Help for Newbies (Discussion Thread)

yes, you are just trying to start a fight. you couldn't just state that, yes, it is the floating drawdown that you are referring to. you had to make it a journey instead. so, are we there yet?

this discussion is over.

...says the guy who is not profitable and doesn't know how he can achieve profitability.

Okay man. I tried to be nice but since you just shit on everything, I will refrain from making any recommendations to you in the future. With your mindset of rejecting every approach you come across you anyways won't last long in the trading arena. You are like the grumpy old grandpa who is against the world and that nobody likes or wants to visit.

I think it's been over for you for some time now, but yet you keep coming back to get beat up some more.

Some people never learn anything and it's because they think they know it all already. They don't challenge themselves to see anything differently. There greatest achievement in life is "whoa is me the cup is half empty."

You could call it floating DD when the trades are open, but you can't call it floating anymore after the trades are closed. If you use the numbers of the statement to base trading decisions off of, which most people do because of backtesting / forward testing or otherwise you set yourself up for more risk than you otherwise thought you had.

But you would rather sugar coat it as it means nothing... which is fine for someone like you. Keep doing what you're doing it's given you such great success so far so why quit now.

Maybe someday you will wake up and find yourself sick and tired of being sick and tired and decide to make a change for the better. Then I will rejoice of not having to waste so much of my time for a big goose egg.

Are we there yet? You can only answer this question. You are there when you are PROFITABLE. If what you have isn't working why would you keep doing EXACTLY what you have always done?

yeah, your posts are cryptic, and no, it is not an error. account statements always just show closed trades.
It's anyways the closed trades that count, not the unrealized profits / losses that you might have had intra-trade.

oh custos, please, please, PLEASE keep recommending me the most crappy of books and giving your shortsighted opinions which only reinforce your 'flat world. the sun revolves around the earth' view on things. maybe some day, with enough years of curve-fitted data, i too can be a profitable trader running some EA that aims to make the percentages that hedge funds make. then i, like you, can consider myself to have ARRIVED, right? right! aim so low that you risk actually achieving your goal.

and as for pip_seeker... lol!

both of you, and anyone else, can put me on ignore. i won't miss your 'valuable' replies to anything i might, or might not, say here or elsewhere. now, i'm going to go whoop my own butt for being so wrong about everything i've ever known to be true about anything, just for you guys. on my way out i'd like to share some worthless crap, just to keep in the spirit of the current back and forth nonsense you two are so fond of right now in this thread. "teacup popcorn under green salty igloos elephant balloons".

couple of real champs. i'm in awe.

grumpy old man .

But I can understand your frustration of not being able to turn a profit consistently. If I had the same existential fear and nothing worked, I would probably also be like you... well maybe not, I am not that bad-tempered.
I find it rather amusing, that you have such strong opinions and shit on any approach you come across, when you still can't profit from the markets. => best recipy for failure
I asked you this already, but you always somehow avoided to answer that question: which approach works in your opinion consistently and gives you insane percentages? I am really curious to know. Enlighten me.
Probably this time you will just again insult me on how crappy I am and avoid the question as usual. Am getting a bit tired about your constant fighting about nothing. sometimes I wonder why you are even on this forum. You just seem to like picking fights and tell everybody that nothing works. What a great spare-time activity.

oh here we go. same old, same old. why are you still posting to me? you already know the answer to your question... frequency * expectancy = gains. maximize the frequency and you maximize the gains. if you don't want to put in the effort to make it work then that is your choice.

considering you didn't even know the definition of scalping until i had to spell it out for you, and you make all these piss-poor assumptions about things you don't even have the slightest clue about, it's no wonder you can't understand how someone can actually trade intraday and make a profit. in terms of scalping, i really don't know what you think pit traders did all day. you see them with your own eyes in documentaries and biographical films buying and selling like crazy all day the moment the trading day begins, yet you can't put two and two together. they certainly didn't sit back and smoke cigars while reading the wall street journal, and once a week check their portfolio and maybe add or subtract a position or two. you don't have the capacity to comprehend that some traders make hundreds of trades per DAY (no not year, or decade. per day!). obviously a retail forex trader playing games with a penny account won't be able to do this, but that's not the point. the point is that even for retail forex traders battling the spread there are a number of trades available most days that the banks are open.

if you can manage a nicely growing account in forex, which has such low entry costs, you are then afforded the ability to go ECN and / or branch into stock / CFD trading which has higher entry costs but far more trade opportunities per day than retail forex will ever have. there's more to life than just tooling in a retail forex account fighting the spread for the rest of your damn life! with capitalization the door opens to other avenues of revenue beyond what you even know about from what you have recently had 'opinions' on. there's a whole world beyond what you even know, so why would or should anyone ever listen to your nonsense? the answer is they shouldn't, unless they too want marginal returns per year.

so maybe, just to please you and fulfill your deep desire for me and everyone else to aim low just like you and reinforce your limiting ignorance, i should refocus my attention away from MY end-goal and instead put all of my attention into some longer-term low-frequency trading strategy that returns 10-30% per year or whatever the 'guru' hedge funds are making? this would again reinforce YOUR need to be right about the low expectations EVERYONE should have from their trading pursuits.

