The Trader's Academy - by Traders for Traders

Anyone who has followed this thread from the start will know that I consider Yoga and exercise in general to be an important part of my trading day, and no day begins without an hour's exercising. I have to get up much earlier, but it is well worth it, and It has helped me enormously. Breathing correctly is an important part of this daily preparation, something I learned about six years ago with the help of this book. If you are prone to stress and are someone who tends to panic when trades are going against you, then I strongly recommend examining this aspect of your self-preparation, because when you panic, your breathing becomes shallow, your pulse quickens, and the amount of oxygen reaching the brain diminishes dramatically, thereby reducing your ability to think rationally and objectively, and all this happens in a matter of seconds. Correct diaghragmatic breathing will prevent this from happening. To trade well, you have to be fit to trade, physically, mentally and spiritually, and although this is an aspect of trading few people ever talk about, for me it is of the very utmost importance.

Relates to trading, 100%. If you are not like this, then become like this.

http://www.becomefighterpilot.com/fi...ilot-emanates/

Quite a few people I know seem to be really struggling with these markets at the moment, as they are pretty much all over the place leading into this very important French election. I just want to repeat what I have stressed before on this thread and elsewhere, and that is the importance of having a trading strategy you fully understand with clear, identifiable signals to get you into a trade as well as a strategy to get you out of it. There should be no doubt in your mind when entering a trade - either it's a trading opportunity or it is not, and if you do not have signals that determine this, then you are simply gambling and it will be impossible to profit consistently. What these signals are depends on each strategy, but be there they must.

LOL. I drink a bit too. Feel the same way.

The journey

It's been one full year and a half since I attempted at making it a full time trader and 3 years and a half since I started trading. When I decided to quit my job I didn't have a trading plan and a proven method. I made some and lost some here and there. With my delusional mind I somehow thought I was ready to go full time after 2 years of trading part time on the side apart from my full time job.

I quickly came to the cruel realisation that I wasn't going to make any money few months after I went full time. Like I said I didn't have a plan and a method that generated consistent result. I was in and out of a trade because I thought or felt like price was moving in a certain direction not because there was a clear indication or a signal that price was headed in one way or another. My gut feeling didn't disappoint me initially but trading without a method eventually affected my psyche and soon I found myself in a downward spiral of losing money trade after trade. I was a disciplined trader before then but that went out the window as my emotions spiralled out of control. All the while I wanted to prove myself to family and friends that it was possible to make a living. I felt like a loser. Pressure I put on myself to make it happen within a certain time period took a toll on me. I was tired, disappointed and above everything else I felt worthless. About the same time I discovered this thread. I was excited about this method, but it wasn't happening. I had no clue if price was going up or down timeframes as low as 10sec and 30sec it all seemed like a great big chaos to me. Naturally I lost trade after trade again. I lost hope then and there. I told myself I'm done for real. I was defeated.

After some thinking on my own I decided to take a break went away on a vacation for a few months. Although I was on a vacation I would still observe price movement on 10sec, 30sec trying to guess the direction while combining them with higher TFs. It was hard. And I wasn't getting anywhere. Now I was getting used to feeling like this, disappointment.

Half a year passed still no visible progress, family & friends started nagging me for the first time. I thought about completely quitting trading and getting a job. But I couldn't imagine myself back again in that miserable position. So I told them I was going to go back to school and study something new. They wholeheartedly agreed that I should do something productive and useful. To them trading was delusional and a waste of time. I kind of agreed to that because I was starting to lose hope then.

Another few months passed plan of going back to school changed. I took up trading again. This time I decided to focus on GBPJPY alone and I kept trading lower TFs like 10sec and 30sec in combination with higher TFs. I traded GBPJPY with some success. But I still didn't have a clear cut indication as to when I get in and out of a trade. So I changed my broker and started trading DAX (as it was always my ultimate goal to trade indices such as DAX and S&P). Six months into the journey I started seeing some progress. I was learning to guess the price direction. I feel like for the time in one year and a half since I went full time I'm finally getting the hang of this. Don't get me wrong I'm not making money in fact I still lose. But its not because I don't know when to get in and get out of a trade but because I don't stick with my method. I get out when price moves against me a bit only to realise it goes further to that direction after some pullback.

