Range Forex Forex Brokers Reviews Forex Peace Army

As the title says, I used to only trade on FOREX. I have since diversified into cryptocurrency because FOREX was so stressful for me and I needed to have something that was a bit less news-job-report intensive to level it all out. You can't get away from charts and candles in crypto, but I feel like there are more long-term hold opportunities in the crypto space and I feel like longer-term investments are less stressful for me. I know this isn't 100% FOREX related, but since I do trade on FOREX, I feel like it has relevance in terms of the ways the spaces are similar.
First, the reasons I diversified. The main one that frustrates me is I feel like the cards are stacked against me in ways I have no control over. Exchanges can sell information about customer buy and sell points to bigger fish than me. The whales have way more information about what the public is doing than I do. Next, trading firms have access to news much faster than me. They can process announcements in microseconds. And lastly, countries do crazy things with their currencies and I just wasn't great at interpreting all the signs. I don't like my fortunes being tied to job reports and the decisions of a treasury secretary that doesn't take any input from me.
The above reasons pushed me to start trading longer term in FOREX. That's fine, there are plenty of long-term strategies that work. Most people will tell you that longer-term is safer, and so the shift didn't bug me that much. But over time, I felt like there were more currencies I was missing out on, so I started adding cryptocurrency into my portfolio.
For those of you that don't know much about cryptocurrency, it's basically a currency that is not controlled by any one person or government (or shouldn't be). It's money free from political corruption, free from bailouts, and free from big banks. It is also highly more volatile than FOREX. Gains and losses are measured in the 10% or 20% range per day. There's actually lots of money to be made day trading it, just like FOREX. But I chose to take a longer term approach for my peace of mind.
One of the things that I looked for when trading FOREX was to trade pairs where I could earn interest while holding it. Then when the pair appreciated, I could sell it for a gain plus the interest. Win win.
Right now, I feel like I found that in ADA (Cardano) crypto. ADA just opened staking (mining) capability last week, meaning that just by holding it you can earn 4.5%-5.5% on your coins (paid in coins, not in dollars). It's the most undervalued crypto in the market (in my opinion), and the fundamentals on it look really strong. It is doing everything I was hoping a FOREX pair would do and I think it's the best crypto investment right now, so I'm just filing it away as a 5-year investment. It's now 50% of my "overall" currency investments, including FOREX.
Anyway, that's my story. I wanted to share it in case anyone here was curious about Cardano in particular, and how it related to fiat currencies. I was super intimidated about crypto at first, but I am also a software developer with a lot of experience, and so I was able to make the transition quite well. I even started my own mining pool to earn more.

Howdy all, I work professionally for a proprietary trading fund, and have worked for quite a few in my time, hope I can offer some insights on trading etc you guys might have.
Bonus for you guys
Here are the columns in my trading journal and various explanations where appropriate:
Trade Number – Simply is this the first trade of the year? The 10th?, The 50th? I count a trade
that you opened and closed just one trade number. For example if you buy EUUSD today and
sell it 50 pips later in the day and close out the trade, then that is just one trade for recording
purposes. I do not create a second trade number to describe the exit. Both the entry and exit are
under the same trade number.
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Ticket Number – This is ticket number / order ID number that your broker gives you for the trade
on your platform.
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Day of the Week – This would be simply the day of the week the trade was initiated
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Financial Instrument / Currency Pair – Whatever Financial Instrument or currency pair you are
trading. If you are trading EUUSD, put EUUSD. If you are trading the EuroFX futures
contract, then put in Euro FX. If you are trading the emini S&P, then put in Emini S&P 500. If
you are trading a stock, put in the ticker symbol. Etc.
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Buy/Sell or Long/Short – Did you buy or sell to open the new trade? If you bought something to
open the trade, then write in either BUY or LONG. If you sold(shorted) something to open a
trade, then write in SOLD, or SHORT. This is a personal preference. Some people like to put in
their journals as BUY/SELL. Other people like to write in Long/Short. My preference is for
writing in long/short, since that is the more professional way to say it. I like to use the lingo
where possible.
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Order Type – Market or Limit – When you entered the trade was it a market order or limit order?
Some people can enter a trade using a combination of market and limit orders. If you enter a
trade for $1 million half of which was market order and the other half was limit order, then you
can write in $500,000 Market, $500,000 Limit as a bullet points.
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Position Size / Units / Contracts / Shares – How big was the total trade you entered? If you
bought 1 standard lot of a currency pair, then write in $100,000 or 1 standard lot. If you bought 5
gold futures contracts, then write in 5 contracts. If you bought 1,000 shares of stock, then write
in 1,000 shares. Etc.
