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Former investment bank FX trader: news trading and second order thinking

Thanks to everyone who responded to the previous pieces on risk management. We ended up with nearly 2,000 upvotes and I'm delighted so many of you found it useful.
This time we're going to focus on a new area: reacting to and trading around news and fundamental developments.
A lot of people get this totally wrong and the main reason is that they trade the news at face value, without considering what the market had already priced in. If you've ever seen what you consider to be "good" or "better than forecast" news come out and yet been confused as the pair did nothing or moved in the opposite direction to expected, read on...
We are going to do this in two parts.
Part I

Introduction
Why use an economic calendar
How to read the calendar
Knowing what's priced in
Surveys
Rates decisions
First order thinking vs second order thinking

Introduction

Knowing how to use and benefit from the economic calendar is key for all traders - not just news traders.
In this chapter we are going to take a practical look at how to use the economic calendar. We are also going to look at how to interpret news using second order thinking.
The key concept is learning what has already been ‘priced in’ by the market so we can estimate how the market price might react to the new information.

Why use an economic calendar

The economic calendar contains all the scheduled economic releases for that day and week. Even if you purely trade based on technical analysis, you still must know what is in store.

https://preview.redd.it/20xdiq6gq4k51.png?width=1200&format=png&auto=webp&s=6cd47186db1039be7df4d7ad6782de36da48f1db
Why? Three main reasons.
Firstly, releases can help provide direction. They create trends. For example if GBPUSD has been fluctuating aimlessly within a range and suddenly the Bank of England starts raising rates you better believe the British Pound will start to move. Big news events often start long-term trends which you can trade around.
Secondly, a lot of the volatility occurs around these events. This is because these events give the market new information. Prior to a big scheduled release like the US Non Farm Payrolls you might find no one wants to take a big position. After it is released the market may move violently and potentially not just in a single direction - often prices may overshoot and come back down. Even without a trend this volatility provides lots of trading opportunities for the day trader.

https://preview.redd.it/u17iwbhiq4k51.png?width=1200&format=png&auto=webp&s=98ea8ed154c9468cb62037668c38e7387f2435af
Finally, these releases can change trends. Going into a huge release because of a technical indicator makes little sense. Everything could reverse and stop you out in a moment. You need to be aware of which events are likely to influence the positions you have on so you can decide whether to keep the positions or flatten exposure before the binary event for which you have no edge.
Most traders will therefore ‘scan’ the calendar for the week ahead, noting what the big events are and when they will occur. Then you can focus on each day at a time.

Reading the economic calendar

Most calendars show events cut by trading day. Helpfully they adjust the time of each release to your own timezone. For example we can see that the Bank of Japan Interest Rate decision is happening at 4am local time for this particular London-based trader.

https://preview.redd.it/lmx0q9qoq4k51.jpg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c6e9e1533b1ba236e51296de8db3be55dfa78ba1

Note that some events do not happen at a specific time. Think of a Central Banker’s speech for example - this can go on for an hour. It is not like an economic statistic that gets released at a precise time. Clicking the finger emoji will open up additional information on each event.

Event importance

How do you define importance? Well, some events are always unimportant. With the greatest of respect to Italian farmers, nobody cares about mundane releases like Italian farm productivity figures.
Other events always seem to be important. That means, markets consistently react to them and prices move. Interest rate decisions are an example of consistently high importance events.
So the Medium and High can be thought of as guides to how much each event typically affects markets. They are not perfect guides, however, as different events are more or less important depending on the circumstances.
For example, imagine the UK economy was undergoing a consumer-led recovery. The Central Bank has said it would raise interest rates (making GBPUSD move higher) if they feel the consumer is confident.
Consumer confidence data would suddenly become an extremely important event. At other times, when the Central Bank has not said it is focused on the consumer, this release might be near irrelevant.

Knowing what's priced in

Next to each piece of economic data you can normally see three figures. Actual, Forecast, and Previous.

Actual refers to the number as it is released.
Forecast refers to the consensus estimate from analysts.
Previous is what it was last time.

We are going to look at this in a bit more detail later but what you care about is when numbers are better or worse than expected. Whether a number is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ really does not matter much. Yes, really.

Once you understand that markets move based on the news vs expectations, you will be less confused by price action around events

This is a common misunderstanding. Say everyone is expecting ‘great’ economic data and it comes out as ‘good’. Does the price go up?
You might think it should. After all, the economic data was good. However, everyone expected it to be great and it was just … good. The great release was ‘priced in’ by the market already. Most likely the price will be disappointed and go down.
By priced in we simply mean that the market expected it and already bought or sold. The information was already in the price before the announcement.
Incidentally the official forecasts can be pretty stale and might not accurately capture what active traders in the market expect. See the following example.

An example of pricing in

For example, let’s say the market is focused on the number of Tesla deliveries. Analysts think it’ll be 100,000 this quarter. But Elon Musk tweets something that hints he’s really, really, really looking forward to the analyst call. Tesla’s price ticks higher after the tweet as traders put on positions, reflecting the sentiment that Tesla is likely to massively beat the 100,000. (This example is not a real one - it just serves to illustrate the concept.)

Tesla deliveries are up hugely vs last quarter ... but they are disappointing vs market expectations ... what do you think will happen to the stock?

On the day it turns out Tesla hit 101,000. A better than the officially forecasted result - sure - but only marginally. Way below what readers of Musk's twitter account might have thought. Disappointed traders may sell their longs and close out the positions. The stock might go down on ‘good’ results because the market had priced in something even better. (This example is not a real one - it just serves to illustrate the concept.)

Surveys

It can be a little hard to know what the market really expects. Often the published forecasts are stale and do not reflect what actual traders and investors are looking for.
One of the most effective ways is a simple survey of investors. Something like a Twitter poll like this one from CNBC is freely available and not a bad barometer.
CNBC, Bloomberg and other business TV stations often have polls on their Twitter accounts that let you know what others are expecting

Interest rates decisions

We know that interest rates heavily affect currency prices.
For major interest rate decisions there’s a great tool on the CME’s website that you can use.

See the link for a demo

This gives you a % probability of each interest rate level, implied by traded prices in the bond futures market. For example, in the case above the market thinks there’s a 20% chance the Fed will cut rates to 75-100bp.
Obviously this is far more accurate than analyst estimates because it uses actual bond prices where market participants are directly taking risk and placing bets. It basically looks at what interest rate traders are willing to lend at just before/after the date of the central bank meeting to imply the odds that the market ascribes to a change on that date.
Always try to estimate what the market has priced in. That way you have some context for whether the release really was better or worse than expected.

Second order thinking

You have to know what the market expects to try and guess how it’ll react. This is referred to by Howard Marks of Oaktree as second-level thinking. His explanation is so clear I am going to quote extensively.
It really is hard to improve on this clarity of thought:
First-level thinking is simplistic and superficial, and just about everyone can do it (a bad sign for anything involving an attempt at superiority). All the first-level thinker needs is an opinion about the future, as in “The outlook for the company is favorable, meaning the stock will go up.” Second-level thinking is deep, complex and convoluted.
Howard Marks
He explains first-level thinking:
The first-level thinker simply looks for the highest quality company, the best product, the fastest earnings growth or the lowest p/e ratio. He’s ignorant of the very existence of a second level at which to think, and of the need to pursue it.
Howard Marks
The above describes the guy who sees a 101,000 result and buys Tesla stock because - hey, this beat expectations. Marks goes on to describe second-level thinking:
The second-level thinker goes through a much more complex process when thinking about buying an asset. Is it good? Do others think it’s as good as I think it is? Is it really as good as I think it is? Is it as good as others think it is? Is it as good as others think others think it is? How will it change? How do others think it will change? How is it priced given: its current condition; how do I think its conditions will change; how others think it will change; and how others think others think it will change? And that’s just the beginning. No, this isn’t easy.
Howard Marks
In this version of events you are always thinking about the market’s response to Tesla results.
What do you think they’ll announce? What has the market priced in? Is Musk reliable? Are the people who bought because of his tweet likely to hold on if he disappoints or exit immediately? If it goes up at which price will they take profit? How big a number is now considered ‘wow’ by the market?
As Marks says: not easy. However, you need to start getting into the habit of thinking like this if you want to beat the market. You can make gameplans in advance for various scenarios.
Here are some examples from Marks to illustrate the difference between first order and second order thinking.

Some further examples
Trying to react fast to headlines is impossible in today’s market of ultra fast computers. You will never win on speed. Therefore you have to out-think the average participant.

Coming up in part II

Now that we have a basic understanding of concepts such as expectations and what the market has priced in, we can look at some interesting trading techniques and tools.
Part II

Preparing for quantitative and qualitative releases
Data surprise index
Using recent events to predict future reactions
Buy the rumour, sell the fact
The trimming position effect
Reversals
Some key FX releases

Hope you enjoyed this note. As always, please reply with any questions/feedback - it is fun to hear from you.
***
Disclaimer:This content is not investment advice and you should not place any reliance on it. The views expressed are the author's own and should not be attributed to any other person, including their employer.

submitted by getmrmarket to Forex [link] [comments]

H1 Backtest of ParallaxFX's BBStoch system

Disclaimer: None of this is financial advice. I have no idea what I'm doing. Please do your own research or you will certainly lose money. I'm not a statistician, data scientist, well-seasoned trader, or anything else that would qualify me to make statements such as the below with any weight behind them. Take them for the incoherent ramblings that they are.
TL;DR at the bottom for those not interested in the details.
This is a bit of a novel, sorry about that. It was mostly for getting my own thoughts organized, but if even one person reads the whole thing I will feel incredibly accomplished.

Background

For those of you not familiar, please see the various threads on this trading system here. I can't take credit for this system, all glory goes to ParallaxFX!
I wanted to see how effective this system was at H1 for a couple of reasons: 1) My current broker is TD Ameritrade - their Forex minimum is a mini lot, and I don't feel comfortable enough yet with the risk to trade mini lots on the higher timeframes(i.e. wider pip swings) that ParallaxFX's system uses, so I wanted to see if I could scale it down. 2) I'm fairly impatient, so I don't like to wait days and days with my capital tied up just to see if a trade is going to win or lose.
This does mean it requires more active attention since you are checking for setups once an hour instead of once a day or every 4-6 hours, but the upside is that you trade more often this way so you end up winning or losing faster and moving onto the next trade. Spread does eat more of the trade this way, but I'll cover this in my data below - it ends up not being a problem.
I looked at data from 6/11 to 7/3 on all pairs with a reasonable spread(pairs listed at bottom above the TL;DR). So this represents about 3-4 weeks' worth of trading. I used mark(mid) price charts. Spreadsheet link is below for anyone that's interested.

System Details

I'm pretty much using ParallaxFX's system textbook, but since there are a few options in his writeups, I'll include all the discretionary points here:

I'm using the stop entry version - so I wait for the price to trade beyond the confirmation candle(in the direction of my trade) before entering. I don't have any data to support this decision, but I've always preferred this method over retracement-limit entries. Maybe I just like the feeling of a higher winrate even though there can be greater R:R using a limit entry. Variety is the spice of life.
I put my stop loss right at the opposite edge of the confirmation candle. NOT at the edge of the 2-candle pattern that makes up the system. I'll get into this more below - not enough trades are saved to justify the wider stops. (Wider stop means less $ per pip won, assuming you still only risk 1%).
All my profit/loss statistics are based on a 1% risk per trade. Because 1 is real easy to multiply.
There are definitely some questionable trades in here, but I tried to make it as mechanical as possible for evaluation purposes. They do fit the definitions of the system, which is why I included them. You could probably improve the winrate by being more discretionary about your trades by looking at support/resistance or other techniques.
I didn't use MBB much for either entering trades, or as support/resistance indicators. Again, trying to be pretty mechanical here just for data collection purposes. Plus, we all make bad trading decisions now and then, so let's call it even.
As stated in the title, this is for H1 only. These results may very well not play out for other time frames - who knows, it may not even work on H1 starting this Monday. Forex is an unpredictable place.
I collected data to show efficacy of taking profit at three different levels: -61.8%, -100% and -161.8% fib levels described in the system using the passive trade management method(set it and forget it). I'll have more below about moving up stops and taking off portions of a position.

