How to survive in forex? Help please!

I can.

Forget demo trading, it's only useful if you're tweaking or trying a new setup. Nobody in their right mind should be on live if they've not have a fixed trading system setup beforehand. So if you already have a proper system setup and had been tested on demo, waste no time and go live.
Go live, but being a newbie, be realistic & trade where it can't hurt you - trade microlots.
Demo trading will not prepare you for the biggest test in this business - trading psychology. And you'd be surprised of how pissed off you can get of a 10c/pip trade gone bad. Emotions needs to be controlled & can only be achieved with the experience of trading live. Sorry but this is the truth & it's the price to pay to find out if this business is for you. The education of currency trading needn't be expensive (ie blowing up a 10thousand dollars account in a few months), but it still needs to be spent on a certain degree to find out if this business is right for you.
Set a modest monthly return. A 1% return sounds about right to start with.
Might not seem much, but try to see if you can maintain consistency over 12 months doing so.
Trying for 1% return over possible 22 trading days in a month would mean you won't be exposing yourself to unnecessary risk, ie overtrading. You would at the same time be able to spot better and possibly bigger trade possibilities since you're not out chasing the market. And daily or half day charts is the way to go to begin with imho. With less screentime, you'd probably get to maintain a day job while learning to trade properly till you find out if you are cut out for this business or not.
And you've probably heard this before, but never forget to stay with the current trend on your working charts. Technically, that is an open secret to successful trading that many hardened traders follow like a religion and amateurs ignore.
It's not a sprint my friend. Good luck

everbody wants to knows to win with forex.

that is important . how do you know to lose?

if you know how you do lose in forex. and then if you learned it so you will win.

1% per month on a $400 area account, thats $4 per month or 40 pips at the min $0.10 level LOL

Does anyone not see why talking percentages on anything less than a 20K account is well pointless ??

Yes, like I said it might seem small for a hotshot trader like you. But if you've already lost 100usd in a month. What makes you think he can get 4usd a month for now? Why did I say 12 months? See if you can manage to keep a level head doing so for that long, see if you have the discipline to do it. I did say emotions need to be controlled.



heh, if you're aiming to compete in a 26 miles marathon which you've never done, how do you reckon you should start your training regime without getting injured or at least minimising your risk of getting injured? Think you can run that 5 miles as a start even, when you've never done so? The answer is NO.
Everything needs practise. The same thing is with currency trading.
It's never pointless talking percentages regardless of the account size. Unless you have no goal in trading, then forget percentages.
Unless you aim to only trade 1 minilot from a 500 dollar account for the rest of your life then forget percentages.
If you aim to one day be able to manage a million dollar account without getting burned, then you better start to learn how to do it the right way from day 1. Better start to take those percentages seriously. Aim small, risk small. Old habits die hard, do it the wrong way, get greedy and making stupid aim from your early days, you'll do the same 5 years from now.

Your call entirely calvk81. Just trying to help you get it right from the start.
And don't forget, it's not a sprint

Well said, Azim.

Firstly, forget about trading full-time with only $500 and no experience. This will never work, I can guarantee that.

The first step on the poster's journey should be learning to trade profitably, in control of his emotions, on a regular basis. If the poster can achieve a 12% return in their first year, with low volatility of monthly performance - ie) each monthly return does not vary greatly from 1% of their capital base - then they will have earbed the right, in my opinion, to add more money to their trading account, funded from their salary, and increase trade sizes accordingly. Nobody should be in a position where their account is down 50% one day, up 30% the next - this is suicidal risk-taking with no respect to the market.

This should be about creating long-term wealth, prosperity and financial security, not gambling in a foolish attempt to hit the big time. This sounds cliche, I know, but there are no quick wins in this game, only a very long, arduous and, seemingly, close to impossible, process of education. This is true whether the poster intends to trade larger timeframes or merely scalp.

Look, money is simply a bit of numbers in a database. How much you can make is only a number in an equation. Such as:

Relevance of your methd x how much actual hard work you put down (not measured in time) x the lot size number you willfully enter into your scripts x time (more or less arbitrary units such as seconds, minutes, hours).

Its the same equation to calculate how much you loose. Now how you find what those numbers are, thats up to you.

So hopefully your equation looks something like: Quite relevant actually x a lot of hard work x 0.1 lots x 7 years = not living on the street begging for food. If thats the actuality of your equation, i cannot answer, i answer only what price will be the next 30 seconds to a couple of minutes.

But dont depend on hope, depend on the things in the equation that you can affect through what you do, every second, every minute, every hour from now. If you fail, its not because you couldnt do it, its because you didnt do it.

Dont forget to rest where you can hear the birds singing, a place like this:

This thread rises from the dead!
It seems pretty timely too. Tax return time seems to bring out the "Zero to Hero" crowd.

Great post, yaed.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a diferent result.