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Entry Price – The entry price you received entering your opening position. If you entered at
multiple prices, then you can either write in all the different fills you got, or specify the average
price received.
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Entry Date – Date that you entered the position. For example January 23, 2012. Or you can
write in 1/23/12
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Entry Time – Time that you opened the position. If it is multiple positions, then you can specify
each time for each various fill, or you can specify the time range. For example if you got
$100,000 worth of EUUSD filled at 3:00 AM EST, and another $100,000 filled at 3:05 and
another $100,000 filled at 3:25, then you can write all those in, or you can specify a range of 3:00
– 3:30 AM EST.
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Entry Spread Cost (in pips) – This is optional if you want to keep track of your spread cost in
pips. If you executed a market order, how many pips did you pay in spread.
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Entry Spread Cost (in dollars) – This is optional if you want to keep track of your spread cost in
dollars. If you executed a market order, how many dollars did you pay in spread.
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Stop Loss Size – How big is your stop loss size? If you are trading a currency pair, then you
write in the pips. If you are trading the S&P futures contract, then write in the number of points.
If you are trading a stock, then write in how many cents or dollars your stop is away from your
entry price.
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% Risk – If you were to get stopped out of the trade, how much % loss of your equity is that?
This is where you input your risk per trade expressed in % terms if you use such a position sizing
method. If you risked 0.50% of your account on the trade, then put in 0.50%
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Risk in dollars – If you were to get stopped out of the trade, how much loss in dollars is that. For
example if you have a $100,000 account and you risked 1% on a trade, then write in $1,000
dollars
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Potential Reward: Risk Ratio – This is a column that I only sometimes fill in. You write in what
the potential reward risk ratio of the trade is. If you are trading using a 100 pip stop and you
expect that the market can reasonably move 300 pips, then you can write in 3:1. Of course this is
an interesting column because you can look at it after the trade is finished and see how close you
were or how far removed from reality your initial projections were.
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Potential Win Rate – This is another column that I only sometimes fill in. You write in what you
believe the potential win rate of this trade is. If you were to place this trade 10 times in a row,
how many times do you think you would win? I write it in as percentage terms. If you believe
the trade has a 50% chance to win, then write in 50%.
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Type of Inefficiency – This is where you write in what type of inefficiency you are looking to
capture. I use the word inefficiency here. I believe it is important to think of trading setups as
inefficiencies. If you think in terms of inefficiencies, then you will think in terms of the market
being mispriced, then you will think about the reasons why the market is mispriced and why such
market expectations for example are out of alignment with reality. In this category I could write
in different types of trades such as fading the stops, different types of news trades, expecting
stops to get tripped, betting on sentiment intensifying, betting on sentiment reversing, etc. I do
not write in all the reasons why I took the trade in this column. I do that in another column. This
column is just to broadly define what type of inefficiency you are looking to capture.
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Chart Time Frame – I do not use this since all my order flow based trades have nothing to do
with what chart time frame I look at. However, if you are a chartist or price action trader, then
you may want to include what chart time frame you found whatever pattern you were looking at.
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Exit Price – When you exit your trade, you enter the price you received here.
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Exit Date – The date you exited your trade.
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Exit Time – The time you exited your trade.
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Trade Duration – In hours, minutes, days or weeks. If the trade lasts less than an hour, I will
usually write in the duration in minutes. Anything in between 1 and 48 hours, I write in the hours
amount. Anything past that and I write it as days or weeks as appropriate, etc.
Pips the trade went against you before turning into a winner – If you have a trade that suffered a
draw down, but did not stop you out and eventually was a winner, then you write it how many
pips the trade went against you before it turned into a profitable trade. The reason you have this
column is to compare it to your stop loss size and see any patterns that emerge. If you notice that
a lot of your winning trades suffer a big draw down and get near your stop loss points but turn out
to be a profitable trade, then you can further refine your entry strategy to get in a better price.
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Slippage on the Exit – If you get stopped out for a loss, then you write in how many pips you
suffered as slippage, if any. For example if you are long EUUSD at 1.2500 and have your stop
loss at 1.2400 and the market drops and you get filled at 1.2398, then you would write in -2 pips
slippage. In other words you lost 2 pips as slippage. This is important for a few different
reasons. Firstly, you want to see if the places you put your stop at suffer from slippage. If they
do, perhaps you can get better stop loss placement, or use it as useful information to find new
inefficiencies. Secondly, you want to see how much slippage your broker is giving you. If you
are trading the same system with different brokers, then you can record the slippage from each
one and see which has the lowest slippage so you can choose them.