And now for the fun. Results!

Total Trades: 241
Raw Winrates:
- TP at -61.8%: 177 out of 241: 73.44%
- TP at -100%: 156 out of 241: 64.73%
- TP at -161.8%: 121 out of 241: 50.20%
Adjusted Proft % (takes spread into account):
- TP at -61.8%: 5.22%
- TP at -100%: 23.55%
- TP at -161.8%: 29.14%

As you can see, a higher target ended up with higher profit despite a much lower winrate. This is partially just how things work out with profit targets in general, but there's an additional point to consider in our case: the spread. Since we are trading on a lower timeframe, there is less overall price movement and thus the spread takes up a much larger percentage of the trade than it would if you were trading H4, Daily or Weekly charts. You can see exactly how much it accounts for each trade in my spreadsheet if you're interested. TDA does not have the best spreads, so you could probably improve these results with another broker.
EDIT: I grabbed typical spreads from other brokers, and turns out while TDA is pretty competitive on majors, their minors/crosses are awful! IG beats them by 20-40% and Oanda beats them 30-60%! Using IG spreads for calculations increased profits considerably (another 5% on top) and Oanda spreads increased profits massively (another 15%!). Definitely going to be considering another broker than TDA for this strategy. Plus that'll allow me to trade micro-lots, so I can be more granular(and thus accurate) with my position sizing and compounding.

A Note on Spread

As you can see in the data, there were scenarios where the spread was 80% of the overall size of the trade(the size of the confirmation candle that you draw your fibonacci retracements over), which would obviously cut heavily into your profits.
Removing any trades where the spread is more than 50% of the trade width improved profits slightly without removing many trades, but this is almost certainly just coincidence on a small sample size. Going below 40% and even down to 30% starts to cut out a lot of trades for the less-common pairs, but doesn't actually change overall profits at all(~1% either way).
However, digging all the way down to 25% starts to really make some movement. Profit at the -161.8% TP level jumps up to 37.94% if you filter out anything with a spread that is more than 25% of the trade width! And this even keeps the sample size fairly large at 187 total trades.
You can get your profits all the way up to 48.43% at the -161.8% TP level if you filter all the way down to only trades where spread is less than 15% of the trade width, however your sample size gets much smaller at that point(108 trades) so I'm not sure I would trust that as being accurate in the long term.
Overall based on this data, I'm going to only take trades where the spread is less than 25% of the trade width. This may bias my trades more towards the majors, which would mean a lot more correlated trades as well(more on correlation below), but I think it is a reasonable precaution regardless.

Time of Day

Time of day had an interesting effect on trades. In a totally predictable fashion, a vast majority of setups occurred during the London and New York sessions: 5am-12pm Eastern. However, there was one outlier where there were many setups on the 11PM bar - and the winrate was about the same as the big hours in the London session. No idea why this hour in particular - anyone have any insight? That's smack in the middle of the Tokyo/Sydney overlap, not at the open or close of either.
On many of the hour slices I have a feeling I'm just dealing with small number statistics here since I didn't have a lot of data when breaking it down by individual hours. But here it is anyway - for all TP levels, these three things showed up(all in Eastern time):

7pm-4am: Fewer setups, but winrate high.
5am-6am: Lots of setups, but but winrate low.
12pm-3pm Medium number of setups, but winrate low.

I don't have any reason to think these timeframes would maintain this behavior over the long term. They're almost certainly meaningless. EDIT: When you de-dup highly correlated trades, the number of trades in these timeframes really drops, so from this data there is no reason to think these timeframes would be any different than any others in terms of winrate.
That being said, these time frames work out for me pretty well because I typically sleep 12am-7am Eastern time. So I automatically avoid the 5am-6am timeframe, and I'm awake for the majority of this system's setups.

Moving stops up to breakeven

This section goes against everything I know and have ever heard about trade management. Please someone find something wrong with my data. I'd love for someone to check my formulas, but I realize that's a pretty insane time commitment to ask of a bunch of strangers.
Anyways. What I found was that for these trades moving stops up...basically at all...actually reduced the overall profitability.
One of the data points I collected while charting was where the price retraced back to after hitting a certain milestone. i.e. once the price hit the -61.8% profit level, how far back did it retrace before hitting the -100% profit level(if at all)? And same goes for the -100% profit level - how far back did it retrace before hitting the -161.8% profit level(if at all)?
Well, some complex excel formulas later and here's what the results appear to be. Emphasis on appears because I honestly don't believe it. I must have done something wrong here, but I've gone over it a hundred times and I can't find anything out of place.

Moving SL up to 0% when the price hits -61.8%, TP at -100%
- Winrate: 46.4%
- Adjusted Proft % (takes spread into account): 5.36%
Taking half position off at -61.8%, moving SL up to 0%, TP remaining half at -100%
- Winrate: 65.97%
- Adjusted Proft % (takes spread into account): -1.01% (yes, a net loss)

Now, you might think exactly what I did when looking at these numbers: oof, the spread killed us there right? Because even when you move your SL to 0%, you still end up paying the spread, so it's not truly "breakeven". And because we are trading on a lower timeframe, the spread can be pretty hefty right?
Well even when I manually modified the data so that the spread wasn't subtracted(i.e. "Breakeven" was truly +/- 0), things don't look a whole lot better, and still way worse than the passive trade management method of leaving your stops in place and letting it run. And that isn't even a realistic scenario because to adjust out the spread you'd have to move your stoploss inside the candle edge by at least the spread amount, meaning it would almost certainly be triggered more often than in the data I collected(which was purely based on the fib levels and mark price). Regardless, here are the numbers for that scenario:

Moving SL up to 0% when the price hits -61.8%, TP at -100%
- Winrate(breakeven doesn't count as a win): 46.4%
- Adjusted Proft % (takes spread into account): 17.97%
Taking half position off at -61.8%, moving SL up to 0%, TP remaining half at -100%
- Winrate(breakeven doesn't count as a win): 65.97%
- Adjusted Proft % (takes spread into account): 11.60%

From a literal standpoint, what I see behind this behavior is that 44 of the 69 breakeven trades(65%!) ended up being profitable to -100% after retracing deeply(but not to the original SL level), which greatly helped offset the purely losing trades better than the partial profit taken at -61.8%. And 36 went all the way back to -161.8% after a deep retracement without hitting the original SL. Anyone have any insight into this? Is this a problem with just not enough data? It seems like enough trades that a pattern should emerge, but again I'm no expert.
I also briefly looked at moving stops to other lower levels (78.6%, 61.8%, 50%, 38.2%, 23.6%), but that didn't improve things any. No hard data to share as I only took a quick look - and I still might have done something wrong overall.
The data is there to infer other strategies if anyone would like to dig in deep(more explanation on the spreadsheet below). I didn't do other combinations because the formulas got pretty complicated and I had already answered all the questions I was looking to answer.

2-Candle vs Confirmation Candle Stops

Another interesting point is that the original system has the SL level(for stop entries) just at the outer edge of the 2-candle pattern that makes up the system. Out of pure laziness, I set up my stops just based on the confirmation candle. And as it turns out, that is much a much better way to go about it.
Of the 60 purely losing trades, only 9 of them(15%) would go on to be winners with stops on the 2-candle formation. Certainly not enough to justify the extra loss and/or reduced profits you are exposing yourself to in every single other trade by setting a wider SL.
Oddly, in every single scenario where the wider stop did save the trade, it ended up going all the way to the -161.8% profit level. Still, not nearly worth it.

Correlated Trades

As I've said many times now, I'm really not qualified to be doing an analysis like this. This section in particular.
Looking at shared currency among the pairs traded, 74 of the trades are correlated. Quite a large group, but it makes sense considering the sort of moves we're looking for with this system.
This means you are opening yourself up to more risk if you were to trade on every signal since you are technically trading with the same underlying sentiment on each different pair. For example, GBP/USD and AUD/USD moving together almost certainly means it's due to USD moving both pairs, rather than GBP and AUD both moving the same size and direction coincidentally at the same time. So if you were to trade both signals, you would very likely win or lose both trades - meaning you are actually risking double what you'd normally risk(unless you halve both positions which can be a good option, and is discussed in ParallaxFX's posts and in various other places that go over pair correlation. I won't go into detail about those strategies here).
Interestingly though, 17 of those apparently correlated trades ended up with different wins/losses.
Also, looking only at trades that were correlated, winrate is 83%/70%/55% (for the three TP levels).
Does this give some indication that the same signal on multiple pairs means the signal is stronger? That there's some strong underlying sentiment driving it? Or is it just a matter of too small a sample size? The winrate isn't really much higher than the overall winrates, so that makes me doubt it is statistically significant.
One more funny tidbit: EUCAD netted the lowest overall winrate: 30% to even the -61.8% TP level on 10 trades. Seems like that is just a coincidence and not enough data, but dang that's a sucky losing streak.
EDIT: WOW I spent some time removing correlated trades manually and it changed the results quite a bit. Some thoughts on this below the results. These numbers also include the other "What I will trade" filters. I added a new worksheet to my data to show what I ended up picking.

Total Trades: 75
Raw Winrates:
- TP at -61.8%: 84.00%
- TP at -100%: 73.33%
- TP at -161.8%: 60.00%
- Moving SL up to 0% when the price hits -61.8%, TP at -100%: 53.33%
- Taking half position off at -61.8%, moving SL up to 0%, TP remaining half at -100%: 53.33% (yes, oddly the exact same winrate. but different trades/profits)
Adjusted Proft % (takes spread into account):
- TP at -61.8%: 18.13%
- TP at -100%: 26.20%
- TP at -161.8%: 34.01%
- Moving SL up to 0% when the price hits -61.8%, TP at -100%: 19.20%
- Taking half position off at -61.8%, moving SL up to 0%, TP remaining half at -100%: 17.29%

To do this, I removed correlated trades - typically by choosing those whose spread had a lower % of the trade width since that's objective and something I can see ahead of time. Obviously I'd like to only keep the winning trades, but I won't know that during the trade. This did reduce the overall sample size down to a level that I wouldn't otherwise consider to be big enough, but since the results are generally consistent with the overall dataset, I'm not going to worry about it too much.
I may also use more discretionary methods(support/resistance, quality of indecision/confirmation candles, news/sentiment for the pairs involved, etc) to filter out correlated trades in the future. But as I've said before I'm going for a pretty mechanical system.
This brought the 3 TP levels and even the breakeven strategies much closer together in overall profit. It muted the profit from the high R:R strategies and boosted the profit from the low R:R strategies. This tells me pair correlation was skewing my data quite a bit, so I'm glad I dug in a little deeper. Fortunately my original conclusion to use the -161.8 TP level with static stops is still the winner by a good bit, so it doesn't end up changing my actions.
There were a few times where MANY (6-8) correlated pairs all came up at the same time, so it'd be a crapshoot to an extent. And the data showed this - often then won/lost together, but sometimes they did not. As an arbitrary rule, the more correlations, the more trades I did end up taking(and thus risking). For example if there were 3-5 correlations, I might take the 2 "best" trades given my criteria above. 5+ setups and I might take the best 3 trades, even if the pairs are somewhat correlated.
I have no true data to back this up, but to illustrate using one example: if AUD/JPY, AUD/USD, CAD/JPY, USD/CAD all set up at the same time (as they did, along with a few other pairs on 6/19/20 9:00 AM), can you really say that those are all the same underlying movement? There are correlations between the different correlations, and trying to filter for that seems rough. Although maybe this is a known thing, I'm still pretty green to Forex - someone please enlighten me if so! I might have to look into this more statistically, but it would be pretty complex to analyze quantitatively, so for now I'm going with my gut and just taking a few of the "best" trades out of the handful.
Overall, I'm really glad I went further on this. The boosting of the B/E strategies makes me trust my calculations on those more since they aren't so far from the passive management like they were with the raw data, and that really had me wondering what I did wrong.