Insanity is going live when one hasnt even a CLUE if a real quantifiable edge is on their side.

Insanity is expecting to survive of such a small account if step 1 hasnt even been "identified".

Reality is (like others have mentioned) that without a clearly definable, time tested proven edge one will fail, no matter how good their MM, psych is.

As for which TF is best. There is none.

Price moves at the same time, at the same place, on every timeframe.

It is the *mindset* of the trader that "influences" on his thoughts as to define which timeframe is better or which isnt.

As magnumfreak does (one of many...) you can trade of the 1m and aim for hundreds of pips, which if you look on the 4h chart, is that nice huge greed indulging bar.

To make money, to "survive in forex" one must know first what he wants from it.

Taking small accounts into huge amounts is totally doable and possible....on a side account!

Surviving in FOREX is extremely hard.

Imagine breaking even... You need lots of experience, LUCK, knowledge and a lot of other variables, that are not even present in POKER.

Imagine doing a living!!!!

Imagine doing a decent living!!!! Man... maybe 1% of the world of traders. I try to be optimistic, but let's be honest, who enters a game when you know that only 1% will make a decent living out of it?

I agree with some suggestion before that your condition is not set right, changing the mindset is the most important factor here. I'm relatively new to forex, only around 2 years of learning & watching the chart. I know for most people it's not that hard nailing hundreds pips, but make it consistent is the hardest part. In my demo account my target with just 10 consistent pips a day is quite hard because of my own psychology, greed & fear.... I admit I'm not in the winner level at current condition, that's why I'm still sit in front of monitor watching how price reaction because of volume & support resistance, I focus to spend my last year just for learning.

Anyway, the base line is you need a process to achieve what you deserve, in this forex world is about your own psychological state & how you can watch market move & strike them right at their weakest point.

I think FX trading requires enormous amount of discipline.......luck. Try this strategy on demo. Flip a coin. If head go long. If tail, go short. TP 10pips, SL 10pips. Logically the chance of winning and losing is 50-50. If you can follow it for 100 times, there are only 2 outcome.

If you have indeed follow through, congratulation. You're highly discipline.
If account is in positive, you have enough luck to trade and vice versa.

Sorry to rain on your first post, but I disagree on at least two counts:

1. There may be only 2 outcomes, but the chance of winning and losing is not 50-50. Costs are significant, in fact if the spread is 2 pips in your TP=10, SL=10 scenario, then you have a 20% edge against you right from the start, and on every trade. To anybody who thinks 20% is insignificant, casinos make billions each year from a 1%-2% edge.

2. Luck can't be sustained indefinitely, and has nothing to do with discipline. If you don't have a profitable trading method, then you're gambling, and you'll eventually lose. And once again, you'll fare better at a casino, where the edge against you is likely to be smaller.

I'm new in this business and these are my opinion, correct me if I'm wrong:

 

1. Trading strategies/ methods are NOT the most important thing to succeed in FOREX. The most important things in trading are mental/ psychology and money management
2. Demo is useless because of no emotion factor, better to trade live with micro account
3. For most people it takes at least 2 years to get a feel for FOREX, studying the methods and researching
4. As a rule of thumb: If you want to make $100 a day (profit), you need at least $10,000 (capital) or at least 100 times of what you want to make providing you already know what you're doing ((being consistently profitable). I think it's realistic, don't you?
5. Discipline, Patience, Focus, Confidence, Persistence, Self Control, Being humble, Risk averse, Being realistic and not greedy
6. Stay positive and remember there's more thing in life than just trading

That's like saying you don't need a fast racing-car to win a race, only a good driver.

Success in trading are made up from 3 parts that all depends on each other;
-System
-Money-management
-Psychology

Even the easiest part of trading, money-management which is basic math, is neglected by many trades and might explain why so many fail in the long-term when such an easy task cannot be implemented successfully. The psychological aspect is the second hardest part since good planning is required. This could explain why automated system are so popular.

IMO, since none of these components can produce profits alone, it might be worth to understand how a system cannot run smoothly without proper MM and being able to execute your signals (psychology) without any doubt.

trading is not for everyone. it is work. not just fun. and there is a code. you can get good at it but never perfect because it is a fractal computer generated was gravitational strings and timed pulses.

so once within range of a perfect swing size and time you still need to be systematic and always playing in the sides of the odds.

With what leverage, 1:10?

If, by "strategies/methods", you mean finding the right cocktail of indicators, then I agree with you. But I think having a defined plan for both entries and exits (which I would call a "system" or "method") is very important. If trading is ultimately about consistent execution, then having an executable plan is the first prerequisite. Or conversely, without a plan, there is no benchmark by which consistency can be measured. Of course one could argue the reverse: that a plan is meaningless if one doesn't have the mindset needed to execute it.