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Profit/Loss -You write in the profit and/or loss in pips, cents, points, etc as appropriate. If you
bought EUUSD at 1.2500 and sell it at 1.2550, you made 50 pips, so write in +50 pips. If you
bought a stock at $50 and you sell it at $60, then write in +$10. If you buy the S&P futures at
1,250 and sell them at 1,275, then write in +25 points. If you buy the GBP/USD at 1.5000 and
you sell it at 1.4900, then write in -100 pips. Etc. I color code the box background to green for
profit and red for loss.
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Profit/Loss In Dollars – You write the profit and/or loss in dollars (or euros, or jpy, etc whatever
currency your account is denominated in). If you are long $100,000 of EUUSD at 1.2500 and
sell it at 1.2600, then write in +$1,000. If you are short $100,000 GBP/USD at 1.5900 and it
rises to 1.6000 and you cover, then write in -$1,000. I color code the box background to green
for profit and red for loss.
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Profit/Loss as % of your account – Write in the profit and/or loss as % of your account. If a trade
made you 2% of your account, then write in +2%. If a trade lost 0.50%, then write in -0.50%. I
color code the box background to green for profit and red for loss.
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Reward:Risk Ratio or R multiple: If the trade is a profit, then write in how many times your risk
did it pay off. If you risked 0.50% and you made 1.00%, then write in +2R or 2:1 or 2.0. If you
risked 0.50% and a trade only makes 0.10%, then write in +0.20R or 0.2:1 or 0.2. If a trade went
for a loss that is equal to or less than what you risked, then I do not write in anything. If the loss
is greater than the amount you risked, then I do write it in this column. For example lets say you
risk 0.50% on a stock, but overnight the market gaps and you lose 1.50% on a trade, then I would
write it in as a -3R.
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What Type of trading loss if the trade lost money? – This is where I describe in very general
terms a trade if it lost money. For example, if I lost money on a trade and the reason was because
I was buying in a market that was making fresh lows, but after I bought the market kept on going
lower, then I would write in: “trying to pick a bottom.” If I tried shorting into a rising uptrend
and I take a loss, then I describe it as “trying to pick a top.” If I am buying in an uptrend and buy
on a retracement, but the market makes a deeper retracement or trend change, then I write in
“tried to buy a ret.” And so on and so forth. In very general terms I describe it. The various
ways I use are:
• Trying to pick a bottom
• Trying to pick a top
• Shorting a bottom
• Buying a top
• Shorting a ret and failed
• Wrongly predicted news
• Bought a ret and failed
• Fade a resistance level
• Buy a support level
• Tried to buy a breakout higher
• Tried to short a breakout lower
I find this category very interesting and important because when performing trade journal
analysis, you can notice trends when you have winners or losing trades. For example if I notice a
string of losing trades and I notice that all of them occur in the same market, and all of them have
as a reason: “tried to pick a bottom”, then I know I was dumb for trying to pick a bottom five
times in a row. I was fighting the macro order flow and it was dumb. Or if I notice a string of
losers and see that I tried to buy a breakout and it failed five times in a row, but notice that the
market continued to go higher after I was stopped out, then I realize that I was correct in the
move, but I just applied the wrong entry strategy. I should have bought a retracement, instead of
trying to buy a fresh breakout.
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That Day’s Weaknesses (If any) – This is where I write in if there were any weaknesses or
distractions on the day I placed the trade. For example if you are dead tired and place a trade,
then write in that you were very tired. Or if you place a trade when there were five people
coming and out of your trading office or room in your house, then write that in. If you placed the
trade when the fire alarm was going off then write that in. Or if you place a trade without having
done your daily habits, then write that in. Etc. Whatever you believe was a possible weakness
that threw you off your game.
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That Day’s Strengths (If any) – Here you can write in what strengths you had during the day you
placed your trade. If you had complete peace and quiet, write that in. If you completed all your
daily habits, then write that in. Etc. Whatever you believe was a possible strength during the
day.
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How many Open Positions Total (including the one you just placed) – How many open trades do
you have after placing this one? If you have zero open trades and you just placed one, then the
total number of open positions would be one, so write in “1.” If you have on three open trades,
and you are placing a new current one, then the total number of open positions would be four, so
write in “4.” The reason you have this column in your trading journal is so that you can notice
trends in winning and losing streaks. Do a lot of your losing streaks happen when you have on a
lot of open positions at the same time? Do you have a winning streak when the number of open
positions is kept low? Or can you handle a lot of open positions at the same time?
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Exit Spread Cost (in pips) – This is optional if you want to keep track of your spread cost in pips.
If you executed a market order, how many pips did you pay in spread.