What I will trade

Putting all this together, I am going to attempt to trade the following(demo for a bit to make sure I have the hang of it, then for keeps):

"System Details" I described above.
TP at -161.8%
Static SL at opposite side of confirmation candle - I won't move stops up to breakeven.
Trade only 7am-11am and 4pm-11pm signals.
Nothing where spread is more than 25% of trade width.

Looking at the data for these rules, test results are:

Winrate: 58.19%
Adjusted Proft % (takes spread into account): 47.43%

I'll be sure to let everyone know how it goes!

Other Technical Details

ATR is only slightly elevated in this date range from historical levels, so this should fairly closely represent reality even after the COVID volatility leaves the scalpers sad and alone.
The sample size is much too small for anything really meaningful when you slice by hour or pair. I wasn't particularly looking to test a specific pair here - just the system overall as if you were going to trade it on all pairs with a reasonable spread.

Raw Data

Here's the spreadsheet for anyone that'd like it. (EDIT: Updated some of the setups from the last few days that have fully played out now. I also noticed a few typos, but nothing major that would change the overall outcomes. Regardless, I am currently reviewing every trade to ensure they are accurate.UPDATE: Finally all done. Very few corrections, no change to results.)
I have some explanatory notes below to help everyone else understand the spiraled labyrinth of a mind that put the spreadsheet together.

I'm on the East Coast in the US, so the timestamps are Eastern time.
Time stamp is from the confirmation candle, not the indecision candle. So 7am would mean the indecision candle was 6:00-6:59 and the confirmation candle is 7:00-7:59 and you'd put in your order at 8:00.
I found a couple AM/PM typos as I was reviewing the data, so let me know if a trade doesn't make sense and I'll correct it.

Insanely detailed spreadsheet notes

For you real nerds out there. Here's an explanation of what each column means:

Pair - duh
Date/Time - Eastern time, confirmation candle as stated above
Win to -61.8%? - whether the trade made it to the -61.8% TP level before it hit the original SL.
Win to -100%? - whether the trade made it to the -100% TP level before it hit the original SL.
Win to -161.8%? - whether the trade made it to the -161.8% TP level before it hit the original SL.
Retracement level between -61.8% and -100% - how deep the price retraced after hitting -61.8%, but before hitting -100%. Be careful to look for the negative signs, it's easy to mix them up. Using the fib% levels defined in ParallaxFX's original thread. A plain hyphen "-" means it did not retrace, but rather went straight through -61.8% to -100%. Positive 100 means it hit the original SL.
Retracement level between -100% and -161.8% - how deep the price retraced after hitting -100%, but before hitting -161.8%. Be careful to look for the negative signs, it's easy to mix them up. Using the fib% levels defined in ParallaxFX's original thread. A plain hyphen "-" means it did not retrace, but rather went straight through -100% to -161.8%. Positive 100 means it hit the original SL.
Trade Width(Pips) - the size of the confirmation candle, and thus the "width" of your trade on which to determine position size, draw fib levels, etc.
Loser saved by 2 candle stop? - for all losing trades, whether or not the 2-candle stop loss would have saved the trade and how far it ended up getting if so. "No" means it didn't save it, N/A means it wasn't a losing trade so it's not relevant.
Spread(ThinkorSwim) - these are typical spreads for these pairs on ToS.
Spread % of Width - How big is the spread compared to the trade width? Not used in any calculations, but interesting nonetheless.
True Risk(Trade Width + Spread) - I set my SL at the opposite side of the confirmation candle knowing that I'm actually exposing myself to slightly more risk because of the spread(stop order = market order when submitted, so you pay the spread). So this tells you how many pips you are actually risking despite the Trade Width. I prefer this over setting the stop inside from the edge of the candle because some pairs have a wide spread that would mess with the system overall. But also many, many of these trades retraced very nearly to the edge of the confirmation candle, before ending up nicely profitable. If you keep your risk per trade at 1%, you're talking a true risk of, at most, 1.25% (in worst-case scenarios with the spread being 25% of the trade width as I am going with above).
Win or Loss in %(1% risk) including spread TP -61.8% - not going to go into huge detail, see the spreadsheet for calculations if you want. But, in a nutshell, if the trade was a win to 61.8%, it returns a positive # based on 61.8% of the trade width, minus the spread. Otherwise, it returns the True Risk as a negative. Both normalized to the 1% risk you started with.
Win or Loss in %(1% risk) including spread TP -100% - same as the last, but 100% of Trade Width.
Win or Loss in %(1% risk) including spread TP -161.8% - same as the last, but 161.8% of Trade Width.
Win or Loss in %(1% risk) including spread TP -100%, and move SL to breakeven at 61.8% - uses the retracement level columns to calculate profit/loss the same as the last few columns, but assuming you moved SL to 0% fib level after price hit -61.8%. Then full TP at 100%.
Win or Loss in %(1% risk) including spread take off half of position at -61.8%, move SL to breakeven, TP 100% - uses the retracement level columns to calculate profit/loss the same as the last few columns, but assuming you took of half the position and moved SL to 0% fib level after price hit -61.8%. Then TP the remaining half at 100%.
Overall Growth(-161.8% TP, 1% Risk) - pretty straightforward. Assuming you risked 1% on each trade, what the overall growth level would be chronologically(spreadsheet is sorted by date).

Pairs

AUD/CAD
AUD/CHF
AUD/JPY
AUD/NZD
AUD/USD
CAD/CHF
CAD/JPY
CHF/JPY
EUAUD
EUCAD
EUCHF
EUGBP
EUJPY
EUNZD
EUUSD
GBP/AUD
GBP/CAD
GBP/CHF
GBP/JPY
GBP/NZD
GBP/USD
NZD/CAD
NZD/CHF
NZD/JPY
NZD/USD
USD/CAD
USD/CHF
USD/JPY

TL;DR

Based on the reasonable rules I discovered in this backtest:

Date range: 6/11-7/3
Winrate: 58.19%
Adjusted Proft % (takes spread into account): 47.43%

Demo Trading Results

Since this post, I started demo trading this system assuming a 5k capital base and risking ~1% per trade. I've added the details to my spreadsheet for anyone interested. The results are pretty similar to the backtest when you consider real-life conditions/timing are a bit different. I missed some trades due to life(work, out of the house, etc), so that brought my total # of trades and thus overall profit down, but the winrate is nearly identical. I also closed a few trades early due to various reasons(not liking the price action, seeing support/resistance emerge, etc).
A quick note is that TD's paper trade system fills at the mid price for both stop and limit orders, so I had to subtract the spread from the raw trade values to get the true profit/loss amount for each trade.
I'm heading out of town next week, then after that it'll be time to take this sucker live!

86 Trades
- Date range: 7/9-7/30
- Winrate: 52.32%
- Adjusted Proft % (takes spread into account): 20.73%
  - Starting Balance: $5,000
  - Ending Balance: $6,036.51

Live Trading Results

I started live-trading this system on 8/10, and almost immediately had a string of losses much longer than either my backtest or demo period. Murphy's law huh? Anyways, that has me spooked so I'm doing a longer backtest before I start risking more real money. It's going to take me a little while due to the volume of trades, but I'll likely make a new post once I feel comfortable with that and start live trading again.

submitted by ForexBorex to Forex [link] [comments]

So you wanna trade Forex? - tips and tricks inside

Let me just sum some stuff up for you newbies out there. Ive been trading for years, last couple of years more seriously and i turned my strategies into algorithms and i am currently up to 18 algorithms thats trading for me 24/7. Ive learned alot, listened to hundreds of podcasts and read tons of books + research papers and heres some tips and tricks for any newbie out there.

Strategy - How to... When people say "you need a trading strategy!!" Its because trading is very hard and emotional. You need to stick to your rules at all times. Dont panic and move your stop loss or target unless your rules tell you to. Now how do you make these rules? Well this is the part that takes alot of time. If your rules are very simple (for example: "Buy if Last candles low was the lowest low of the past 10 candles." Lets make this a rule. You can backtest it manually by looking at a chart and going back in time and check every candle. or you can code it using super simple software like prorealtime, MT4 ++ Alot of software is basicly "click and drag" and press a button and it gives you backtest from 10-20-30 years ago in 5 seconds. This is the absolute easiest way to backtest rules and systems. If your trading "pure price action" with your drawn lines and shit, the only way to truly backtest that kind of trading is going in a random forex pair to a random point in time, could be 1 year ago, 1 month ago, 5 years ago.. and then you just trade! Move chart 1 candle at a time, draw your lines and do some "actual trading" and look at your results after moving forward in the chart. If you do not test your strategy your just going in blind, which could be disaster.. Maybe someone told u "this is the correct way to trade" or "this strategy is 90% sure to win every trade!!!" If you think you can do trading without a strategy, then your most likely going to look back at an empty account and wonder why you moved that stop loss or why you didnt take profit etc.. and then your gonna give up. People on youtube, forums, interwebz are not going to give you/sell you a working strategy thats gonna make you rich. If they had a working strategy, they would not give it away/sell it to you.
Money management - How to.... Gonna keep this one short. Risk a small % of your capital on each trade. Dont risk 10%, dont risk 20%. You are going to see loosing trades, your probably gonna see 5-10 loss in a row!! If your trading a 1000$ account and your risking 100$ on each trade (10%) and you loose 5 in a row, your down -50% and probably you cant even trade cus of margin req. Game over.. Now how does one get super rich, super fast, from risking 1-3% of your account on each trade?? Well heres the shocking message: YOU CANT GET RICH FAST FROM TRADING UNLESS YOUR WILLING TO GO ALL IN! You can of course go all in on each trade and if you get em all right, you might get 1000%, then you go all in 1 more time and loose it all... The whole point of trading is NOT going bust. Not loosing everything, cus if you loose it all its game over and no more trading for you.
Find your own trading style.... Everyone is different. You can have an average holding period of 1 month or you could be looking at a 1 min chart and average holding time = 10 minutes. For some, less volatility helps them sleep at night. For others, more volatility gives them a rush and some people crave this. There is no "correct" timeframes, or holding periods, or how much to profit or how much to loose. We are all individuals with different taste in risk. Some dont like risk, others wanna go all in to get rich over night. The smart approach is somewhere in the middle. If you dont risk anything, your not gonna get anything. If you risk everything, your most likely going to loose everything. When people are talking about trading style, this is kinda what that means.
There are mainly 2 ways to trade: Divergence and Convergence. Or in other words: Mean reversion or trend following. Lets talk about them both: Trend following is trying to find a trend and stay with the trend until its over. Mean reversion is the belief that price is too far away from the average XX of price, and sooner or later, price will have to return to its average/mean (hence the name: MEAN reversion). Trend following systems usually see a lower winrate (30-40% winrate with no money management is not uncommon to see when backtesting trend following systems.. You can add good money management to get the winrate % higher. Why is the % winrate so low? Well a market, whatever that market is, tend to get real choppy and nasty right after a huge trend. So your gonna see alot of choppy fake signals that might kill 5-6 trades in a row, until the next huge trend starts which is going to cover all the losses from the small losses before the trend took off. Then you gotta hold that trade until trade is done. How do you define "when trend starts and stops"? Well thats back to point 1, find a strategy. Try defining rules for an entry and exit and see how it goes when you backtest it. For mean reversion the win % is usually high, like 70-90% winrate, but the average winning trade is alot smaller than the average loosing trade. this happens because you are basicly trying to catch a falling knife, or catch a booming rocket. Usually when trading mean reversion, waiting for price to actually reverse can very often leave you with being "too late", so you kinda have to find "the bottom" or "the top" before it actually has bottomed/ topped out and reversed. How can you do this you ask? Well your never going to hit every top or every bottom, but you can find ways to find "the bottom-ish" or "the top-ish", thens ell as soon as price reverts back to the mean. Sometimes your gonna wish you held on to the trade for longer, but again, back to point 1: Backtest your rules and figure that shit out.

