich! Well uhh..... that didnt work out as planned, else I probably wouldnt have titled the thread "Noobs on a mission". Long story short I burned about $15000 in the matter of 3 months. By the way Tell those damn market makers(LEHM,GISCO,MORG, INCA) that I'll be looking for my money in the unemployment lines. Anyhow, after my first stint with Equities I stumbled upon forex while searching for a trading platform on the web, which would have been for my second attempt at equity trading. Needless to say, I gave it a try and I've been hooked ever since. I loved the fact that I can trade 24 hrs a day ... or do i ? :/ As far as forward progression goes......hmmm.....I've probably blown about few accounts so far ... ROFL. But yes... I'm still here. During my first run I blew about $1000. But had enough very limited + days to make me feel good and come back to get wiped out again. Now the second time around ... Was actually rather exciting for a good 3 months .... Lets just say ... I took $300 and turned it into $3000. Things were starting to click. ( Let me pop my collar) I was trading regulary and booking profits regulary. In my mind I was thinking .... man ... I'm really doing it. I'd say to myself, if I can turn $300 into $3000 , then I should be able to turn $3k into $10K ,$100k and ...well you get my drift. Then the unthinkable happened. I got pretty comfy placing my trades you know ... Had some success, but lack of experience and discipline got the best of me. One day ... when the US market had received some pretty positive news I decided that the Eur/USD was going to tank and figured ... well if this pair tanks ... its going to drag all the rest of them down with it..... right??? Plus, I was pretty confident so I decied to up the ante and throw about 1.5 lots worth of cash( you know using my large reserve s of cash $3k) at it among various pairs going short on the EURO in everyone of them. Yeah ... well lets just say ... I was wrong. In 1 day ... I blew my $3k that took me 3 months to build up. Which really wasnt a lot of time (damn Im good), but that was my hard earned money Go_ Dam_it. Anyway that was a pretty devistating experience, honestly. So this is going to be my journey back to a thousand. I would say a million, but at the rate I'm going, I'll be lucky to hit a thousand again. Anyhow .... heres a brief summary of my time back. I started a micro account( the first time I was on a mini) this time so that I would be forced to use better money managment and not overleverage myself. I put the bare minimum money in it, A whopping 25 bucks. I got in at the right time though because there was a promotion that gave me an extra $25 on top as a promo. I flipped that $50 into $180 in about 10 days. I discovered ForexFactory.com and through trying different techniques I had read about and hardley mastered ... I had managed to blow my $180 to $7 bucks on minis in 1 day ... here we go again. Last night I got my act together ... and figured I would go back to the basics.... and try to keep it as simple and fundamental as possible using longer term charts, entry orders, stop losses, a couple of MAs and Fib Charting and ohhh my last $7.00 . Thats how the pros do it right.. :/ ???? We'll I made a couple of hundred pips tonight. I'm back up to $30 bucks ... WOHOO. I felt like writing a book about it So ... thank god there are people out here like me else you wouldnt have anyone to steal from. So now that you read about my pathetic forex journey, I'll try keep my entries shorter. Maybe you and I can actually get something out of this . I'd love to hear others more intriguing stories. Lets make some money and have fun doing it. See you on the other side.

Ryquade

EUR/JPY Short 120.783 out 120.587 12/11/2008 04:57 +20 more pips




Retracement from earlier rally ... I know that this is against the rules. :/ Going against the current trend, but I havent learned yet.

Buy Eur/Jpy 122.51

Had to pull out of it because I cannot afford a correction :/ ... Sad but true.

Long NZD/USD 0.55109 12/14/2008

We May be looking at a breakout.

Buy EUR/USD 1.34462

Buy GBP/USD 1.50328
Buy AUD/USD 0.67010

Saw an opportunity here, but played these with tighter stops

Looks like you're buying relative strength. That's a trend following approach. The only way to make that profitable is to find a way to detect and filter ranges. Do you have a consistent way to do that?

Plus, you really might want to go back to demo for a while. That or fund an Oanda account for $100 and trade in tiny amounts until you can turn a consistent profit.

Thanks for the reply rabid. Yes, I guess you could say that. I'm actually trading off of a 5, 7 ma. Along with a momentum indicator. I'm recently started incorporating some chart reading techniques that I learned from reading a lot of the James16, and Jackos thread.

Those are good, but if you're planning to trade them w/ real money you might not like the results. There's a lot of unspoken tricks to those techniques that aren't inherently obvious until you trade them. Those tricks make or break the approach.