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Exit Spread Cost (in dollars) – This is optional if you want to keep track of your spread cost in
dollars. If you executed a market order, how many dollars did you pay in spread.
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Total Spread Cost (in pips) – You write in the total spread cost of the entry and exit in pips.
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Total Spread Cost (in dollars) – You write in the total spread cost of the entry and exit in dollars.
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Commission Cost – Here you write in the total commission cost that you incurred for getting in
and out of the trade. If you have a forex broker that is commission free and only gets
compensated through the spread, then you do not need this column.
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Starting Balance – The starting account balance that you had prior to the placing of the trade
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Interest/swap – If you hold forex currency pairs past the rollover, then you either get interest or
need to pay out interest depending on the rollover rates. Or if you bought a stock and got a
dividend then write that in. Or if you shorted a stock and you had to pay a dividend, then write
that in.
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Ending Balance – The ending balance of your account after the trade is closed after taking into
account trade P&L, commission cost, and interest/swap.
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Reasons for taking the trade – Here is where you go into much more detail about why you placed
the trade. Write out your thinking. Instead of writing a paragraph or two describing my thinking
behind the trade, I condense the reasons down into bullet points. It can be anywhere from 1-10
bullet points.
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What I Learned – No matter if the trade is a win or loss, write down what you believed you
learned. Again, instead of writing out a paragraph or two, I condense it down into bullet points. it
can be anywhere from 1-10 bullet points. I do this during the day the trade closed as a profit or
loss.
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What I learned after Long Term reflection, several days, weeks, or months – This is the very
interesting column. This is important because after you have a winning or losing trade, you will
not always know the true reasons why it happened. You have your immediate theories and
reasons which you include in the previous column. However, there are times when after several
days, weeks, or months, you find the true reason and proper market belief about why your trade
succeeded or failed. It can take a few days or weeks or months to reach that “aha” moment. I am
not saying that I am thinking about trades I placed ten months ago. I try to forget about them and
focus on the present moment. However, there will be trades where you have these nagging
questions about they failed or succeeded and you will only discover those reasons several days,
weeks, or months later. When you discover the reasons, you write them in this column.

You have a chart in front of you, a buy and sell button respectively, this basically gives you 50% of probability that if you open a buy or sell at any time your action will end up making money after sometime. "Sometime" adds new variables to the game and makes it more complicated: is knowing the direction for sometime, the market needs to move to increase profit or increase loss. You then go into the volatility reports for lets say EURUSD, and you see that during London session and New York session, it's the time where price statistically moves more, so there is where you want to be if you want to day trade (open and close trades in the same day), this can be also noticed if you zoom out for example M5 of almost any pairs, volume will be bigger in this two sessions.
Ok so you have statistics of at what times it may move big, you also know that it may not move or it may range the whole day, but definitely there is going to be big moves. If you analyse the past, with only for example a 30 MA, you will see the 50/50. What else do you need? To be in most of the times you are humanly able following the trend, if price is averaging over any average you want and see useful to add, why would you bet that is not going to average oveunder it for some more time? Add a 1000 MA, what if you waited for each cross and traded it trend following? Here then comes a "must": money management = risk = stay in the game for long = you can lose multiple times and long term it's hard that you even lose 10% of your account. Start with the minimum risk, demo in 0.01. Why? If you can consistently win with 0.01 it's just a matter of optimizing the statistics your demo trading over time has thrown, money will come, lots of it, the amount your confidence as a trader can bear and ultimately because trading is so big and involves almost all of the aspects of your life and personality, your confidence as a human being can bear. But this is skipping to psychology.
So, volatility, an average of some x periods to get the trend (not of the market but of the x periods in relation to the market and time, x is important, x can't be 2000 in M5), money management and time to play. What else? When will you close the trades? There are multiple ways each one with pros and cons, price crossing the average (too slow sometimes), price hitting fibos (gotta have a method for plotting fibos the same time each time, check the "Do it yourself" section, 61.8 a.k.a 0.618 and 61.8, god made numbers), being this last one the one I like. Price plays with these levels, nothing magical about it, is just "nature", a forgotten and violated term these days IMHO. There it is, when to open with probability, when to close methodically, how to play your money so you last as long as you don't fail too much repeatedly. This results after studying Ralph Elliot's, W Gann's, Wykcoff's, Pesavento's, Gartley's, Carney's and some others WAY TO LOOK AT THE MARKET. They all found structure in price actions over time, they all understood natural patterns that occur, they all sat in front of some charts, used or created tools for handling those charts, in the end everything is so simple and easy that our minds, past, maybe present, the t.v, Instagram won't lets us succeed. Why? Your mind is your biggest enemy of what you want to do in life. How? Your past in someway defines you, defines what you are looking for in life.