Read these 4 points and try to follow them and you are at least 4 steps closer to being a profitable trader. Some might disagree with me on some points but i think for the majority, people are going to agree that these 4 points are pretty much universal. Most traders have done or are doing these things every day, in every trade.
Here is some GREAT material to read: Kevin Davey has won trading championship multiple times and he has written multiple great books, from beginner to advanced level. Recommend these books 100%, for example: Building winning algorithmic trading systems" will give you alot to work with when it comes to all 4 of the above points. Market wizards, Reminiscences of a stock operator are 2 books that are a great read but wont give you much "trading knowledge" that you can directly use for your trading. Books on "The turtles" are great reading. Then you have podcasts and youtube. I would stay away from youtube as much as possible when it comes to "Heres how to use the rsi!!!" or "this strategy will make you rich!!". Most youtube videoes are made by people who wanna sell you a course or a book. Most of this is just pure bullshit. Youtube can very harmfull and i would honestly advice about going there for "strategy adivce" and such. Podcasts tho are amazing, i highly recommend: Better systems trader, Chat with traders, Top traders unplugged, We study billionairs, to name a few :)
Also, on a less funny note.. Please realize that you are, and i am, real fucking stupid and lazy compared to the actual pro's out there. This is why you should not go "all in" on some blind stupid strategy youve heard about. This is why this is indeed VERY FUCKING HARD and most, if not everyone has busted an account or two before realizing just this. Your dumb.. your not going to be super rich within 1 year.. You can not start with 500$ account and make millions! (some might have been able to do this, but know that for every winner, theres 999 loosers behind him that failed... Might work fine first 5 trades, then 1 fuckup tho and ur gone..
And lastly: Try using a backtesting software. Its often FREE!!! (on a demo account) and often so simple a baby could use it. If your trading lines and such there exists web broweser "games" and softwares that lets you go "1 and 1 candle ahead" in random forex pairs and that lets you trade as if its "real" as it goes.
A big backtesting trap however is backtesting "losely" by just drawing lines and looking at chart going "oh i would have taken this trade FOR SURE!! I would have made so much money!!" however this is not actually backtesting, its cherry picking and its biased beyond the grave, and its going to hurt you. Try going 1 candle at a time doing "real and live" trades and see how it goes.

Bonus point!!
many people misunderstands what indicators like the RSI is telling you. Indeed something is "overbought" or "oversold" but only compared to the last average of xx amounts of bars/candles.
It doesn't tell you that RIGHT NOW is a great time to sell or buy. It only tells you that the math formula that is RSI, gives you a number between 1-100, and when its above 70 its telling you that momentum is up compared to the last average 14 candles. This is not a complete buy/sell signal. Its more like a filter if anything. This is true for MOST indicators. They INDICATE stuff. Dont use them as pure buy/sell signals.. At least backtest that shit first! Your probably gonna be shocked at the shitty results if you "buy wehn rsi is undeer 30 and sell when RSI is above 70".

Editedit: Huge post already, why not copy paste my comment with an example showing the difference in trend following vs mean reversion:
The thing about trend following is that we never know when a trade starts and when it ends. So what often happens is that you have to buy every breakout going up, but not every breakout is a new trend. Lets do an example. Check out the photo i included here: https://imageshost.eu/image/image.RcC

THE PHOTO IS JUST AN EXAMPLE THAT SHOWS WHY A TYPICAL TREND FOLLOWING STRATEGY HAVE A "LOW" WINRATE.
THE PHOTO IS NOT SHOWING AN EXAMPLE OF MY STRATEGIES OR TRADING.

We identify the big orange trend up.
We see the big break down (marked with the vertical red line) this is telling us we are not going higher just yet. Our upwards trend is broken. However we might continue going up in a new trend, but when will that trend come?
We can draw the blue trend very earyly using highs and lows, lines up and down. Then we begin to look for breakouts of the upper blue line. So every time price breaks upper blue line we have to buy (cus how else are we going to "catch the next trend going up?)

As you can see we get 5 false breakouts before the real breakout happens!
Now if you could tell fake breakouts from real breakouts, your gonna be rich hehe. For everyone else: Take every signal you can get, put a "tight" stop loss so in case its a fake signal you only loose a little bit. Then when breakout happens as you can clearly see in chart, your going to make back all the small losses.
So in this example we fail 5 times, but get 1 HUGE new trend going further up. This 1 huge trade, unless we fuck it up and take profits too early or shit like that, is going to win back all those small losses + more.
This is why trend following has a low winrate. You get 5 small loss and 1 big win.

Now lets flip this! Imagine if your trading Mean reversion on all the same red arrows! So every time price hits the blue line, we go short back to the bottom (or middle) again! You would have won 5 trades with small profits, but on that last one you would get stopped out so hard. Meaning 5 small wins, 1 big loss (as some have pointed out in comments, if you where trading mean reverting you would wanna buy the lows as well as short the tops - photo was suppose to show why trend following strategies have a lower % winrate.)

Final edit: sorry this looks like a wall of text on ur phones.

submitted by RipRepRop to Forex [link] [comments]

CMC Markets: is everything in CFDs? If so, how do the forward date ones work?

I just started a demo account with CMC Markets, and I was wondering if every single asset listed is traded as a CFD? When learning about forex from BabyPips I had the mentality as if I'm literally trading the currency; as in if it were in person, I'd be giving some coins in one currency and receiving another. I guess since CFDs are linear derivatives it doesn't matter as much, but I still feel like there are some additional considerations when trading CFDs vs "actual currency"? Also, what are the maturities on these? Are there even maturities? All the quotes just say "USD/CAD", "EUJPY" etc, but from my understanding of a CFD, you agree to pay the difference from actual and agreed, much like a future, so why are there no maturities?

Question 2: For CFDs on things like equity indices, they seem to trade the whole day unlike their underlying. Does this mean say at 9pm EST the S&P500 CFD is just people essentially betting on tomorrow's open? And again with the futures thing, does after-market hours trading in these CFDs affect the real opening price the next day? (If markets are efficient and we assume there are people watching CFD prices like future prices, and then tomorrow's early trades become based on what the futures markets seem to say about the S&P, holding news and other things constant).

Question 3: For CFDs with maturity dates like commodities on this platform, how does that work? Again, I'm mostly confused at how CFDs operate without maturities and how they different from futures. On the CMC markets platform, many agricultural commodities come with the suffixes like either "cash" or a maturity date, but currencies and equity indices do not. What does this mean? Those commodities I'm clicking trade on...am I trading a corn CFD? Or a CFD on corn futures? What exactly is the underlying mechanic?
Question 4: yet another example. For the bond indices...what am I looking at on the platform? I just want to get a chart of US treasury yields but I don't think that is available on CMC. What am I looking at when I click UK Gilt Cash or US T-Bond Cash or US T-Bond Jun 2020?

Tl;dr Don't understand the mechanics of CFDs and thus I'm not sure what EXACTLY I'm actually trading when I trade things like currency, equity indices, commodities. Surely I'm not actually trading a physical commodity or actual shares. Please note this is specific to CMC markets.
Thanks :)

submitted by fittyfive9 to Forex [link] [comments]

Finding Trading Edges: Where to Get High R:R trades and Profit Potential of Them.

TL;DR - I will try and flip an account from $50 or less to $1,000 over 2019. I will post all my account details so my strategy can be seen/copied. I will do this using only three or four trading setups. All of which are simple enough to learn. I will start trading on 10th January.
----
As I see it there are two mains ways to understand how to make money in the markets. The first is to know what the biggest winners in the markets are doing and duplicating what they do. This is hard. Most of the biggest players will not publicly tell people what they are doing. You need to be able to kinda slide in with them and see if you can pick up some info. Not suitable for most people, takes a lot of networking and even then you have to be able to make the correct inferences.
Another way is to know the most common trades of losing traders and then be on the other side of their common mistakes. This is usually far easier, usually everyone knows the mind of a losing trader. I learned about what losing traders do every day by being one of them for many years. I noticed I had an some sort of affinity for buying at the very top of moves and selling at the very bottom. This sucked, however, is was obvious there was winning trades on the other side of what I was doing and the adjustments to be a good trader were small (albeit, tricky).
Thus began the study for entries and maximum risk:reward. See, there have been times I have bought aiming for a 10 pip scalps and hit 100 pips stops loss. Hell, there have been times I was going for 5 pips and hit 100 stop out. This can seem discouraging, but it does mean there must be 1:10 risk:reward pay-off on the other side of these mistakes, and they were mistakes.
If you repeatedly enter and exit at the wrong times, you are making mistakes and probably the same ones over and over again. The market is tricking you! There are specific ways in which price moves that compel people to make these mistakes (I won’t go into this in this post, because it takes too long and this is going to be a long post anyway, but a lot of this is FOMO).
Making mistakes is okay. In fact, as I see it, making mistakes is an essential part of becoming an expert. Making a mistake enough times to understand intrinsically why it is a mistake and then make the required adjustments. Understanding at a deep level why you trade the way you do and why others make the mistakes they do, is an important part of becoming an expert in your chosen area of focus.
I could talk more on these concepts, but to keep the length of the post down, I will crack on to actual examples of trades I look for. Here are my three main criteria. I am looking for tops/bottoms of moves (edge entries). I am looking for 1:3 RR or more potential pay-offs. My strategy assumes that retail trades will lose most of the time. This seems a fair enough assumption. Without meaning to sound too crass about it, smart money will beat dumb money most of the time if the game is base on money. They just will.
So to summarize, I am looking for the points newbies get trapped in bad positions entering into moves too late. From these areas, I am looking for high RR entries.
Setup Examples.
I call this one the “Lightning Bolt correction”, but it is most commonly referred to as a “two leg correction”. I call it a “Lightning Bolt correction” because it looks a bit like one, and it zaps you. If you get it wrong.

https://preview.redd.it/t4whwijse2721.png?width=1326&format=png&auto=webp&s=c9050529c6e2472a3ff9f8e7137bd4a3ee5554cc
Once I see price making the first sell-off move and then begin to rally towards the highs again, I am waiting for a washout spike low. The common trades mistakes I am trading against here is them being too eager to buy into the trend too early and for the to get stopped out/reverse position when it looks like it is making another bearish breakout. Right at that point they panic … literally one candle under there is where I want to be getting in. I want to be buying their stop loss, essentially. “Oh, you don’t want that ...okay, I will have that!”
I need a precise entry. I want to use tiny stops (for big RR) so I need to be cute with entries. For this, I need entry rules. Not just arbitrarily buying the spike out. There are a few moving parts to this that are outside the scope of this post but one of my mains ways is using a fibs extension and looking for reversals just after the 1.61% level. How to draw the fibs is something else that is outside the scope of this but for one simple rule, they can be drawn on the failed new high leg.

https://preview.redd.it/2cd682kve2721.png?width=536&format=png&auto=webp&s=f4d081c9faff49d0976f9ffab260aaed2b570309
I am looking for a few specific things for a prime setup. Firstly, I am looking for the false hope candles, the ones that look like they will reverse the market and let those buying too early get out break-even or even at profit. In this case, you can see the hammer and engulfing candle off the 127 level, then it spikes low in that “stop-hunt” sort of style.
Secondly I want to see it trading just past my entry level (161 ext). This rule has come from nothing other than sheer volume. The amount of times I’ve been stopped out by 1 pip by that little sly final low has gave birth to this rule. I am looking for the market to trade under support in a manner that looks like a new strong breakout. When I see this, I am looking to get in with tiny stops, right under the lows. I will also be using smaller charts at this time and looking for reversal clusters of candles. Things like dojis, inverted hammers etc. These are great for sticking stops under.
Important note, when the lightning bolt correction fails to be a good entry, I expect to see another two legs down. I may look to sell into this area sometimes, and also be looking for buying on another couple legs down. It is important to note, though, when this does not work out, I expect there to be continued momentum that is enough to stop out and reasonable stop level for my entry. Which is why I want to cut quick. If a 10 pips stop will hit, usually a 30 pips stop will too. Bin it and look for the next opportunity at better RR.