Also, do yourself a favor and read up on market profile concepts. There's some free stuff at the CBOT if you search for it, or you can get the book "Mind over Markets" ... they provide an excellent way of determining, in advance, when markets are out of balance and ready to reprice themselves.

There's nothing wrong w/ buying on strength, a lot of people do it, just make sure you do it when the time is right. Otherwise you'll get eaten during ranging periods.

Peace.

Market profile concepts?? Not really sure what that is or what it means? What the general Idea of these concepts? Sorry if its a dumb question.

Nope, that's fine. For most on here it's a brand new concept. Oddly enough it's a very common and well-known concept on the futures exchanges (which closely correlate to the forex markets), but here... not so much.

An excellent starting point is here:
http://www.cbot.com/cbot/pub/page/0,3181,1184,00.html

Most of the material focuses on habits and patterns of intra-day traders that can be observed to determine whether the market will trend or range. Since these patterns occur before price patterns come about, you end up with an edge over pure price traders.

Today's EURUSD market is a classic pattern, it will "open" (8am GMT) above it's last close (5pm EST). In order for price to continue going up it will need to find a bottom and test it, so that traders can quantify their risk. If/when it does this, we will very likely see a strong up trend day (nothing's 100% tho, trade at your own risk) provided it tests and sticks above the last high.

Lack of formatting...making brain...explode...

LOL..... yeah ... sorry for the jibber jabber. I just threw it together in about 20 min. I Didnt bother to go back and format. I probably should have, the last thing I want to do is give you more stress to add to your already hectic forex day. My apologies :/

Rabid,

I'm going to look at this when I get a little free time. Thanks for you advice and for passing a little advice my way. Its much appreciated. In the mean time, I think its time for a little sleep.

Buy NZD/JPY 1 B 50.404 .

This is more of a Carry trade position. But from the charts it looks like it has found some support and trend could possibly reverse. This is a risky trade. Because its going against the trend.

I just want to come back and post something real quick to clarify my last post.

My last msg:

I made that call several hours ago. The chart details what happened.

Anyway, what we saw was a classic pattern. Price had traveled abive the previous high overnight. It came back to where it opened and found support, creating a nice low point for traders to clarify their risk.

At that point it traveled along a range until the US open, and shot up from there. I've been long the entire day up until now. Price just hit the weekly R1, which was my TP. Price might continue to go to R2, but it usually doesn't in a single day. Regardless, I'm happy w/ the results (200 pip days are never to be regretted, lol) and ready to call it a day.

My point in all of this isn't to brag or anything so crude, but to punctuate my point earlier. If you understand the factors that drive the markets, and the patterns they produce, you can easily adjust your intra-day trading strategy by making an educated guess. This tells you when to trade the break, or when to fade against the break.

These patterns are about 60% to 70% reliable and have an average ROI of 2:1 (sometimes 3:1, maybe higher, if you get a good ROI).

Wow!... thats very insightful. I will definately look into the link you sent me so that I can learn more about this. I didnt know that the open had any real significance. I do take it very personally when I lose money. I know thats part of the game .... but I hate when I do. I'm doing well today but I took a few losses that I didnt need to take. I 've been reading a lot about how stops are important ... and one strategy I'm using right now requires a 50 pip stop loss. Well twice today .... I got stopped out only to see the pair come right back to near where I bought it. That was a total loss of about 120 pips. Luckily I made 600 on the day so I'm not too upset , but regardless I dont like to lose. Before I would usually not use stops or I would use them very loosely. I do see the value in them but sometimes I just wonder if I'm not using them correctly.

EUR/USD Open Long 1.35050 Close 1.36650 +160
NZD/USD Open Long 0.55178 Close 0.55050 -12.8
AUD/USD Open Long 0.67100 Close 0.66500 -60
Err!
AUD/USD Open Long .67010 close 0.66410 -60
Err!

Total Gain/Loss +28

I'm so mad because I got stopped out twice only to see the pair come right back to the same price. I'm trying to stick with a 50 pip stop, but maybe its too close.

The good news is I'm still long in several positions and up about 500 pips on the day

http://www.forexfactory.com/images/misc/progress.gif

I've spent some time reading up on the link you attached. I must say its an interesting concept, though I'm a bit confused still. I found a study guide on CBOT that seems to thouroughly explain it though. I'm attaching the link in case you or anyone else would like to read through it.

http://www.cbot.com/cbot/pub/page/0,3181,1184,00.html

Select Market Profile Handbook to Read up on the subject. Thanks Rabid.

Whats up Rabid. I've been doing some research on the Market Profile lately. I posted a link above that has a lot of information on the subject. I also was able to find this indicator and thought you might be able to make use of it.