I don't disagree that MM and psychology are vitally important, but I think that the "method" aspect is underrated, and here's why: every EA will nail both the MM and psychology aspects flawlessly, yet very few EAs are profitable. I could, for example, write an EA that enters every emerging move, cuts losses short, takes high R:R trades, and risks (say) only 1% equity per trade. But would that, in itself, guarantee long term profit, through several thousand trades and many years of changing markets? I wish that I could answer "yes", because it means that I could effortlessly become a forex millionaire myself. And it also means that all of the banks and funds could save themselves millions in salaries by replacing their highly paid analysts with EAs as primitive as the one I described. But somehow I doubt that it's as easy as that.

However, I acknowledge that there are at least two schools of thought. Quants are more likely to see method as being the most important of the method/MM/mindset "trinity", while discretionary traders might prioritize it the other way around. All of which I see as being relevant to the age-old argument about demo vs live. If method is seen as being important, then demo trading is an ideal vehicle to prove its edge; and the confidence (mindset) needed to stay with the plan will be helped by the positive results. Demo allows the trader to identify weaknesses specifically applicable to the method, because his mindset (or at least the part of it that worries about losing $$$) is removed from the equation. But if method is seen as being less important than developing the right mindset, then the perceived value of demo decreases accordingly.

I believe that flaws in MM (e.g. overleveraging) and psychology (e.g. impatience, overtrading, revenge trading) will drain an account much more quickly than an impotent method, and being more glaringly obvious, may mask any shortcomings in the method. But the latter will still ensure bleed, even if it is a slow death.

I certainly don't claim that my views are infallible. For better or worse, I tend to question everything, including myself. The longer I go on, the more I realize that that absolute methodological truths are rare; that there are different, and supposedly opposing, pathways to profit; that finding a genuine edge involves some real finesse, and is very dependent on context. Hence I try to remain as open-minded as possible to new ideas and angles...... at least to the extent that I'm able to keep my ego in check.

I would never use leverage more than 1:100.

Thanks Aediaz and Hanover for the feedback. I guess Those three: method, psychology and money management works as a system and equally important. Even though for me personally the psychology is harder to master and affects heavily on my money management.

Good trading to all!

"hai guys and gal out there. i need some of your advice on how to stay survive to live in forex trading. In order to keep survive in forex, i have calculate my month live living budget, all i need is $571. That means is $25.55/day and i decided to trade for about 12 hours a day and that means $2.379/hour. And i have open a ibfx account one month ago at $500 but right now the acc balance is down at $403 right now. Can anybody out there teach me how to survive, your help with very appreciate. And sorry for my english."


stupid stupid STUPID.

why are you trading 12 hours a day? The more you spend time gawking charts and trading the more you will blow your balance.

Let me give you some figures. I started out with a 3.5k account and it now has 16k (i've withdrawn 4k already so i'm already a winner regardless of what happens)

stop thinking about dollar figures. Think iin mterms of pips. Don't be greedy just aim for 10 pips a day. 10 pips a day is DEAD EASY. any idiot who doesn't know what he's doing can at least manage a 5-10pip profitable trade even after paying the spread.(this is true don't try and argue with me)
Forex doens't require much if you keep it small and simple. For me, it's not my bread and butter i do it part time for fun and i could care less what happens and it's showing.

Only trade when you're certain and limit your trading to 4-6 hours PER WEEK. I take in a consistent 15-25 pips per week EVERY WEEK never a losing week since i started 3 months ago.

and i don't trade much nor do i spend time studying anything. i probably risk about 9-15% capital on every trade. i've only had a few losers. mostly winners.

it's so easy trading any ---/jpy pairs right now. i've made a killing simply following the news of the earthquakes and tsunamis and nucleuar crap.

basically any idiot can make money if they're smart about it.


just like gambling and alcohol they are beneficial and fun for you IN MODERATION when you're RESPONSIBLE about it. Forex isn't any different.

the more you play forex the more you will lose. Keep it small and simple and it IS ACCEPTABLE to only have 1 or 2 trades a month. You can go weeks without trading. it DOESN"T HAVE TO BE every bloody day.

I have to agree with everything posted. I just started trading micro forex a few days ago. I have some experience with swing trading stocks and I'm pretty good at reading charts.

I'll tell you how my intro into forex went. First day my second trade USD/JPY, I got in on the bottom of the rally and before i knew it i was up $60+ , i decided not to risk losing my gains and stopped it there. So then i got arrogant thinking it was really easy to trade FX. Well I learned real quick that isnt the case at all.

I started with $300, gained $70, deposited another $40 and tried to grab more of those 100+ pip trades..not a good idea. So After losing all my gains and then some I'm down at $285 and being real cautious as to what i jump into , how much leverage and making sure i keep a close tab on stops.

I'd love to make a living trading but it's like starting an airline, you can make a million in aviation, just start with 20 million.

good luck with your dream, i'm right there with you and it is possible to make a living trading you just have to have plenty of backup funds available for when the market doesnt go the way you planned.