https://preview.redd.it/mhkgy35ze2721.png?width=1155&format=png&auto=webp&s=a18278b85b10278603e5c9c80eb98df3e6878232
Another setup I am watching for is harmonic patterns, and I am using these as a multi-purpose indicator. When I see potentially harmonic patterns forming, I am using their completion level as take profits, I do not want to try and run though reversal patterns I can see forming hours ahead of time. I also use them for entering (similar rules of looking for specific entry criteria for small stops). Finally, I use them as a continuation pattern. If the harmonic pattern runs past the area it may have reversed from, there is a high probability that the market will continue to trend and very basic trend following strategies work well. I learned this from being too stubborn sticking with what I thought were harmonic reversals only to be ran over by a trend (seriously, everything I know I know from how it used to make me lose).

https://preview.redd.it/1ytz2431f2721.png?width=1322&format=png&auto=webp&s=983a7f2a91f9195004ad8a2aa2bb9d4d6f128937
A method of spotting these sorts of M/W harmonics is they tend to form after a second spike out leg never formed. When this happens, it gives me a really good idea of where my profit targets should be and where my next big breakout level is. It is worth noting, larger harmonics using have small harmonics inside them (on lower time-frames) and this can be used for dialling in optimum entries. I also use harmonics far more extensively in ranging markets. Where they tend to have higher win rates.
Next setup is the good old fashioned double bottoms/double top/one tick trap sort of setup. This comes in when the market is highly over extended. It has a small sell-off and rallies back to the highs before having a much larger sell-off. This is a more risky trade in that it sells into what looks like trending momentum and can be stopped out more. However, it also pays a high RR when it works, allowing for it to be ran at reduced risk and still be highly profitable when it comes through.

https://preview.redd.it/1bx83776f2721.png?width=587&format=png&auto=webp&s=2c76c3085598ae70f4142d26c46c8d6e9b1c2881
From these sorts of moves, I am always looking for a follow up buy if it forms a lightning bolt sort of setup.
All of these setups always offer 1:3 or better RR. If they do not, you are doing it wrong (and it will be your stop placement that is wrong). This is not to say the target is always 1:3+, sometimes it is best to lock in profits with training stops. It just means that every time you enter, you can potentially have a trade that runs for many times more than you risked. 1:10 RR can be hit in these sorts of setups sometimes. Paying you 20% for 2% risked.
I want to really stress here that what I am doing is trading against small traders mistakes. I am not trying to “beat the market maker”. I am not trying to reverse engineer J.P Morgan’s black boxes. I do not think I am smart enough to gain a worthwhile edge over these traders. They have more money, they have more data, they have better softwares … they are stronger. Me trying to “beat the market maker” is like me trying to beat up Mike Tyson. I might be able to kick him in the balls and feel smug for a few seconds. However, when he gets up, he is still Tyson and I am still me. I am still going to be pummeled.
I’ve seen some people that were fairly bright people going into training courses and coming out dumb as shit. Thinking they somehow are now going to dominate Goldman Sachs because they learned a chart pattern. Get a grip. For real, get a fucking grip. These buzz phrases are marketeering. Realististically, if you want to win in the markets, you need to have an edge over somebody.
I don’t have edges on the banks. If I could find one, they’d take it away from me. Edges work on inefficiencies in what others do that you can spot and they can not. I do not expect to out-think a banks analysis team. I know for damn sure I can out-think a version of me from 5 years ago … and I know there are enough of them in the markets. I look to trade against them. I just look to protect myself from the larger players so they can only hurt me in limited ways. Rather than letting them corner me and beat me to a pulp (in the form of me watching $1,000 drop off my equity because I moved a stop or something), I just let them kick me in the butt as I run away. It hurts a little, but I will be over it soon.
I believe using these principles, these three simple enough edge entry setups, selectiveness (remembering you are trading against the areas people make mistakes, wait for they areas) and measured aggression a person can make impressive compounded gains over a year. I will attempt to demonstrate this by taking an account of under $100 to over $1,000 in a year. I will use max 10% on risk on a position, the risk will scale down as the account size increases. In most cases, 5% risk per trade will be used, so I will be going for 10-20% or so profits. I will be looking only for prime opportunities, so few trades but hard hitting ones when I take them.
I will start trading around the 10th January. Set remind me if you want to follow along. I will also post my investor login details, so you can see the trades in my account in real time. Letting you see when I place my orders and how I manage running positions.
I also think these same principles can be tweaked in such a way it is possible to flip $50 or so into $1,000 in under a month. I’ve done $10 to $1,000 in three days before. This is far more complex in trade management, though. Making it hard to explain/understand and un-viable for many people to copy (it hedges, does not comply with FIFO, needs 1:500 leverage and also needs spreads under half a pip on EURUSD - not everyone can access all they things). I see all too often people act as if this can’t be done and everyone saying it is lying to sell you something. I do not sell signals. I do not sell training. I have no dog in this fight, I am just saying it can be done. There are people who do it. If you dismiss it as impossible; you will never be one of them.
If I try this 10 times with $50, I probably am more likely to make $1,000 ($500 profit) in a couple months than standard ideas would double $500 - I think I have better RR, even though I may go bust 5 or more times. I may also try to demonstrate this, but it is kinda just show-boating, quite honestly. When it works, it looks cool. When it does not, I can go bust in a single day (see example https://www.fxblue.com/users/redditmicroflip).
So I may or may not try and demonstrate this. All this is, is just taking good basic concepts and applying accelerated risk tactics to them and hitting a winning streak (of far less trades than you may think). Once you have good entries and RR optimization in place - there really is no reason why you can not scale these up to do what may people call impossible (without even trying it).
I know there are a lot of people who do not think these things are possible and tend to just troll whenever people talk about these things. There used to be a time when I’d try to explain why I thought the way I did … before I noticed they only cared about telling me why they were right and discussion was pointless. Therefore, when it comes to replies, I will reply to all comments that ask me a question regarding why I think this can be done, or why I done something that I done. If you are commenting just to tell me all the reasons you think I am wrong and you are right, I will probably not reply. I may well consider your points if they are good ones. I just do not entering into discussions with people who already know everything; it serves no purpose.

Edit: Addition.

I want to talk a bit more about using higher percentage of risk than usual. Firstly, let me say that there are good reasons for risk caps that people often cite as “musts”. There are reasons why 2% is considered optimum for a lot of strategies and there are reasons drawing down too much is a really bad thing.
Please do not be ignorant of this. Please do not assume I am, either. In previous work I done, I was selecting trading strategies that could be used for investment. When doing this, my only concern was drawdown metrics. These are essential for professional money management and they are also essential for personal long-term success in trading.
So please do not think I have not thought of these sorts of things Many of the reasons people say these things can’t work are basic 101 stuff anyone even remotely committed to learning about trading learns in their first 6 months. Trust me, I have thought about these concepts. I just never stopped thinking when I found out what public consensus was.
While these 101 rules make a lot of sense, it does not take away from the fact there are other betting strategies, and if you can know the approximate win rate and pay-off of trades, you can have other ways of deriving optimal bet sizes (risk per trade). Using Kelly Criterion, for example, if the pay-off is 1:3 and there is a 75% chance of winning, the optimal bet size is 62.5%. It would be a viable (high risk) strategy to have extremely filtered conditions that looked for just one perfect set up a month, makingover 150% if it was successful.
Let’s do some math on if you can pull that off three months in a row (using 150% gain, for easy math). Start $100. Month two starts $250. Month three $625. Month three ends $1,562. You have won three trades. Can you win three trades in a row under these conditions? I don’t know … but don’t assume no-one can.
This is extremely high risk, let’s scale it down to meet somewhere in the middle of the extremes. Let’s look at 10%. Same thing, 10% risk looking for ideal opportunities. Maybe trading once every week or so. 30% pay-off is you win. Let’s be realistic here, a lot of strategies can drawdown 10% using low risk without actually having had that good a chance to generate 30% gains in the trades it took to do so. It could be argued that trading seldomly but taking 5* the risk your “supposed” to take can be more risk efficient than many strategies people are using.
I am not saying that you should be doing these things with tens of thousands of dollars. I am not saying you should do these things as long term strategies. What I am saying is do not dismiss things out of hand just because they buck the “common knowns”. There are ways you can use more aggressive trading tactics to turn small sums of money into they $1,000s of dollars accounts that you exercise they stringent money management tactics on.
With all the above being said, you do have to actually understand to what extent you have an edge doing what you are doing. To do this, you should be using standard sorts of risks. Get the basics in place, just do not think you have to always be basic. Once you have good basics in place and actually make a bit of money, you can section off profits for higher risk versions of strategies. The basic concepts of money management are golden. For longevity and large funds; learned them and use them! Just don’t forget to think for yourself once you have done that.

Update -

Okay, I have thought this through a bit more and decided I don't want to post my live account investor login, because it has my full name and I do not know who any of you are. Instead, for copying/observing, I will give demo account login (since I can choose any name for a demo).
I will also copy onto a live account and have that tracked via Myfxbook.
I will do two versions. One will be FIFO compliant. It will trade only single trade positions. The other will not be FIFO compliant, it will open trades in batches. I will link up live account in a week or so. For now, if anyone wants to do BETA testing with the copy trader, you can do so with the following details (this is the non-FIFO compliant version).

Account tracking/copying details.

Low-Medium risk.
IC Markets MT4
Account number: 10307003
Investor PW: lGdMaRe6
Server: Demo:01
(Not FIFO compliant)

Valid and Invalid Complaints.
There are a few things that can pop up in copy trading. I am not a n00b when it comes to this, so I can somewhat forecast what these will be. I can kinda predict what sort of comments there may be. Some of these are valid points that if you raise I should (and will) reply to. Some are things outside of the scope of things I can influence, and as such, there is no point in me replying to. I will just cover them all here the one time.

Valid complains are if I do something dumb or dramatically outside of the strategy I have laid out here. won't do these, if I do, you can pitchfork ----E

Examples;

“Oi, idiot! You opened a trade randomly on a news spike. I got slipped 20 pips and it was a shit entry”.
Perfectly valid complaint.

“Why did you open a trade during swaps hours when the spread was 30 pips?”
Also valid.

“You left huge trades open running into the weekend and now I have serious gap paranoia!”
Definitely valid.

These are examples of me doing dumb stuff. If I do dumb stuff, it is fair enough people say things amounting to “Yo, that was dumb stuff”.

Invalid Complains;

“You bought EURUSD when it was clearly a sell!!!!”
Okay … you sell. No-one is asking you to copy my trades. I am not trading your strategy. Different positions make a market.

“You opened a position too big and I lost X%”.
No. Na uh. You copied a position too big. If you are using a trade copier, you can set maximum risk. If you neglect to do this, you are taking 100% risk. You have no valid compliant for losing. The act of copying and setting the risk settings is you selecting your risk. I am not responsible for your risk. I accept absolutely no liability for any losses.
*Suggested fix. Refer to risk control in copy trading software

“You lost X trades in a row at X% so I lost too much”.
Nope. You copied. See above. Anything relating to losing too much in trades (placed in liquid/standard market conditions) is entirely you. I can lose my money. Only you can set it up so you can lose yours. I do not have access to your account. Only mine.
*Suggested fix. Refer to risk control in copy trading software

“Price keeps trading close to the pending limit orders but not filling. Your account shows profits, but mine is not getting them”.
This is brokerage. I have no control over this. I use a strategy that aims for precision, and that means a pip here and there in brokerage spreads can make a difference. I am trading to profit from my trading conditions. I do not know, so can not account for, yours.
* Suggested fix. Compare the spread on your broker with the spread on mine. Adjust your orders accordingly. Buy limit orders will need to move up a little. Sell limit orders should not need adjusted.

