Vetern at Stocks...complete utter n00b at FX

Well I do have to say I have been doing stocks for about 2 years and I have for a while been a lil skeptical bout FX and how it trades. After becoming pretty technical in TA I realized that FX is a good place to throw some money at...

I have been doing the Thinkorswim demo accounts and have been averaging somewhere around 50-100pips per trade but my problem is that I want to become automated and I do not know where to start. I have used EA if that is what you guys call it for ETFs with wealth builder but I do not know where to start/get Metatrader. But I want to start asap..

So Cliff notes...

Veteran at Day trading stocks/etfs
Noob on what drives FX rates and such (CPI reports or whatever that stuff is)

Needs: A demo account at a good broker to plan an EA that has MT
Has: Money to risk
Wants: Help

Thanks if my post was a lil confusing I do apologize and also sorry for the poor spelling I'm on my iPhone

First thing is to look for a good recommended broker in the brokers section. Then go to their site and download metatrader platform.
If you want to create an EA then go to www.mql4.com and type expert advisor and look in the articles section. u will find good tutorials there.
Theres a lot of factors that drive the forex market, namly interest rates, general health of countrys economy and its current price. If though you use pure TA then you dont really need to focus on those things as all of that is already calculated into the price.
Just a question though was you making money in the stock market?
If so why change to forex?
If not how do you know you will be profitable in forex?
I guess tho you are cause u say you average 50-100 pips per trade.
If u want an expert advisor just ask in the programming section, somone will probably help u with that.

I used to be a active trader (5 trades a month) then in September I moved into day trading and so far I have made about 7K profit from just using 10K-13K when trading my stocks. I focused on the Ultra/Ultrashort ETFs which were very volitale (sp) but my technical system worked out pretty well. I had about 80% wins and 20% losses that hit the 8% stop loss.

I want to move to FX because of the ability to actively trade during off peak hours and such since school here takes up a lot of my time. Also the profits that can be made due to the leverage is something that I like. I would dabble first in EUR/USD and possibly move over the USD/JPY later on.

I understand the rate changes and how the markets are but I want to learn what the CPI and the other reports that affect the rates are.

Are there any good books not really on the technical aspect but the basics of the Forex markets?

First thing first. If you have traded stocks for 2 years, you're miles away from considering yourself an veteran I've traded forex for almost 3 years and I still consider myself as newcomer.

Second, I don't see why you're so interested in the fx market when you have such a profitable system trading stocks ?

If you want to develop a successful EA on MT4, I hope you have years to "waste" or a brilliant brain when it comes to stuff like automatic trading combined with an excellent understanding of how the market work. As far as I know there is only 1 person I would bother learning from when it comes to profitable EA's here on FF; Ronald Raygun.

haha I totally understand about the veteran saying. I just have to say that I'm somewhere in between rookie and 1 year veteran.

The reason that I'm interested in FX is that because of my work/schooling I cannot always checkout the market during the active hours and I like the fact that I can trade usually on my own accord.

My trading "system" for ETFs is just simple BB with a MACD, RSI, and SS. I focus on the 30min and 1 hour trade. When everything looks good and aligns up I get in. That is when I do it manually. With wealth builder I just use the same thing but different timelines in order to get my trades in and out.

What I want to do is carry my success from the stock over into the FX market. I'm completely technical so I think the move would be not that difficult but the spreads and pips thing is still a lil new to me.

But where do I start for a broker or should I keep to thinkorswim?

-Jared

I would not recommend you to trade outside London and US Session. I don't even like to trade in the last half of the US Session.
The only thing you will get is price bouncing up and down 10-20 pips.
Personally I don't want to be exposed that long if there is no solid momentum and trend. It's always funny hearing people complaining
about market getting slow. Onlything they need to do is look at the clock.

Tjpld is right on the money.(hopefully) I might see 2 entry points in Eur/Usd per day on average. Only during European and/or American sessions. I only trade Eur/Usd (EA) on 15m chart. I might make(or lose) 15 to 100 pips per trade. Nothing going on with this pair outside of these 2 sessions. I am thinking about bailing totally on FX as soon as the stock market calms down-how ironic.

Looking at the market times I could possibly do that. I just found out that ToS has a strategy(EA) maker but its complete script which I have to learn compared to wealth builder which is a drag and drop.

I don't mind how the market is going up and down, I have been longing and shorting it left and right but you could make more money with less money with this leverage.

I do understand that as quick as you can make it you can also lose it. How much do you guys usually do for the lots? I've been playing with 50,000 size lots (I think whatever is around 500 bucks) for a leverage of 5 bucks a pip and I'm liking what I see so far.

If I'm active and sitting at the computer I do 15 min chart with 30 min right next to each other for some redundancy. If I go away for the day I look at the 1 hr and the 2 hr.

Since i'm doing pretty well with my system should I dabble around with Fibo or just KISS it.

talljoker, if u have a profitable system you should be happy with that, and not start looking around for other things because it will only complicate it and your trading will suffer.
Maybe you shud look into better ways of managing your risk and exposure to the market to maximise your profit potential?

the thing is that I am attracted to FX as the leverage is what attracts me to it. I'm pretty young at 23 and can take some risks. I'm not looking at making 10 million dollars in a year or even 100K but I'm just looking to dabble and this is something that I can do well possibly.

I understand the transition and such but I'm looking to have two options available to me if you understand that.

I just picked up MT4 from UWC from the MQL4 and Ill look at it tonight, but so far I like the ease of navigation and it SEEMs pretty straight through. I'm going to have to look at how the EA are implemented.

But so far I'm thankful for your help and I might pose some more questions once I figure this out.

Okay can somebody explain this...

How come with my system of manually trading during the sessions I could beat out a EA? Today I grabbed close to 200 pips during a 3 hour cycle but the EA ended up losing money. The EA is just a simple one I pulled from mql4 like you guys told me. I picked it because it had all the downloads and a good rating but it was busted?

Also is there any correlation in how the NYSE is doing to the exchange rate? Just wondering because I caught a spike of 70 during premarket trading.

hopefully I go live with 100,000 lots (or is it 10,000?) haha