Newb looking to be pointed in the right direction

Hey folks. Im pretty new to all this. Im a 20 year old guy who has pretty much decided that no matter how long it takes me, im going to get good at trading. Theres just simply too many benefits to this line of work, and I damn well intend to learn to do this well.

But ive got a bunch of questions. Some probably dumb, some less so. Im really hoping you guys can help me out here and just set me on the right path.

Ive been trading for 6-7 months now. The first 4 was spent on commodities mainly, where I learned most of the basics. Probably kind of silly, but I went in hot with real money right away - I made a little, I lost a little more, but I learned a great deal, and that period basically served as my introduction to trading. The last three has been spent on forex, which seemed to me a real "step up" from commodities.

Heres the deal - when I started on Forex, I had huge success initially. What id do is look for a trending currency, and using the charts, feel out what is "high" and what is "low" for it, and simply short or long at extremes of that range. I guess you could call it support/resistance trading.
USD/CAD for a long time bounced between 0.9900 - 1.0, and I had a lot of success there. GBP/USD floated between 1.5800-1.6000. And again, there was a lot of milking to be had. In a pretty short amount of time I went from £1000 to £2000. The plan was to basically go from one pair to another whenever the one I was trading on stopped trending.

But things have started going downhill. Im finding it increasingly difficult to make money this way. I dont know if its the mess in Europe or just bad luck, but im struggling to make... well, any money now.

So here my first questions pop up
What I was doing at the begining - was it just newb luck, or was I onto something there? And if it was legitimate, are there any ways to make trading by support/resistance lines more successful?

But as I was saying, things started going downhill pretty quickly. I went from £2000 down to £750 on a bunch of bad trades on pairs which stopped trending, and what was "high" on those pairs previously, now wasnt even a low. So I tried to learn a new method which exposed you less to all the news, and tried trading by the news. Using an audio news bulletin service, I basically just try to "beat the market" to good/bad news, and milk the small amount of pips I can. This consistently works, but the profits are tiny, and there are plenty of days with no news or unimportant news.

So here I am with £800 (made £50 on this news style trading over the past week) and im not feeling satisfied with my current methods.
1. Should I expand on the current methods I know, or should I start over with a method thats popular on here?
2. For somehow who-knows-what-theyre-doing-but-not-really, would it be worth signing up with james16group (http://www.james16group.us/), or a similar sort of "help group"? Ive heard them recommended by a poster or two, but im not sure what the consensus is on whether these sort of sites are worth it

Whew. Thats it. I know its a lot of text, but im just feeling kind of lost and overwhelmed. Really appreciate any help

most people go through the stages you go and most never come out of it. Unfortunately it's very likely that you just had newbie luck. I can just tell you how I turned around my trading. Maybe some others have a better advice, but this is what worked for me:

I went very heavily into statistics and in the beginning logged in trades manually and now backtesting ideas via a program. Unfortunately, you can go hundreds of trades winning in the market while the method overall (over thousands of trades) only generates random signals.
You have to realize that most methods here are written by unprofitable traders. They just wanna share their ideas / methods and for one reason or another they all state that they are heavily profitable (highly unlikely if you ask me).
So, my advice, focus less on methods written in this forum and just study the market on your own. You have an idea that you think might work in the market, then backtest it. When that is successful, forward test it for a while. And when that still works then go live. Finding a profitable method can take you weeks to months, depending on how lucky you are and how much time you can devote towards research.
Sorry, no short-cut in this business. Took me also a while to realize that.

Hey "FeelMyPecs", if you were feemale I would help you. HeHeHe...

Just my 2 cents, if you lost most of your money on just a few trades you probably were risking too much on 1 trade.

No matter what strategy you are using. Don't focus on $ gains in the first years, better focus on pips. There no way to quick success as it takes time and experience to develop good trading skills. So try to stay in the market as long as possible without killing your account. The best way to achieve this is to reduce your leverage to 1:1. So if you just have $1000 dollar to trade with, use just 1000 units per trade and start from there. This way you also should be free from emotional problems like greed and fear. At least that's what helps me the most.

No need to join the J16 group so fast.

Go hang out at the free thread here.
http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=2331

Then decided if you want to spend your money.

1. to double your money so quickly it sounds like you were risking too much...

2. sounds more like you were range trading rather than trend trading.

3. have a look at building risk models for any strategy.... have 5 losers on the trot isn't always a sign stuff isnt working... its all about the combination of win rate, risk/reward and amount of account at risk.

My trend trading has a pretty low win rate, but i get nice big winners, once i learnt to leave trades open (which took a long time) i never had to worry about losers anymore, because i knew the winners would wipe them out and give me consistent profit...

Newb looking to be pointed in the right direction

Google is always good start....http://maps.google.com

Sweet, really appreciate the input from everyone. This is kind of silly, but I didnt even know the proper name for what I was doing - thanks to one of the above posters, I now know its called range trading. Not even knowing what its called or if its even a legitimate technique made it difficult to look for tips

i agree with torkay77,dont rush pushing yourself with value.focus with pips is better.such as,try set target how many pips minimum daily 30 50 80?.try too maintain it everyday.if u see improvement,try add more and maximum it.some ppl use a huge lot too enter market,but so risky.the scenario like A have 1k in his acc B also have 1k.but A enter market 1pips/3, B 1pips/1.A manage to get 90usd daily B also same.but once market go the wrong way, A loss a much than B.day by day u may see market tricks with patient and control emotion u gain a lot off experience.in future u know how to manage frx easily.also u can enter market with huge value because u confidence with your experience

it seems that you probably used a lot of leverage to double your account at the beginning. Overleverage always come back biting you in the ass. The trading game is about consistency. I am always thinking first what is my risk/stop loss in the trade even before I think my potential profit is. Not losing money is just as good as making money.

[quote=feelmypecs;5705288]Hey folks. Im pretty new to all this. Im a 20 year old guy who has pretty much decided that no matter how long it takes me, im going to get good at trading. Theres just simply too many benefits to this line of work, and I damn well intend to learn to do this well.


I can tell you,by starting off saying,Your going to need this mentatlity if you wanna make it in this lustrous industry,but kudos to you for having what seems like an iron will or what I like to call "the eye of the tiger in the sky"but honestly I can see, by you acknowledging,after 6-7 months your still a newbie, you probably have a chance,but then again it's always going to come back to you like things like your attention span,effort,risk appetite,etc..

Also don't let no one determine how much skin you want to have in the game only way you'll learn is probably by blowing a few or more than a few accounts,"demo's are traps meant to keep u standing still in time until u realize what you have to find",which is to learn to control your feelings,develop discipline and follow directions, anyhow here's a thread which will take support and resistance to the next plateau,because your on the right track you just have to keep treading along,but check out nomask trading major lines here: http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=281454

PS also read up on support and demand levels after you understand support and resistance a little more

Awesome. Honestly, these replies + the PMs ive gotten have really cleared a lot of the static that was in my head, you guys are great

So what's going to happen now is that you're going to be jerked around by a bunch of "I have the greatest" traders. So you can spend the next 2 years trying to figure out who is right.

If you had a profitable method at the start but it went a little haywire
you only need to improve your OWN method and keep learning.

It can't possibly take any longer than being jerked around by "greatest" thing that will be thrown at you.

There's several posts of good advice here, as well.

You have a charting method already that works for you:
Just put that to rules, and you're set.
My guess is it'll take a whole lot of bar-and-pattern study to pin down how you look at the charts.

Good luck.