“I got stopped out right before the market turned, I have a loss but your account shows a profit”.
This is brokerage. I have no control over this. I use a strategy that aims for precision, and that means a pip here and there differences in brokerage spreads can make a difference. I am trading to profit from my trading conditions. I do not know, so can not account for, yours.
** Suggested fix. Compare the spread on your broker with the spread on mine. Adjust your orders accordingly. Stop losses on sell orders will need to move up a bit. Stops on buy orders will be fine.

“Your trade got stopped out right before the market turned, if it was one more pip in the stop, it would have been a winner!!!”
Yeah. This happens. This is where the “risk” part of “risk:reward” comes in.

“Price traded close to take profit, yours filled but mines never”.
This is brokerage. I have no control over this. I use a strategy that aims for precision, and that means a pip here and there differences in brokerage spreads can make a difference. I am trading to profit from my trading conditions. I do not know, so can not account for, yours.
(Side note, this should not be an issue since when my trade closes, it should ping your account to close, too. You might get a couple less pips).
*** Suggested fix. Compare the spread on your broker with the spread on mine. Adjust your orders accordingly. Take profits on buys will need to move up a bit. Sell take profits will be fine.

“My brokers spread jumped to 20 during the New York session so the open trade made a bigger loss than it should”.
Your broker might just suck if this happens. This is brokerage. I have no control over this. My trades are placed to profit from my brokerage conditions. I do not know, so can not account for yours. Also, if accounting for random spread spikes like this was something I had to do, this strategy would not be a thing. It only works with fair brokerage conditions.
*Suggested fix. Do a bit of Googling and find out if you have a horrific broker. If so, fix that! A good search phrase is; “(Broker name) FPA reviews”.

“Price hit the stop loss but was going really fast and my stop got slipped X pips”.
This is brokerage. I have no control over this. I use a strategy that aims for precision, and that means a pip here and there differences in brokerage spreads can make a difference. I am trading to profit from my trading conditions. I do not know, so can not account for, yours.
If my trade also got slipped on the stop, I was slipped using ECN conditions with excellent execution; sometimes slips just happen. I am doing the most I can to prevent them, but it is a fact of liquidity that sometimes we get slipped (slippage can also work in our favor, paying us more than the take profit would have been).

“Orders you placed failed to execute on my account because they were too large”.
This is brokerage. I have no control over this. Margin requirements vary. I have 1:500 leverage available. I will not always be using it, but I can. If you can’t, this will make a difference.

“Your account is making profits trading things my broker does not have”
I have a full range of assets to trade with the broker I use. Included Forex, indices, commodities and cryptocurrencies. I may or may not use the extent of these options. I can not account for your brokerage conditions.

I think I have covered most of the common ones here. There are some general rules of thumb, though. Basically, if I do something that is dumb and would have a high probability of losing on any broker traded on, this is a valid complain.

Anything that pertains to risk taken in standard trading conditions is under your control.

Also, anything at all that pertains to brokerage variance there is nothing I can do, other than fully brief you on what to expect up-front. Since I am taking the time to do this, I won’t be a punchbag for anything that happens later pertaining to this.

I am not using an elitist broker. You don’t need $50,000 to open an account, it is only $200. It is accessible to most people - brokerage conditions akin to what I am using are absolutely available to anyone in the UK/Europe/Asia (North America, I am not so up on, so can’t say). With the broker I use, and with others. If you do not take the time to make sure you are trading with a good broker, there is nothing I can do about how that affects your trades.

I am using an A book broker, if you are using B book; it will almost certainly be worse results. You have bad costs. You are essentially buying from reseller and paying a mark-up. (A/B book AKA ECN/Market maker; learn about this here). My EURUSD spread will typically be 0.02 pips or so, if yours is 1 pip, this is a huge difference.
These are typical spreads I am working on.

https://preview.redd.it/yc2c4jfpab721.png?width=597&format=png&auto=webp&s=c377686b2485e13171318c9861f42faf325437e1

Check the full range of spreads on Forex, commodities, indices and crypto.

Please understand I want nothing from you if you benefit from this, but I am also due you nothing if you lose. My only term of offering this is that people do not moan at me if they lose money.

I have been fully upfront saying this is geared towards higher risk. I have provided information and tools for you to take control over this. If I do lose people’s money and I know that, I honestly will feel a bit sad about it. However, if you complain about it, all I will say is “I told you that might happen”, because, I am telling you that might happen.

Make clear headed assessments of how much money you can afford to risk, and use these when making your decisions. They are yours to make, and not my responsibility.

Update.

Crazy Kelly Compounding: $100 - $11,000 in 6 Trades.

$100 to $11,000 in 6 trades? Is it a scam? Is it a gamble? … No, it’s maths.

Common sense risk disclaimer: Don’t be a dick! Don’t risk money you can’t afford to lose. Do not risk money doing these things until you can show a regular profit on low risk.
Let’s talk about Crazy Kelly Compounding (CKC). Kelly criterion is a method for selecting optimal bet sizes if the odds and win rate are known (in other words, once you have worked out how to create and assess your edge). You can Google to learn about it in detail. The formula for Kelly criterion is;
((odds-1) * (percentage estimate)) - (1-percent estimate) / (odds-1) X 100
Now let’s say you can filter down a strategy to have a 80% win rate. It trades very rarely, but it had a very high success rate when it does. Let’s say you get 1:2 RR on that trade. Kelly would give you an optimum bet size of about 60% here. So if you win, you win 120%. Losing three trades in a row will bust you. You can still recover from anything less than that, fairly easily with a couple winning trades.
This is where CKC comes in. What if you could string some of these wins together, compounding the gains (so you were risking 60% each time)? What if you could pull off 6 trades in a row doing this?
Here is the math;

https://preview.redd.it/u3u6teqd7c721.png?width=606&format=png&auto=webp&s=3b958747b37b68ec2a769a8368b5cbebfe0e97ff
This shows years, substitute years for trades. 6 trades returns $11,338! This can be done. The question really is if you are able to dial in good enough entries, filter out enough sub-par trades and have the guts to pull the trigger when the time is right. Obviously you need to be willing to take the hit, obviously that hit gets bigger each time you go for it, but the reward to risk ratio is pretty decent if you can afford to lose the money.
We could maybe set something up to do this on cent brokers. So people can do it literally risking a couple dollars. I’d have to check to see if there was suitable spreads etc offered on them, though. They can be kinda icky.
Now listen, I am serious … don’t be a dick. Don’t rush out next week trying to retire by the weekend. What I am showing you is the EXTRA rewards that come with being able to produce good solid results and being able to section off some money for high risk “all or nothing” attempts; using your proven strategies.
I am not saying anyone can open 6 trades and make $11,000 … that is rather improbable. What I am saying is once you can get the strategy side right, and you can know your numbers; then you can use the numbers to see where the limits actually are, how fast your strategy can really go.
This CKC concept is not intended to inspire you to be reckless in trading, it is intended to inspire you to put focus on learning the core skills I am telling you that are behind being able to do this.

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How To Trade Forex

How To Trade Forex
Learn The Basics |Advanced Topics | Chart Patterns | Choose The Best Broker
Beware of scam companies! Trade only with a good licensed broker that holds an FCA or ASIC license like these.

USE A BROKER THAT PROVIDES 0.0 pips Spreads and 500:1 Leverage for better trading!
OPEN A DEMO ACCOUNT | OPEN A LIVE ACCOUNT

How does Forex Work?

Forex trading is the simultaneous buying of one currency and selling of another…
Read more

Basic Terminology

Before trading currencies, an investor has to understand the basic terminology of the forex market…
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Fundamental Analysis

Fundamental analysis is the study of the overall economic, financial, political…
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Technical Analysis

Technical analysis is the study of prices over time, with charts being the primary tool…
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Trend Lines

The term ‘trend’ describes the current direction of the financial instrument…
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What is a Technical Indicator

Technical Indicators are a result of mathematical calculations/algorithms…
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Gold Trading

As an investment, gold is the most popular of the precious metals…
Read more

Order Types

A market order is an order to open a buy or sell position at…
Read more

We complete our education centre with a breakdown of Gold Trading and details of the different Order Types.
You can also review our glossary to find brief definitions of various trading and financial terms you may encounter.
Once you have familiarised yourself with the information and concepts, you can open a Demo Trading Account to practice what you have learnt and build on your knowledge and understanding of how to trade successfully. Treat your demo account as you would your real account.
Aprender a operar con Forex | Lernen Sie Forex zu handeln

What is Forex? Think the stock market is huge? Think again. Learn about the LARGEST financial market in the world and how to trade in it.
1. What Is Forex?Learn about this massively huge financial market where fiat currencies are traded.
2. What Is Traded In Forex?Currencies are the name of the game. Yes, you can buy and sell currencies against each other as a short-term trade, long-term investment, or something in-between.
3. Buying And Selling Currency PairsThe first thing that you need to know about forex trading is that currencies are traded in pairs; you can’t buy or sell a currency without another.
4. Forex Market Size And LiquidityThe Forex market is yuuuuuuuggggeeee! And that comes with a lot of benefits for currency traders!
5. The Different Ways To Trade ForexSome of the more popular ways that traders participate in the forex market is through the spot market, futures, options, and exchange-traded funds.
Why Trade Forex? Want to know some reasons why traders love the forex market? Read on to find out what makes it so attractive!
1. Why Trade Forex: Advantages Of Forex TradingLow transaction costs and high liquidity are just a couple of the advantages of the forex market.
2. Why Trade Forex: Forex vs. StocksNobody likes bullies! Good thing for us, unlike the stock market, there is no one financial institute large enough to corner the forex market!
3. Why Trade Forex: Forex vs. FuturesThe futures market trades a puny $30 billion per day. Thirty billion? Peanuts compared to the FIVE TRILLION that is traded daily in the forex market!
Who Trades Forex? From money exchangers, to banks, to hedge fund managers, to local Joes like your Uncle Pete – everybody participates in the forex market!
1. Forex Market StructureBecause there is no centralized market, tight competition between banks normally leads to having the best prices! Boo yeah!
2. Forex Market PlayersThe forex market is basically comprised of four different groups.
3. Know Your Forex History!If it wasn’t for the Bretton Woods System (and the great Al Gore), there would be no retail forex trading! Time to brush up on your history!
When Can You Trade Forex? Now that you know who participates in the forex market, it’s time to learn when you can trade!
1. Forex Trading SessionsJust because the forex market is open 24 hours a day doesn’t mean it’s always active! See how the forex market is broken up into four major trading sessions and which ones provides the most opportunities.
2. When Can You Trade Forex: Tokyo SessionGodzilla, Nintendo, and sushi! What’s not to like about Tokyo?!? The Tokyo session is sometimes referred to as the Asian session, which is also the session where we start fresh every day!
3. When Can You Trade Forex: London SessionNot only is London the home of Big Ben, David Beckham, and the Queen, but it’s also considered the forex capital of the world–raking in about 30% of all forex transactions every day!
4. When Can You Trade Forex: New York SessionNew York baby! The concrete jungle where forex dreams are made of! Just like Asia and Europe, the U.S. is considered one of the top financial centers in the world, so it definitely sees its fair share of action–and then some!
5. Best Times of Day to Trade ForexTrading is all about volatility and liquidity. Which times of day provide the most dynamic market action and volumes?
6. Best Days of the Week to Trade ForexEach trader should know when to trade and when NOT to trade. Read on to find out the best and worst times to trade.
How Do You Trade Forex? Now, it’s time to learn HOW to rake in the moolah!
1. How to Make Money Trading ForexJust like any other market: buy low and sell high…and vice versa. Simple, right!?
2. Know When to Buy or Sell a Currency PairLet’s start with the very basics. First, what drives the value of a currency?
3. What is a Pip in Forex?You’ve probably heard of the terms “pips,” “pipettes,” and “lots” thrown around, and here we’re going to explain what they are and show you how their values are calculated.
4. What is a Lot in Forex?How many units of currency can we trade? What size positions can we trade and what are they called?
5. Impress Your Date with Forex LingoWanna impress your crush? Here are some forex terms to help you wow that special someone!
6. Types of Forex Orders“Would you like pips with that?” Okay, not that type of order, but buying and selling currencies can be just as simple with a little practice.
7. Demo Trade Your Way to SuccessCurrency market behavior is constantly evolving. Trade on demo first to get a lot of the rookie mistakes out of the way before risking live capital. There are no take-backs in the real market.
8. Forex Trading is NOT a Get-Rich-Quick SchemeWhile possible if you’re a trading genius with ice in your veins and you’re luckier than a lottery winner, building wealth through trading takes time and practice to build the skills and experience needed to be successful.