Last year and a half has been a very difficult and challenging phase in my life. Family and friends offered no emotional support I was all alone in this. Well we have sites like this FF, it does help a great deal for people like us who are alone in this. I think most of us are alone in this, people who aren't traders often don't understand the struggles we go through. Now that I see some light at the end of the tunnel my family is nagging me again to do something useful with my life. They say they are worried about me not doing anything productive and staying home all day in front of a computer screen. They don't acknowledge the fact that I work everyday despite not making any money. It is frustrating to not have your closest understand your situation. Maybe I'm being stubborn but if I hadn't seen some progress I wouldn't have kept this going full time. I thought about getting a job many times when I felt truly defeated. But I hung in there long enough to finally see some progress. But now they want me to quit and do real (more like shitty job) job ?

I don't know what I want to do at this point. Its not like I have to get a job I still have money saved up for myself for a while so I can push it another year or so and see what happens. I don't know how I should describe situation. I guess the point is is it worth pushing it another year full time and see what happens now that I've come this far ?

That was a long ramble. But I had nowhere to turn to. Thanks for anyone who's spent the time reading through.

Just read this and I will try help share with you my experience in this same journey. Actually it's no different from yours,exactly the same.

3yrs staring at the charts looking for something that might work. Thousands of times I thought I found something good, was excited about it but it turned out to be wrong and I lose money trading with them. I mean thousands... Tell me how disappointed is that. And the hard work.....working from Monday to Sunday(7days a week) every week......from 8am to 12midnight plus 2-4ams looking at charts becos an idea popped in the mind. All this efforts end up in the bin becos they do not work. That's the despair.....

The direction and the entry/exit. You are right about this, spot on !

I had no idea - zero, zilch. Guess ? Our financial future based on guess ? No way. We need better than that. Something more concrete.

In that time I learned mql to code on mt4, thanks to a buddy I met forum. That was a huge leap becos I could test strategies a lot faster. I can make my own indicators/tools to study the charts, I begin to understand the math and why the indicators lag/repaint and so on. Thousands of those stuff I made thrown into the bin.....useless, rubbish.

I read forums, followed threads for ideas, small nuggets, piece them together one by one, until they finally it gelled together. It begin to make sense why the price move the way they do. The breakthrough happened when, by accident I stumbled upon a CONCEPT of how the price moved, I don't know the why. How long and the amount of work it took to reach this point ? The number of rabbit holes I went digging ending up nothing, wasted time and effort. It's crazy to think about it!

Your post seems to ask this question - will you make it ?

Very difficult, I am honest here, I read your posts about your trades. There's no literature on books, videos, forums that properly discuss this. The best I've seen in one place is on this thread - Cat's posts about how he trades with MA's and MACD - he has given a lot of info. Notice his MACD is different from mt4 MACD - I coded on mt4 to look the same. My CONCEPT is similar with Cat but I went a lot further, I know becos I read all his post on dax charts. The other guys medici also make very good posts with his CONCEPT and entry idea - read his post on this thread. Try to understand what both of them convey with their posts. Thanks to both of them and many other contributors here and elsewhere.

Learn to write codes, then you can test ideas a lot faster and you can do stuff non-coders can't do - create tools that mirror your idea. I create my charts on excel - another area to learn, now I can test these ideas on other types of random distribution and compare them - the scope of vision has widened, not just on forex.

This is my journey. Others may be different yours may be different, I don't know. I know mine was very difficult - I don't know what I need to know - I just stumbled upon them one by one until I reach where I am today. Describing my journey hopefully tells you where you are, what's ahead of you and what you need to do. Hopefully this helps you in your journey.

Good morning Piquant,

First, I want to encourage you to continue learning how to trade I don't believe that trading in and of itself is rewarding. I do believe that trading consistently and profitably is rewarding and is a skill that can be developed over time.

