Should I go against myself?

I RARELY make trades that are actually correct. I'm thinking about doing exactly the opposite of what I think the price is going to do every time. I've been using practice accounts for 3 years and I'm trading a live micro account right now. What gives I tell you WHAT GIVES

Do you want help?

Yes.

James16 Chart Thread -

http://www.forexfactory.com/newreply...te=1&p=2907143

Work hard, and you will be profitable in 4months or so . . Thats if you work hard of course, then it's just a matter of getting a big account to trade and be financially free forever.

Regards,
Jig

Placing trades opposite won't work. The reason is that there is being in-sync with the market and there is being out of sync.

There isn't just one way to trade in disaccord with current market reality - there are many - and therefore placing "opposite" trades won't really be opposite at all. It will just be another wrong way.

Trading without a valid market understanding and trading out of sync with the reality of what the market is doing - this is what you need to do the opposite of.

All just my opinion - just trying to help.

I feel your pain.

And my answer to your question is yes, in a way. In a way that you got to be willing to reflect on what you know and give up what doesn't work for you (I found it more difficult than it sounds) and look for stuff that works FOR YOU.

I've been doing this for a bit over 2 years now went from losing all the time, to winning every now and then, to break even trading and very recently I started dipping VERY SLOWLY into the more consistent winning zone.

There is no one trick that mends it all. In my opinion in order to be successful there are 3 things that one MUST master and there is no way around it.

1) Money Management
2) Method
3)And probably the most important and most difficult in the same time: YOUR MIND

All three are absolute cornerstones and I can't fathom a trader being successful without having mastered all 3 in some way or another.

Recommendations based on my experience:

1) Money Management:

Probably the easiest to understand and one that brings you a great step ahead towards being consistently profitable.

E.g.: Losing is part of trading. You trade, you're bound to lose sometimes, that's how it is.
Now for examples sake and to raise the question mark:

"You chose a stoploss & position size that makes you stake 50% of what you have in one trade and: you lose this one.
To make up for the loss now you'd have to double your account now i.e make 100% of what you have after the 50% loss." You follow me? Sure you do.

That's the very simple basic principle because no one in their right mind will stake 50% in one trade and call themselves a trader because that's gambling or speculating not trading.
No matter the account size 50% is 50% and the problem from taking such a loss stays the same in priciple.

But the quesiton now is how much should I stake to deal in an optimum way with my losses and maximise my gains in the same time?

You can get an answer to that here:
http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=6948

I learned pretty mucch all know about it from Diallist here on FF, who's btw also part of the James16 Group



2) Method:

Somebody mentioned the James16 thread, I think it's an excellent suggestion as I learned there and Jim helped me come off indicators.
This was a great step in the right direction fro me since I spend my whole first year in funky indicator land drunk with the dream of quick riches. Some might disagree but I don't believe one needs an indicator to tell you what price is doing if you can read the charts. Indicators caused me more confusion about price movements than they clarified it to me.

I checked also out: Price Action, Japanese Candlesticks, Price Pivot Zones or Support/Resistance Trading, Volume Spread Analysis, Price Patterns.

From all this I am piecing together my method and still tweaking it.

I suggest you do the same, learn a method, understand it, trust it, make it your own.


3) Trading Psychology

Hardest one in my opinion and the one I just started to tackle in the last months but the benefits are immense.

Got myself "Trading in the Zone" from Mark Douglas, recommend you get it
and if you do, do the attitude test in the beginning of the book and write the answers down, he asks you to do the test again after you read the book and compare the answers.
Showed me in a powerful way how my thinking about trading started to naturally shift after reading the book.

Also I got this free e-book "Mental Fitness for Traders" by Norman Hallett. Surprisingly brief, but so well written, fun and to the point, it's a gem in my opinion.

You can get it here:

http://www.directyourmind.com/tradingmind.html

You'll have to give them your e-mail address for a link to the e-book so that they can keep writing you to get you to buy their Trading Mind software (which I got myself and find good btw) but is not obligatory.


There you go, you might have been doing already some of the stuff I mentioned but if you're not successful yet I'm sure you'll find 1 or 2 things you want to take on board.

I have to say that trading is the most difficult thing I've ever tried and by now I'm under no illusion that I will have to keep giving my sweat, blood and tears on the way to success.