well i will tell you right now custos that this won't happen. i'm not going to waste my time wrongly 'proving' to you that you are right when you are already content with your own answers. it serves me in no way to do this! i will spend my time pursuing my goals, and my goals only, proving MYSELF to be right. i will find and learn my own truths. you can be satisfied with your gains and pat yourself on the back each day you wake. i would sooner neck myself than be content like you. everyone has differing goals and levels of desire and success. be glad for yourself. i'm glad that there are people like you who aim low and reach their goals, and don't even know what is truly possible. if i only make it 50% of the way to my goal i will still be successful and far surpass what you comprehend can be done, so i will aim as high as i can and keep reaching as far as i can! what's the worst that could happen... i reach my goal? i should be so unfortunate!

if it weren't for a few willing and able people who dared to dream we would not have landed on the moon. your attitude is that the moon does not exist and no one should waste their time trying to go there. but the fact is that you don't even comprehend what the moon is to begin with. before that it was flying. no one could fly, but a few dared to dream and made it a reality for everyone. you would have sat back and laughed at anyone who dared to try to fly, and yet here we all are today flying around the world with ease. i say your opinions, beliefs, and expectations you have of others, are mediocre and not worth the time it takes to read them.

so while you are satisfied with your little hobby others are aiming so far above where you are at that you don't even register on their radar as existing. and you have the steadfast belief that none of them have the ability to make it. whatever floats your boat. ignorance is bliss. donald trump should have stuck with owning only 1 or 2 properties, right? how dare he aim higher than the average person will ever imagine. how dare successful people spend their time pursuing ways to maximize their potential, right? you close the door on what can be done while others open them, walk through, and never look back to even bother giving you a parting wave.

just because you maxed out your potential at whatever level doesn't make you the benchmark. others are willing to continually fail and learn from their mistakes until they are masters of their domain, unlike others who are happy to rest on their laurels.

this is about the last i care to spend on anything you have to say, which is truly and sincerely worth so very little, if even worth anything at all, to me. you mention i fight about nothing... why do you find the need to even post a message then? don't waste both of our time, now and in to the future. i really don't value your posts, and i know i'm not the only one.

honestly, in general i reply to your posts to try and maintain some level of perspective and degree of knowledge on the forum and counter some of your ignorance. but i'm at the point where i no longer care to care that members like yourself only lower the collective IQ of all who read here. sometimes it entertains me to swim upstream against the current of crap, but most of the time it's better just to let you all collectively dumb yourselves down and let you all be how you have chosen to be.

and finally, it makes me glad that you will assume forever that i'm unprofitable. this assumption serves me well. i guarantee you i will never try to change this assumption of yours.

how did we get from me recommending you a book to you insulting me. Normal people would just say: "thanks for recommending it to me, but this is not the book I looked for". Of course then there is the nubcake way of saying it: "Fuck you dude, you are seriously shit". Some classes in manners would do you really some good. And still you didn't answer me with which method you are going to achieve the insane percentage amounts.

As expected you just want to quarrel and don't write anything of value. But you are right about posting. I am getting a bit tired of this forum too and will take your suggestion to post less. But would be great if you can keep me updated once you found an appropriate system for you. Maybe I can learn a few things then from you.

When you girls have finished bitching at each other could we get back on track so newbies can ask some questions?

i don't know , why bad news still have good impact for its currency.

Was about to ask the same things.. Can we get back to us noob who still have a lot to learn????

Hello Peter! Just thought to say a BIG THANK YOU for taking the time to put together your thoughts and experience, its been very helpful! Thanks a loT!

I try to post trades in my thread as they come. Maybe that will help.

Hi guys, Sorry if I have posted this is wrong place but having trouble finding any info on this.
I am new and learning all the time, just trying to set up an FX trading account, and because I live in Alberta it seems I can't have an individual trading account, is this correct? are there ways to set up apart from move...
Thanks for any info
Louise

I am looking for a system that will allow me to gain only 2-4 pips a day. I have been interested in trading for a while and have 2 active acts with fxcm. my one account i traded with 1500 bucks in it i lost back in 2007 with the mortgage madness. want to start with 3-500 dollars and gain 2-4 pips a day. very slow growth. please advise.

I think Peterfm went the way of the forex dodo - the stuff simply isn't working. His last post was Dec.2010,he isn't posting because he most likely have lost enough money.

Oanda stats are that 25% make money every quarter, this means that after one year, less than 1% will actually be net positive.(25% of 25% etc)

Hello! So your reply.... so you saying forex trading doesn't work?

Hello @ Stephanusr, are you saying Forex trading doesbt work?

You shouldn't assume that - people move on for various reasons - could be health (he's 67), other interests, etc. If so many traders lose, then maybe you should quit...

Yeah, everything you said makes no sense.

25% make money every quarter, and the same 25% make money the next quarter (plus or minus a few).

And I don't know what your kick is with PeterFm, but there's a long list of successful traders that don't bother coming here to the newbie playground anymore. Can't say I blame them. It can be a fairly unprofessional environment.

I do wish you luck in all of your profit seeking endeavors.