Second, from your post, it appears that you have been trading for a very short time (3 years to me seems short), and that your trading is neither consistent (not following your trading plan or strategy) nor profitable. You say that you see the light at the end of the tunnel. (Let's hope it's not a train coming the other way. chuckle) You also say that you have enough money to trade another year without working - that's great.

Third, the frustration you have felt with trading and with your loved ones not understanding what & why you are learning how to trade is understandable and seems to be a common experience among traders during the learning phase of trading. I had experience similar doubts expressed to me by my family when I was initially learning how to trade.

Fourth, that being said, it seems to me that you feel if you don't continue to try and make a living by trading at this point in your life that your trading career is over. Nothing is further from the truth. The situation you are in is not a binary set, all or nothing. Instead, you have the option to save that year of capital you expressed you had, go back to work (which will alleviate the criticism of your family/loved ones) at a job that will still allow you to trade during one of the three trading sessions, prove that your methodology/strategy/trading plan is profitable, and work on your consistency. Once you are making your yearly salary from trading on a regular basis, then it would be time to try again and make a living by only trading.

I hope this brief note encourages you and that you find a profitable and consistent trading career.

B.

I appreciate you sharing your experience Skyway (I remember you from last year). I also have read this thread from page 1 until the very end many times over the last year and a half and still have yet to digest all of it. If it wasn't for this thread I don't think I would made the progress that I have made so far. I work with what I have from now on, I need to be consistent with my approach to figure out if I really have an edge. Maybe I don't, if thats the case I'll have further examine my approach and make further changes like you did with MACD and coding. I'm guessing what you have right now does not work ?

Thanks ! Bren.

I wish people around me would say the same thing but they would never understand what I'm going through. Your words were encouraging, a pat on the back. I guess I wanted to hear this the most. I really appreciate your response !

How long have you been trading ?

Your welcome sir.

A little over 9 years.

B.

9 long years. I'm hoping to make it on my 4th year. I just hope its another train coming my way. Too many wishful thinking I guess :-)

Hi Piquant. Sometimes it does help to share with other traders one's feelings and experiences, since we traders are really the only people who understand the journey we are on, and it is never an easy one as you yourself and others know. All I would add to what has already been written in reply to you is perhaps it may suit you at the moment to trade something a little easier to trade ( though I do always say once you can trade one pair you can trade them all ), and perhaps a little less daunting than GJ or Dax, both of which have big ranges and fast moves. AUD/USD is one I have in mind, quite docile as forex pairs go, fairly small range compared with some of the others, and a much smaller stop loss can be used. It is always best to avoid the most volatile markets when one is still struggling to devise a real edge. You want to make the learning process as painless as possible, and choosing the right pair to trade can help facilitate this.

If anyone else out there can suggest some nice, low spread forex pairs to trade, please share.

I'm sure I've said this somewhere in this thread, but this is a very general pointer with regard to technical trading -

Trade away from the big moving averages on whatever time frame you trade off. Price moves away from them, but always comes back, but the momentum will usually lie trading with these moving averages ( 100sma/200sma/ema ) rather than against them. To trade back into these MAs once the price has got far enough away from them, you need other smaller moving averages that come up over the price for a sell, or beneath it for a buy, which you know give you a clear indication of a change in direction, though what these smaller moving averages are depends on which you find and prefer to use. I myself spent a long time working through different MAs before finding the ones I now use.

This is a generalization, and there are set ups where you can trade into one of the big MAs, though this will require too much detail to go into, and even then it may confuse, but it all depends upon where they are on different time frames, so attempting to go further with this will likely only confuse more than it will help. I do have however an example I can post this weekend, which relates back to a losing trade Piquant had which he posted a couple of weeks ago or so, where he traded directly into a big moving average and got stopped out pretty quickly for his efforts. I can show him why he got stopped out on that particular occasion, but on another almost identical set up on the same time frame on the next day I think it was, he would have been okay trading into this 200ema..it all depends where this MA was on a higher time frame.