Good luck

its screen time my fren ,
demo has no screen time value , need to lose or make money to get that screen time burned in ur head...

Definitely agree with screen time, but disagree with the demo thing, actually to say that demo time has no value at all...common man that just can not be true.

Then again, may be it really hasn't for you.

I've only busted a small micro account with a few hundred but that was a while back and have demoed ever since.
I have improved massively and can't say that it was ONLY thanks to the busted micro account and that demoing had no value for me. On the contrary.

I think it depends largely with how much intent you go on about it; if you can summon the attitude to take demoing serious then you're ok.
But if you approach it with a "it's- play-money-anyways-so-I-do-what-I-want-and-it's-ok-to-break-ones-rules" attitude that's supposed to excuse one's shortcomings, then you're right: this really has no value.

However, I would agree with you that live trading has an additional emotional edge that demo just hasn't and can't have.
But making a blanket statement that demo is of no value is a dangerous recommendation to make to a newbie, for the newbie.

In fact starting with demo is the best way imho until some of the mechanical and other basics are mastered before going on to master the emotional part of live trading.

WHAT DO YOU THINK YOUR EDGE IS?

regards
daytrading

true , wat u said ,
thats y I said demo has no screen time value ...
to really learn something u need pain or euphoria associated with the stuff u learn ...
cant ride a bike till u fall n get hurt ...

demo may be valuable in case you want to try out a new strategy ...

but clearly to learn to trade , u need to lose money first , then learn not to lose money (break even) and then learn to make money last ...

the guy demoed for 3 yrs n still lost money ...

If he, as he says, rarely gets a trade right after 3 years then I dont think going live will help him with that.
It suggests that he's at a stage where he's got to acquire some other knowledge first before throwing money at it.

I agree that anyone seriously learning to trade is bound to go through pain, however the objective is to learn to trade successfully and not to feel pain but rather try and minimise it.

Like with riding a bike, falling is part of the process but not the objective and you wanna try and minimise that, else you're more likely to get frustrated to the point that you give up. That's why there is the whole support wheel thing.

Just work on solid basic market understanding and Daytrading's koan.
You can reach it - it's lots of work.

Well said. thank you.

pff, quote of the f...ing century. very wise.

realnovice, just don't give up. Trade small positions, don't force yourself to 5 pip stops just because that's what you can afford with the minimum position size of your broker. Some brokers let you trade as little as 1 unit (1/100.000 lot, that is). Small position - bigger stop.

Always look at the left side of the chart - what makes price turn at a certain point. Don't buy "on the top" and don't sell "on the bottom" of the chart. Try to trade bigger timeframes (staring with the hourly), the bigger the timeframe, the more reliable the signals are. Wait for those patterns everyone is trading - head and shoulders, double top, double bottom etc. The more people see something, the more likely it's gonna work.

I'm old. What's this?

true , u need to go through it , and the same time minimize its damage to ur account and urself ,
micro n mini is the answer ...
but not demo

haha , forget it fren , I feel strongly against demo , if u have successfully used demo to such an account it has affected ur trading profitability , great for u ...

I personally think demo makes one careless and doesnt teach much , well , to each their own as one wld have said

good day

I liked your very wise thoughts a lot and I believe they should be carved into stone somewhere everyone sees it.

you know this is what is the best about trading, you can see it this or that way, people usually have very different views, but still they can be profitable.

I demo traded for a year and no, I didn't play with 25 lots to become demo-millionaire, and no, I didn't earn much money in the demo. I don't think it made me careless either.

I don't want to argue whether demo's good or not, just wanted to tell, for every example, there is a counter-example and everyone has to find their own special ways in the market.

Thank you. I need to follow my own advice more...and not be like your signature.

Hi Real, I noticed your new thread here and had a minute to comment. I checked out your FF history and noticed you have started your fair share of threads in an effort to get trading help. The following is my opinion only. First, you should not be trading with real money. Second, you should stop trading all together until you have researched what went wrong with your last 100 trades. If you can't get a real technical answer to that question, you should find some expert help. I am a believer that the market price action does not randomly start and stop, but does so for a reason nearly every time, and if you don't know those reasons, you better find out. That is just one piece of the puzzle, but is an important piece. Tough Love, and Best wishes.