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Psychology, establishment and relativity.
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Mark Douglas introduced me (in his videos) to a new way of thinking towards trading. He speaks about beliefs, how they drives us in each decision we make each day from as simple as making coffee, having a bath,
dressing nice or dressing in the first place. Beliefs are what makes your past define you today and tomorrow if you keep believing them. A wrong belief of yourself, a wrong belief of the world outside your eyes,
a wrong belief of the market (you keep trusting other people about the market, in the end after loosing you trust no one), this leads to what lot's of gurus outside the financial world, will say: trust in
yourself. Forex gurus tell you to trust them, pay them so they'll unveil the secrets. No money can change your wrong mindset, that feeling in your chest each time you think about possibilities with Forex (euphoria, dangerous as f not only in forex), that belief that some magical indicator will come, some hidden code of some pro advanced indi if you are more realist, some guy with the answer. You are very alone in this world my friend, money will tear countries apart, cities apart, families apart. People will sell their face for some money, their name, in the end corrupt politicians that don't get caught will enjoy their feasts everyday, with their innocent childs, who see their daddy as their hero, this is not a fair world, what's fair in the first place? A human creation so we can live together in peace, but that's not reality we all know. We are evoluted chimps, we still feel what the cheetah feel's in front of his prey, we share 90% of DNA with most of mammals, as intelligent as we like to think we are, we can't delete our nature, our hunger, our fear, our needs, our instinct (the one rushes adrenaline when you know you are losing too much), because deep inside we all know whats right or wrong, the difference between people is whether you hear that voice, or you shut it with a nicer version. 90% of people in forex (not real statistics, the real number varies from broker hmmm brokers another shady topic), prefers the nice version long term, which results not profitable basically.
It's your version (you + all gurus you've seen) not the version the market shows and the deep-you tries to alert.
I headed far from an important topic: gurus telling to trust them, a killer market killing you, lots of misinformation around the WWW and you not believing in yourself. What else do you have to face the markets?
You are in a triangle: broker (not so hard to get a nice one), market and yourself. Everything else is a lie until the person who is in any way selling you stuff, shows you his profitable record of more than 6 months in any financial instrument, that you look at yourself in the mirror and you can say I trust him, not I want to trust him (even if it's some of each, but hey everything involves risk).
LOOK AT THE CHARTS.
Want to have "fast money" (intraday), look M1 to M30, even H1 for a bird's view, optimize your profitable and consistent demo results to that market; want to look charts once a day, trade D1, I'd say you don't even have to look at something bigger as it is big enough and you can go to H4 or H1 for finesse entries (can become a vicious circle, how much finesse is finesse?).
It's all about trust, confidence and a good plan.
Psychology of yourself is so vast, and so unique to each person that I would dare to say that if you are looking for the answer outside of you, you better befriend a trader who is today making money and pray that he literally gifts you his confidence (not his knowledge even if it can help, hi will be sharing his confidence). Your social mind will spawn the hype, the euphoria, you will succeed for a while, market will kill you sooner or later, you will help the market to kill your account. Why? Because your confidence wasn't real, it may be that that day, that week the market moved nicely, or you felt strong and super.
How many gurus go live and say "hey today, as a human being, I don't feel great, I would not trade today?" none. They say market is not right ATM, cherry picking, they totally exploit that you can't go inside their screens and really know them, here comes the version you want to believe, you will tell yourself anything, you will tell anyone anything.
Here to finish, I'll say that consistency in anything in life starts from yourself. If you can't be consistent everyday with yourself for a long period of time, you will find temporary jobs, temporary stuff, you will keep jumping from gurus, from strategies, you will create better versions on your head, just imagine what version a guru must have created to go and sell forex related stuff instead of searching for how to kill the markets, he may be doing both, in the end none of that will give you anything, you will end up being the stair to the gurus goals. Try to comprehend how human we are, how arrogant we are from a farmers perspective, how or evolution results in our minds plays us tricks, to think the government is real, to think there's order, justice, to think that we can achieve huge things with the help of YouTube videos or paying another human being, the market is flow, manipulation is real (why call it manipulation when you would be doing the same in their shoes(big boys)) is part of the nature of anything you plot with Y and X axis (look for a graph of population changes, harmonics, double bottoms, double tops, in a population changes graph? how can that be?), it may be a cliche but is aaaaaaall an illusion guys, the truth is not good business for the other side of the trades.
See you on the other side.
"I'll be a big noise with all the big boys"