📷
Via XNTRADES.com
Topics Which Every Trader Must Master.
Or at least know your Chart Patterns
Support and Resistance v.1
Support and Resistance v.2
Elliot Waves Theory
Elliott Waves 101
Harmonic Patterns
Chart Patterns
How to Trade Market Structure
More educational materials from TRESORFX.com and XNTRADES.com

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Established Strategies You Can Use In Forex Trading

Both down market and up market patterns are visible, but one is more dominant. You should aim to select the trades based on the trends.

Adjust your position each time you open up a new trade, based on the charts you're studying. Traders often open in the same position and spend more than they should or not a sufficient amount. Vary your position depending on the trades above you if you want to be profitable in the market.

Some currency pairs have what is called an inverse relationship with another currency pair. What this means is that when one pair is trending upwards, the other trends downward (and vice-versa). The classic example is that of the EUUSD vs. the USD/CHF. This comes about because the Swiss economy is closely tied with the rest of the European economy. Additionally, there is the common factor of the US dollar in both pairs.

If you are just starting out in Forex and you are still hesitant about investing your own money, sign up for a demo account with a broker that will enable you to try out your Forex investment skills. Demo accounts allow you to trade with virtual money. It is a great way for you to practice without risking any real money.

You should try Forex trading without the pressure of real money. By practicing live trading under real market conditions, you can get a feel for the Forex market without using actual currency. You can also get some excellent trading advice through online tutorials. Gather as much information as you can, and practice a lot of trading with your demo account, before you move on to trading with money.

It may seem like it is you against the world sometimes when it comes to dealing with Forex trading. With the vast amount of information available online, it can be nearly overwhelming at first. This article will provide much helpful information for you to get started on the right path.

Begin as a Forex trader by setting attainable goals and sticking with those goals. Establishing goals, and deadlines for meeting those goals, is extremely important when you're trading in Forex. Keep in mind that the timetable you create should have room for error. If this is your first-time trading, you will probably make mistakes. Additionally, calculate a realistic amount of time that you can spend trading, and make sure to factor in time spent researching.

You should pay attention to the larger time frames above the one-hour chart. Technology can even allow you to track Forex down to 15-minute intervals. The thing is that fluctuations occur all the time and it's sometimes random luck what happens. You do not need stress in your life, stay with long cycles.

Be sure that you always open up in a different position based on the market. There are Forex traders who always open using the same position. They often end up committing more cash than they intended and don't have enough money. Learn to adjust your trading accordingly for any chance of success.

Learning about the currency pair you choose is important. It can take a long time to learn different pairs, so don't hold up your trading education by waiting until you learn every single pair. It's better to pick a pair in which you are interested, do your research, and understand how volatile the pair is. Follow and news reports and take a look at forecasting for your currency pair.

As a beginner in Forex, you will need to determine what time frames you will prefer trading in. To make plans for getting in and out of trades quickly, rely on the 15-minute and hourly charts to plan your entry and exit points. A scalper, for example, might refer to the five- and ten-minute charts to complete trades within a matter of minutes.

Utilize resources at hand, such as exchange market signals, to facilitate purchases or sell-outs. Forex Robots Software allows you to set alerts that sound once the market reaches a certain rate. Figure out your exit and entry points ahead of time to avoid losing time to decision-making.

Many traders make careless decisions when they start making money based upon greed and excitement. Consequently, not having enough confidence can also cause you to lose money. Work hard to maintain control of your emotions and only act once you have all of the facts - never act based on your feelings.

If you are new to the trading market, you should begin your account with a small initial deposit. This minimizes your losses if you were to lose your money. Instead of depositing more money, you should try to make gains through the money that you initially invested, and then place the money into further investments.

Be sure that your account has a Stop-loss in place. Stop-losses are like free insurance for your trading. If you do not set up any type of Stop-loss order, and there happens to be a large move that was not expected, you can wind up losing quite a bit of money. Your capital can be preserved with Stop-loss orders.

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COMPREHENSIVE Forex Trading SOLUTION/ANSWER; FEEDBACK NEEDED

The following is a comprehensive response outlining a viable, reasonable, scalable, and sustainable solution for achieving financial independence/prosperity. Please let me know what you think as I would appreciate your feedback.
Trade the financial markets, specifically Forex trading. It's a fkin trillion dollar industry! There are a plethora of businesses online that sell software to meet the trading/investment needs of various demanding clients.
Just look up online EAs (Expert Advisor, which is automated/algorithmic trading, for Meta Trader 4), verify results using the myfxbook website (i.e. a reputable independent third-party website that certifies and tracks the record/performance of various trading strategies/systems, including commercial EAs), purchase the EA, verify results again by running/performing both a backtest and a forward test (i.e. paper trading on a demo account), and then, and only then can/should you use the EA with real money trading on a live/real account.
You can verify the EA's reliability by performing a backtest for a "significant" time period (for example 5-10 years; or depending on the "frequency" of trades placed from the EA) coupled with 2-3 months of forward testing (i.e. paper trading on a demo account) and if the results are "consistently" profitable (i.e. "overall consistent" "monthly" profits from both backtesting and forward testing) with drawdowns being not "too much/high/extreme" AND not "too frequent", then you can go live and trade using real money.
It's okay to expect a particular trading strategy/system to expire (i.e. lose its edge, or for profits to weaken/deteriorate/diminish). When that time comes, simply go onto the next “hot/trendy” EA or if you were fortunate enough to accumulate significant profits, you can store those profits in an interest-savings account and receive periodic income that way.
The purpose of backtesting and forward testing is to ensure drawdowns are not "too much/high/extreme" AND not "too frequent", AND that there is proper risk management "embedded within the EA", thus minimizing/avoiding the risk of "extreme" drawdown or "extreme" losses when using real money.
Note: The switch to "another" hot/trendy EA should be made when the profits earned from the "current" EA have reached a point/level where it no longer appeals to the individual's interest/preference. However, if there is an "unusual/unexpected/unanticipated" "significant" drawdown (according to the performed backtest and forward test), then that would unfortunately represent an actual/real risk/loss incurred by the individual (and would still require a switch to another hot/trendy EA). This risk can be "mitigated/minimized" by performing a backtest "AND" a forward test (both for a "significant" time period, i.e. depending on the "frequency" of trades placed from the EA), AND by conducting a proper psychological evaluation of the EA seller (as an "individual" entity), i.e. evaluating their reliability, logic, and confidence when it comes to addressing/answering relevant/crucial questions pertaining to Forex/Finance/Trading/Investing (rather than asking for or needing specific details regarding their intellectual property or proprietary strategy/system/software, i.e. their source code or trading methodology).
Ultimately, it comes down to “risk tolerance” while taking into account the results obtained from backtesting and forward testing, as well as the level of confidence and trust you impart/place on the person/group selling/distributing the EA.
Note: refer to the Investopedia website for definitions on the following terminology/vocabulary: backtesting, forward testing (i.e. paper trading on a demo account), drawdown (DD), maximum drawdown (MDD or MaxDD), and monthly/annual ROI (return on investment, as a percentage).
Also, note: "focus" on testing for maximum drawdown (MDD or MaxDD) (making sure drawdowns are not "too much/high/extreme" AND not "too frequent"; for example, not greater than 30%-50%, depending on your risk tolerance or preference) and looking for a "track-record" of "overall consistent" "monthly" profits from both backtesting and forward testing, i.e. paper trading on a demo account (both for a "significant" time period, depending on the "frequency" of trades placed from the EA). This "track-record" can be "verified" either through the "myfxbook" website or through the combined use of backtesting and forward testing.
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Each and every year, students graduate from college and university. How is it "economically feasible" to provide jobs for all or most of these people? My understanding is that people need to display a good understanding of the psychology of first impression, which includes genuine/authentic personality, trustworthiness, and competency (reflected in education); in other words, honest, reliable, and competent in relevant matters, or integrity, energy, and intelligence.
Problem: The individual's attainment of their “desired dream/career job", which is their ultimate purpose for pursuing "rigorous" higher education (i.e. college or university) or "rigorous" professional education (i.e. apprenticeship or trades).
I believe that a lot of people attend college and university with the hope that they will obtain a job after they graduate, a job that will support them financially. If money is the primary reason for their pursuing higheprofessional education, shouldn't they be "informed" (as part of a global/collective civic/social responsibility) that there are alternative ways of making money (personally, namely, trading the financial markets), ones that will actually lead them to, or at least have a higher probability of leading them to, financial independence/prosperity, since the chances of them achieving such goal upon graduation from college/university is realistically slim – if not the problem of difficulty finding employment related to their “desired careedream job”, then the problem of a dead-end mediocre job with a “fixed” “small” salary?
Should we, as a society, steer people away from college/university, often temporarily, since, let's be honest, our society is currently producing "a lot" of "mediocre" individuals with no real chance of obtaining a job that they were initially in pursuit of? Can we, as a society, do a better job of "realizing" and "maximizing" the talents/skills of these "mediocre" individuals, i.e. individuals who have no real chance of obtaining a job which they had been (or currently are) pursuing/studying rigorously for?
After going through a proper evaluation of current circumstances and current options, I've realized that people need to get certain things in their life straight "before" working on pursuing higheprofessional education – i.e. Health > Wealth > Education/”Prestige”.
The mass of people who pursue college and university because their program is in high demand are ones that are studying the program not for its unique intricacies, but rather only for graduation with the expectation that they "deserve" to be rewarded a job. As opposed to, respect and appreciation to the language their subject takes on (whether that be Accounting language or Computer Programming language, etc.). Respect and appreciation for a subject or field is displayed when the person engages with the subject or field with a “critical thinking” mindset, with the main purpose/goal of analyzing and critiquing thoroughly the accuracy of any statement presented to them that is related to their chosen subject or field, i.e. effectively utilizing journaling and documentation (see relevant section below, point #1 of 2 under “ESSENTIAL/CRUCIAL” for more details); this main purpose/goal is often rooted from a genuine desire/interest/passion for pursuing/studying their chosen subject or field.
The simple fact remains that it is simply not economically feasible to provide jobs to meet the constant influx of supply being produced by colleges and universities, "each" and "every" year. As a result, why are people making the foolish decision to incur immense amount of “DEBT” (keyword) while pursuing higheprofessional education when the economic reality simply does not provide enough jobs for society, i.e. jobs that are specifically expected of from college and university graduates?
Quoted from someone else: "Our societies have for so long told us that education can and should equate to professional success, which should equate to economic success, yet we are entering a period where that simply can't occur. The foundation that those notions were created upon doesn't exist any longer, given how we have evolved and grown as a species, and we have yet to make the transition to a new set of notions."
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Some ESSENTIAL/CRUCIAL characteristics of an individual who exhibits genuine desire/interest/passion for pursuing/studying their chosen subject/field (especially at the higher education or professional education level) are as follows:
1) Effective "Information Management" strategy (utilizing journaling and documentation). The individual had made it a priority to create and compile personal notes or online documents for the purpose of future-reference and documentation – for potential revision, self-reflection, self-correction, or discovery, as this is crucial for knowledge retrieval, knowledge retention, as well as knowledge synthesis and creating/generating new knowledge. Note: information becomes knowledge when you regard the information as valuable and when you make the conscious decision to keep it as part of your notes with the expectation/option of using it in the future; knowledge is information in action, so actually using the information, instead of dismissing it as irrelevant.
Response from another individual/writer:

