EURUSD

Bepop,

The thing is, the size of the account is not important. Its whether you can survive it or not.....to me, if I am trading a $500 (I started with that on my smaller accounts) and can survive for a good while without blowing it but growing it, is all that matters...then its just a matter of upping your lot size or just compounding the gains....

The real key is consistency....that's the most important thing....if you are consistent, then you can grow your account quickly.

Absolutely correct....and that's the bottom line!

Might I add for New traders.Do not start an account with a minimum deposit and expect to last long at all.Its a sucker deal.I was green and learned the hard way.Start an account at Oanda.There is no minimum deposit and you can trade as low as 1/100 of a US cent if you want.You can trade any amount you want to keeping within money management rules.You can trade 2 cents43 cents or 26 cents or full lots.Demo is best for being new.But if you decide to go live its a good start.

I do have to say thats a true ... monday i lost a lot for me it was the first shock after 2 hours i taught damn i worked so hard to get that profit now i lost that profit pluss more... but today i am back even and looking again to pluss side.

it never left the cards. were still not below 4609/16 .. all this thus far is just a pullback. 4646 is a short term support. and were above it. but it looks promising. a reversal may take an hour or a month..ill feel beter with a high belo 4609 and a low below 4444

Agreed...in fact, when I learned how to trade properly, I was only taking .01 lots on a mini account with 5K in it for many months.....

That's how I learned how to read price action without having to worry about blowing my account and just concentrating on pure trading....

Now that's over with, I am starting to reap the practice...it was nearly a year of solid practice and 2 years prior to that to develop the actual concepts....lots of loss sleep....I think I averaged about 3 or 4 hours between trading and my full time job...

I also mentored a good size group of traders during that time....that's how I accelerated my knowledge....

Vil if you take small position sizes you'll be alright though...losses are part of the game...

Not to disagree but...

First let me say, I am not a professional trader. I am trying to become a professional trader, but I am still learning.

•Anyone who tells you that you need more then $300 to start trading and trading efficiently is full of shit.
•Anyone who tells you that you will be under capitalized is full of shit.
•Anyone who tells you to start your first live account with more then $500 is full of shit.
•If you honestly think you will make 10-20% a week consistently, you are full of shit.
•If you think you can trade without proper money management, you are going to be broke very soon.


Now, first and foremost; if you have been paper trading for 2 years and STILL do not have a grasp of money management, I would recommend a couple things. One, take the time to learn money management and apply it diligently to your paper account for several months first. Two, when you open an account, do it with the smallest amount possible (If using a broker like IBFX it is $250).

Secondly, the ONLY thing you should focus on is percent’s. The percent gain you have at the end of a month (Not week or day), the percent of your account you are risking per trade, the percent of trades you have that go your way, and the percent of time you honestly spend evaluating your mistakes. The ONLY thing pips are good for is determining your stop. Without knowing your stop you can not apply proper money management.

Third, the reason to start your account as small as possible is to learn from the real thing. You may be thinking now that when you lose 1-2% of $300 its only $3 - $6 and that’s no big deal. Every person I know that has started with even the smallest amount has come to me and mentioned the shock of the feeling when they lost that $3 - $6. I am an engineer and work with engineers, so to be honest $3 - $6 is usually less then we spend on lunch every day. But losing that money and realizing that its real, and then doing mental calculations and going wow 2% of a 30,000 account would have been $600 in a blink of an eye. It is honestly an eye opening experience when you lose money for the first time in the forex market, no matter how small it is. You need to “build up your tolerance” I guess you can say. The fact is, you will have losing trades in forex, and the stress (Trading Psychology #1 thing in trading) of losing money can force you to chase money and trades. You need to learn how to trade and how to accept the downturns with a small amount of money before you do it with a large amount.

Lastly, you are not under capitalized. All of the major forex brokers allow you to trade .01 mini lots at a time. With this level of granularity, you can always make a trade well within a 1% per trade money management schema. Yes if you are trying to make a living off of your $250 investment, you are way under capitalized. But this should not be the goal of your first live account. This account should be treated with respect and as an education. If you make $5 on a $250 account you have made 2%. There is no difference in doing that and making $500 on a $25,000 account. The only difference is the amount you have made, not the percent. And as I stated above, this should be your focus. When you are comfortable with this account and have consistently made a profit for 3 months in a row, you can then add more to the account. Even at this time, you should only add a marginal amount to get use to losing the extra money when you have bad trades. Keep doing this until you have an account that is making more money in a month then you can afford to deposit. If forex is a race, it is not a sprint, it is a marathon. Take your time (Just as an example) if you had $1000 and made 5% a month you would have $1,125,276.03 in 13 years. In August I will have been married for 13 years, I assure you it goes fast and that is an incredible gain in 13 years. My point is, do not try an achieve 10-20% a week. Set your sights for something like 3% a month and work towards that even if the account has $250 in it.