As a quick example, a trade I have just closed on GJ provides some insight into the above. GJ is trending up on the H4 and H1 charts, but it is showing signs of exhaustion and so is being sold quite aggressively, but bought back just as aggressively, thereby giving some great trade opps. For the buy back, I waited for my smaller moving averages to get into the right formation on my 20 second and 1 min time frame, so when I bought, I was buying into the 20sec, 1m, 3m, 10m, and 15m 200ema, but that didn't matter, because I was buying away from the 30m 200ema and H1 100sma, so those moving averages on the bigger time frames overrode all of the other 200emas on the smaller time frames. On the H1 chart, there was no resistance between the 100sma and the S1 pivot, which were together, up to where the price dropped from earlier this morning, and so back up it went, all the way.

This is how to trade the big moving averages on the multiple time frames, trading away from the one that has held the price and forgetting the others on the smaller time frames which have become redundant once they have been broken.

A while ago you mentioned about trading around the edges. Would this qualify ? Today London open, I wasn't in the trade but I was long in my mind (not trading until after French elections). I appreciate your suggestion by the way about trading less volatile pairs like AUDUSD, I did have a look. But I'm still drawn towards DAX, the pay off is much greater than any FX pair. Maybe I'm wrong but I think DAX respects my MAs more than any other JPY pair especially GJ, it can be a real struggle to trade sometimes as it does whatever it wants to regardless of the positioning of the MAs. I'm currently drawing up a plan on trading DAX around London and NY open, I should trade around the edges wait patiently for price to come around these levels (MAs) if its below sell if its above like the image attached I would hit the buy button. Other than these two scenarios I would just sit aside. I don't think its a good idea to try to trade every possible scenario on DAX given my current circumstance.

This raises a lot of points, which I won't try and go into now. trading around the edges is fine as long as you know where the edges are! Generally though, buying the valley and selling the peak is a good template to have in your head. As for only buying when the price is above or selling when it's below an MA or whatever..if only trading were that simple - unfortunately it's not. We are always all looking for ways to simplify out charts/trading/strategy, and we should seek to do so, but that is very different to trying to find some holy grail lying within the charts, because there isn't one, so it all comes back to screen time, knowledge and experience in the end - the more you learn, the more you see, and the simpler it becomes. You will learn, in time, to recognize the high probability trading opportunities, and reject the rest. Don't clutter the charts - a few key moving averages, MACD for diversion ( I never use it for overbought or oversold, because like RSI, it doesn't work very well for that ), pivots, trend lines, fibonacci, and candlestick formation...and that's all you need, well, that's all I need. Learn to use these in combination, and you will be there. I use Bollinger bands only because it helps me place my stops, ie, outside of the Bollinger band.

I'll tell you exactly why I started this thread. It is this.

Although experienced traders like myself tell the relative newcomers to trading that learning how to trade takes a long time, many years in fact for most people, it can safely be said that had I known when I started out, which was basically nothing, what I know now, I would have undoubtedly shortened the learning process, because as with anything in life, quality trumps quantity every time, so if you actually know what to concentrate on and what not to waste you time on, in theory, you will reach your destination that much more quickly provided you work hard and think smart. The faster we can figure out the what, when, how, and why of price movement, the sooner we will reach that coveted goal.

It was with this in mind that I started this thread, and I hope that I and others who have contributed have gone some way towards smoothing out the long and rocky path towards success.

The ultimate guide to learning anything faster.


https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/246118

The feeling you have when you see your trading opportunity staring you in the face but that little fucker inside your head tells you it doesn't look quite right...there's too much resistance above---too much support below...best to wait a little....London open 30 mins away...what if I'm wrong...or any number of other reasons NOT to pull the trigger, and then, off it goes without you for the biggest movement of the day. Yes, you can get in on a pullback if there is one, but you missed the optimal opportunity to get into the trade when it was screaming at you to take it, and all because you let that little bastard in your head talk you out of it.

Yes, we've all been there. If it looks good, conforms to your strategy, and you have the signal to go, then do just one thing - PULL THE TRIGGER!! You'll be right many more times than you'll be wrong.

Can she shock the world on Sunday and defy the pollsters just as the Brits did in June and Trump did in November? If she does it, the impact on the financial markets will be massive. Either way, I'll be watching from the sidelines.