I don't mean that all information has to be kept as notes, nor that other strategies/tactics of finding/retrieving information aren't valuable. I don't even mean that it's impossible for someone to exist/operate without ever taking any notes. Most saliently, I'm more saying that to categorically omit note-taking from one's information management capabilities/strategy is to invite unnecessary trouble, likely to the point of dysfunction, unless one happens to never be doing anything that involves any significantly elusive information to begin with.
My bias toward this assessment is reinforced by 25+ years of highly-technical work that has resulted in literally thousands (or tens-of-thousands) of pieces of information, extremely valuable to me, that can't be readily found anywhere but in my notes.
Some of it is information specifically originating with myself – there's no one or nowhere else from which it can be gotten. Some of it is information that took me immense amounts of time, thought, and effort to find/acquire, and I would never want to have to try to find it again. Most of these things are in my notes because they have either already disappeared, or are likely to disappear, off of the internet, or don't lend themselves well to simple bookmark-able reference.
Another way of saying this is that personally-kept notes are a reflection of the time/effort/insight one has had to put into acquiring the information, combined with the value of retrieval efficiency (organized for one's own retrieval needs). To subject yourself to relying on reproduction of that time/effort and self-organization is to either admit that the time/effort isn't significant (i.e. the information is rather trivial or ubiquitous in nature), or that your own time/effort spent isn't worth much (if you're willing to repeat it).
Also, if one assumes that the information is always going to be right where you can easily find it, or even right where you found it before, that's actually just naive.
While its true you still need to expend time/effort into locating the info, it has been organized specifically how YOU determine it should be, and thus truncates any actual "overhead" involved in the typical "location" process, not to mention the guarantee that it's actually there to find. Note: overhead expense refers to an ongoing expense of operating a business; it is also known as an "operating expense".
As a simple/clear example: if you've never spent hours sifting through the deluge from the Google sewer pipe flooding into your browser, just to find anything remotely relevant to the fairly elusive technical scenario you're trying to resolve, then you're probably not acquainted with really anything I'm talking about, and your dismissal would then represent simply being unaware.

2) The individual is ASSERTIVE and NOT PASSIVE towards the subject they are studying. They are WILLING to articulate and share important ideas and concepts from the subject they are studying. The individual is not seen as someone who is under the spell/act (i.e. false and disingenuous impression of superior intelligence) of mindless regurgitation but rather, the individual is able to offer their OWN UNIQUE interpretation on the subject they are studying, while also citing important concepts or ideas where citation is necessary. In other words, the individual demonstrates "individual competency" THROUGH the subject they are studying and are ultimately/inherently passionate about. The individual's competency (i.e. his/her opinion or interpretation of what is relevant or accurate information) is demonstrated through the individual's pattern of logical and coherent thinking, as well as through the individual's writing style (which displays "CONFIDENCE" in what the individual is presenting as relevant or accurate information).
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Relevant response from another individual:
Decide where you fall on the self-directed spectrum.
Highly self-directed: technical books and MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses)
Average: an online community + curriculum like Free Code Camp or theodinproject.com
Not very self-directed: An in-person coding boot camp like Hack Reactor or App Academy; similar to “subpamediocre” college/university “classroom” learning.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There are only so many ways of acquiring wealth (with only some methods actually leading to long-term/sustainable financial independence/prosperity):
1) Real Estate
2) Owning a business; being an entrepreneur
3) Career Job requiring higher education (i.e. college or university) or professional education (i.e. apprenticeship or trades)
4) Minimum Wage Jobs
5) Trading the financial markets; making financial “investments” (stocks, forex, futures, options, equities, commodities, etc.)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Pseudo-Intellectual versus Intellectual (the following is a response from another individual/writer):
An intellectual follows the values and attitudes of Critical Thinking, and exercises good thinking habits. Their interest lies in discovery and self-correction.
The traits of a true intellectual are as follows:

intellectual humility – recognizing the limits and sensitivities of one's experience.
intellectual courage – ability to examine things and/or state results or potentialities, even if it may be costly/risky to your personal beliefs, or social acceptance, established norms or theories. The ability to put things at risk. Even if they are your own cherished ideas or beliefs that you are putting at risk.
intellectual empathy – knowing that you have to imaginatively put yourself in the place of others in order to understand them.
intellectual autonomy – being able to think independently, to carry through without constant guidance from others, and sometimes even to come to different conclusions.
intellectual integrity – holding yourself to the same standards you hold others, and holding all beliefs to the same standards.
intellectual honesty – being willing to admit discrepancies and avoid overlooking exceptions, even to oneself.
intellectual perseverance – having the patience to struggle through difficult or complex problems.
confidence in reason – willingness to follow the logic where-ever it leads.
fair-mindedness – avoiding making unjustified special exceptions or privileges. Holding all viewpoints to the same standards. This does not mean that all views are equal; it means they all are held to the same universal standards. They might end up meeting those standards very unequally. For instance: the theory of evolution vs the fable of creation, or climate change vs science denialism.

A pseudo-intellectual does not do these things. Their interest lies not in discovery and self-correction, but in confirmation of what is already believed. Confirmation Bias. Their "thinking" style is characterized by cognitive biases, a lack of self-reflection/self-correction, a lack of rigor and completeness, and applying woefully different standards to beliefs/ideas that they cherish, and any information that calls them into question.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

submitted by gentlestream to Forex [link] [comments]

Feedback Needed

I don't mean that all information has to be kept as notes, nor that other strategies/tactics of finding/retrieving information aren't valuable. I don't even mean that it's impossible for someone to exist/operate without ever taking any notes. Most saliently, I'm more saying that to categorically omit note-taking from one's information management capabilities/strategy is to invite unnecessary trouble, likely to the point of dysfunction, unless one happens to never be doing anything that involves any significantly elusive information to begin with.
My bias toward this assessment is reinforced by 25+ years of highly-technical work that has resulted in literally thousands (or tens-of-thousands) of pieces of information, extremely valuable to me, that can't be readily found anywhere but in my notes.
Some of it is information specifically originating with myself – there's no one or nowhere else from which it can be gotten. Some of it is information that took me immense amounts of time, thought, and effort to find/acquire, and I would never want to have to try to find it again. Most of these things are in my notes because they have either already disappeared, or are likely to disappear, off of the internet, or don't lend themselves well to simple bookmark-able reference.
Another way of saying this is that personally-kept notes are a reflection of the time/effort/insight one has had to put into acquiring the information, combined with the value of retrieval efficiency (organized for one's own retrieval needs). To subject yourself to relying on reproduction of that time/effort and self-organization is to either admit that the time/effort isn't significant (i.e. the information is rather trivial or ubiquitous in nature), or that your own time/effort spent isn't worth much (if you're willing to repeat it).
Also, if one assumes that the information is always going to be right where you can easily find it, or even right where you found it before, that's actually just naive.
While its true you still need to expend time/effort into locating the info, it has been organized specifically how YOU determine it should be, and thus truncates any actual "overhead" involved in the typical "location" process, not to mention the guarantee that it's actually there to find. Note: overhead expense refers to an ongoing expense of operating a business; it is also known as an "operating expense".
As a simple/clear example: if you've never spent hours sifting through the deluge from the Google sewer pipe flooding into your browser, just to find anything remotely relevant to the fairly elusive technical scenario you're trying to resolve, then you're probably not acquainted with really anything I'm talking about, and your dismissal would then represent simply being unaware.

intellectual humility – recognizing the limits and sensitivities of one's experience.
intellectual courage – ability to examine things and/or state results or potentialities, even if it may be costly/risky to your personal beliefs, or social acceptance, established norms or theories. The ability to put things at risk. Even if they are your own cherished ideas or beliefs that you are putting at risk.
intellectual empathy – knowing that you have to imaginatively put yourself in the place of others in order to understand them.
intellectual autonomy – being able to think independently, to carry through without constant guidance from others, and sometimes even to come to different conclusions.
intellectual integrity – holding yourself to the same standards you hold others, and holding all beliefs to the same standards.
intellectual honesty – being willing to admit discrepancies and avoid overlooking exceptions, even to oneself.
intellectual perseverance – having the patience to struggle through difficult or complex problems.
confidence in reason – willingness to follow the logic where-ever it leads.
fair-mindedness – avoiding making unjustified special exceptions or privileges. Holding all viewpoints to the same standards. This does not mean that all views are equal; it means they all are held to the same universal standards. They might end up meeting those standards very unequally. For instance: the theory of evolution vs the fable of creation, or climate change vs science denialism.

submitted by gentlestream to algotrading [link] [comments]

Feedback Needed

I don't mean that all information has to be kept as notes, nor that other strategies/tactics of finding/retrieving information aren't valuable. I don't even mean that it's impossible for someone to exist/operate without ever taking any notes. Most saliently, I'm more saying that to categorically omit note-taking from one's information management capabilities/strategy is to invite unnecessary trouble, likely to the point of dysfunction, unless one happens to never be doing anything that involves any significantly elusive information to begin with.
My bias toward this assessment is reinforced by 25+ years of highly-technical work that has resulted in literally thousands (or tens-of-thousands) of pieces of information, extremely valuable to me, that can't be readily found anywhere but in my notes.
Some of it is information specifically originating with myself – there's no one or nowhere else from which it can be gotten. Some of it is information that took me immense amounts of time, thought, and effort to find/acquire, and I would never want to have to try to find it again. Most of these things are in my notes because they have either already disappeared, or are likely to disappear, off of the internet, or don't lend themselves well to simple bookmark-able reference.
Another way of saying this is that personally-kept notes are a reflection of the time/effort/insight one has had to put into acquiring the information, combined with the value of retrieval efficiency (organized for one's own retrieval needs). To subject yourself to relying on reproduction of that time/effort and self-organization is to either admit that the time/effort isn't significant (i.e. the information is rather trivial or ubiquitous in nature), or that your own time/effort spent isn't worth much (if you're willing to repeat it).
Also, if one assumes that the information is always going to be right where you can easily find it, or even right where you found it before, that's actually just naive.
While its true you still need to expend time/effort into locating the info, it has been organized specifically how YOU determine it should be, and thus truncates any actual "overhead" involved in the typical "location" process, not to mention the guarantee that it's actually there to find. Note: overhead expense refers to an ongoing expense of operating a business; it is also known as an "operating expense".
As a simple/clear example: if you've never spent hours sifting through the deluge from the Google sewer pipe flooding into your browser, just to find anything remotely relevant to the fairly elusive technical scenario you're trying to resolve, then you're probably not acquainted with really anything I'm talking about, and your dismissal would then represent simply being unaware.

intellectual humility – recognizing the limits and sensitivities of one's experience.
intellectual courage – ability to examine things and/or state results or potentialities, even if it may be costly/risky to your personal beliefs, or social acceptance, established norms or theories. The ability to put things at risk. Even if they are your own cherished ideas or beliefs that you are putting at risk.
intellectual empathy – knowing that you have to imaginatively put yourself in the place of others in order to understand them.
intellectual autonomy – being able to think independently, to carry through without constant guidance from others, and sometimes even to come to different conclusions.
intellectual integrity – holding yourself to the same standards you hold others, and holding all beliefs to the same standards.
intellectual honesty – being willing to admit discrepancies and avoid overlooking exceptions, even to oneself.
intellectual perseverance – having the patience to struggle through difficult or complex problems.
confidence in reason – willingness to follow the logic where-ever it leads.
fair-mindedness – avoiding making unjustified special exceptions or privileges. Holding all viewpoints to the same standards. This does not mean that all views are equal; it means they all are held to the same universal standards. They might end up meeting those standards very unequally. For instance: the theory of evolution vs the fable of creation, or climate change vs science denialism.

submitted by gentlestream to Forex [link] [comments]

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