Que

This is true, but account size - more specifically, how large one trades - is obviously relevant. What you do consistently with your mini-lot trades you may fail completely to do with mult-lot trades. Trading size may be scalable but the psychological effect of the scaling is something anyone will have to confront.

chf broke a small channel to the south so we may go up some

Absolutely!!!

Thus starting small and gradually gaining money + deposits will slowly get you a larger account and its not a psychological shock.

Que

Just one small correction to Que's post. IBFX has no minimum, at least for a micro account. Costs 20$ to deposit though, so I would think 100$ would be a sensible minimum.

Agree with ya 100% Que, excellent couple of posts above.

I believe i am trading with very small amounts its not mini account but normal one with 1 k when i am better then i consider putting more money in but i dont see this happening this year.... i have been dealing with stock's for some time but i then i found FOREX which is much more fun so i am trying this out.

You may be correct. I thought to open it was $250, once open no minimum deposit to add.

Que

There are quite a number of brokers who allow micro accounts apart from oanda,i mean 1pip/10 cents only.I am personally not comfortable with oanda cos they do not have meta4 platform which is quite easy to operate.

Hi Im a noob still. I did'nt think I was a novice trader until th past few days of trading.

I have had the worst week. Trading th EURUSD I took my 35k account to 25k now with a bad position currently open negative 188 pips.

Its funny though because for the past 2 years of virtual trading i have had hundreds and hundreds of consecutive winning trades. Sometimes making 20-50% in a night.

I have even blown out a few practice account with small capital just because I felt the need to test the limits of trading with 100% margin level. Afterwards I would just open another practice account with $100,000 instead of $50k and presto my strategies work perfect, never a margin call. I turned my $100k practice account into $360k in 2 months. Whoopie right!! I know because trading live is a whole nother beast. Or maybe Im just not as great of trader as others claim me to be. Inclusing myself.

No no no. I will never trade below 4500% margin level again, I wouldnt care if it took me 50 years to take a $10k account into $1 mil. (a bit ambitious I know...)

As soon as I get good into live trading the market just goes haywire. My indicators stop working, all the candle stick analysis and practice goes out the window.

My biggest problem is MM. I need to learn to keep my freaking lot size and drawdowns low on the live account. Losing trades on margin call is not the way to trade!!

My second problem is I need to learn to trust whats working and stick to it.What I mean is I have been able to get the expert advisor to trade my live accounts and it has had over 200 winning trades straight in the past 10-15 days. I have it running on two other accounts and as soon as I can get out of this face smashing - 188 pip trade im in, I ve decided just let the freaking EA run it.

In the meantime Im gonna saddle up and see if I cant scalp my way back to BE.... wish me luck, prayers, mitzvahs...etc.etc.

Que,

Your advice above is very sound & thanks for taking the time to share it.

There's always more than one way to skin a cat and your ideal approach of forming good mm habits from the get-go & learning to deal with the psychology of loss with a gradually increasing account size fits perfectly the ideal acolyte who lives in an ideal world and starts a nice safe $100 account then grows it into $1,000,000 in 13 years and then lives happily ever after.

And then there's the normal story (like mine) where the Trader's knowledge is imperfect and incomplete and he makes the inevitable mistakes that cause him real psychological and financial pain. Said typical Trader may or may not have the psychological make-up to endure this experience & learn from his mistakes and return to trading & eventually succeed.

There's something to be said for the ideal, sane approach and of course, anyone should try to go that route.

But, generally speaking, you're gonna lose. So can you deal with that? The supposed 95% who fail probably can not.

Trading is something very personal and there is no one size fits all in this business. I'm trading Forex before a lot of people here were even born and something that I learned from the begining is to focus on PIP profits.

I make consistently 100 to 150 pips per week, and again I'm doing it for years. When I want to raise my salary I encrease my lots accordly. I can do it with confidence because I know what to expect.

Don't get me wrong encreasing your lots generate stress and even a old fart like me can get screwed by my own feelings. Forex is a game of feelings ( greed , fear, illusion, etc) and as humans our feelings will always be present independent of your experience or expertise.

But.......

If you can consistently make a certain amout of pips per week, it makes so much easier to encrease your account.

hey folks commodity pairs could be hot. the kiwi may be worth looking at. if u agree id recomend a some position and look for more pips. but check it out yourself. i got it as breaking a lower channel line