The Official FOREX Thread

[MetalFortress]

If you think you can, you will. If you think you can't, you won't. It's all about learning and perseverence. In other words, sparky, STFU.

On topic: The dollar's implosion along with the strength of the GBP and Euro has given rise to a large number of net-positive trades for me. I traded them all with low units, but combined I gained about 100 pips today, and also had a 90-pip closure of XAU/USD. Still waiting for XAG/USD to continue its rise. A few rookie mistakes led to a couple negative trades, but those are being ironed out as I practice. Hell, that's what the demo account is for, right? Still far less rookie mistakes than last week. I hope to be ready to begin trading real money by December.

 

[g g g unit]

Why? Opening a demo account has no negative effects...

Cos i know if i do too well straight away ill wanna get a real one n then one day bam all my money will be gone. I gotta learn to crawl before i run so in a few months when i know enough about stocks n forex il try setting up my trading plan but untill i got forex info pouring out my ar$e lol im not taking any risks.

 

[MetalFortress]

Closed another 150 pips higher this morning. I made about 12 trades off the news since yesterday, and 90% of those have been closed at a positive gain.

 

[Bible_Belt]

That's great. How does the size of your average winning trade compare to the size of your average losing trade? Another good stat to keep is your biggest winner and biggest loser each day. "Batting Average" can be deceptive if there are some large losing trades.

 

[MetalFortress]

My losing trades aren't closed yet. They are trades that are at the top or bottom of their cycle and look to turn around soon, so I'm riding them out. My few losses that I just sucked up because of the news, are pretty small. I've been riding out GBP/USD all week before it turned positive this morning.

 

[CitizenOfTheWorld84]

Surprised to find a fx thread here.

I trade fx full time.

I only trade on fundamentals I started a few years back with technical.

I found particular during economic releases technical analysis failed miserably.

Technical analysis has its merits but it uses math’s formulas to predict prices.

I view the market as a living breathing entity just like humans it cannot be broken down to formulas because it is unpredictable at times.

I trade major economic releases once or twice a day.

I aim for 100 pips a day.

The less time you spend in the market the safer your money is.

All together I would spend 10 minutes in the market a week and take home 500-1000 pips a week.

Don't be fooled by demo programs just because you make money in a demo it does not mean you will surely make money in the real world.

Fx is a dangerous game be careful.

 

[Bible_Belt]

Do you buy on good news, or sell into the bounce from the good news? (and the opposite for short positions on bad news)

How easy is it to get your order filled in a fast-moving market? What's it like trying to buy when it's going up quickly? Can you get traded? How bad can slippage be?

What broker do you use? Have you tried trading through the CME Globex?

 

[CitizenOfTheWorld84]

Do you buy on good news, or sell into the bounce from the good news? (and the opposite for short positions on bad news)

I do not wait for the news to come out rather I find out the exact times economic reports will be released and I straddle the market.

When the price breaks out either way my order gets hit.

How easy is it to get your order filled in a fast-moving market? What's it like trying to buy when it's going up quickly? Can you get traded? How bad can slippage be?

I have no problem getting my order through during economic releases.

When it is time to exit my position I might get a bit of lag when exiting but I will usually get out the second I want.

What do you mean by slippage?

What broker do you use? Have you tried trading through the CME Globex?

I use mbtrading and have never heard of CME (I don’t spend much time on the internet)

I just like to make a correction in my previous post I said that I spend 10min a week in the market when I actually meant 10min a trade and I do 10 trades per week on average.

My money is only physically in the market for 10 min a week, I exit positions 10 seconds after I enter them.

 

[Teflon_Mcgee]

What's your news source, Citizen?

From the little I've experienced, I think fundamental is the way to go in Forex.
I'd consider myself more of a technician in regular stocks and tried to apply the same strategies in FX. But I can see how your technique could be very beneficial.

I do not wait for the news to come out rather I find out the exact times economic reports will be released and I straddle the market.

When the price breaks out either way my order gets hit.



I have no problem getting my order through during economic releases.

When it is time to exit my position I might get a bit of lag when exiting but I will usually get out the second I want.

What do you mean by slippage?



I use mbtrading and have never heard of CME (I don’t spend much time on the internet)

I just like to make a correction in my previous post I said that I spend 10min a week in the market when I actually meant 10min a trade and I do 10 trades per week on average.

My money is only physically in the market for 10 min a week, I exit positions 10 seconds after I enter them.

 

[CitizenOfTheWorld84]

I use www.newsstrike.com/ to get up to the second news updates.

 

[SELF-MASTERY]

You are a scalper.

That's how I trade, but I still believe that poker has more +ev for me!

 

[MetalFortress]

I set up two demo sub-accounts: one for day trading, and one for long term (AKA: do not open until Christmas). The long termer is only going to carry XAU/USD and XAG/USD investments. If gold and silver keep going up the same way they used to, I can end up with 1-10x my investment back, which is a far higher return than any of the currencies has potential for. And at this point, it looks like precious metals are going to be a much safer investment than dollars.

 

[CitizenOfTheWorld84]

I set up two demo sub-accounts: one for day trading, and one for long term (AKA: do not open until Christmas). The long termer is only going to carry XAU/USD and XAG/USD investments. If gold and silver keep going up the same way they used to, I can end up with 1-10x my investment back, which is a far higher return than any of the currencies has potential for. And at this point, it looks like precious metals are going to be a much safer investment than dollars.

The more money you have a chance to make the more you are risking to lose.

 

[MetalFortress]

Bad Advice Removed

 

[Bible_Belt]

fwiw, those indicators are just another way of looking at price action. And I think you may be using them the wrong way.

RSI above 50, stochastic goes up = price is going up fast. BUY if it's not overbought.
RSI above 50, stochastic goes down or sideways = price is stagnant or dropping very slowly. Buy if the RSI is staying in place.
RSI below 50, stochastic goes up = price is stagnant or rising very slowly. Sell if the RSI is staying steady.
RSI below 50, stochastic goes down = price is dropping fast. SELL before it's oversold.

Oscillators are overbought/oversold indicators. They are meant to be used in a sideways choppy market to buy into dips and sell into bounces. In a strongly trending market, an oscillator is nearly worthless. But in a sideways market, a trend line is just about as worthless.

What you are doing is trading like 95% of people trade - panic buying as it goes up and panic selling as it goes down. I'm almost certain that the simulator is giving you fills that you would never get in real trading. There are no rules to require them to execute your orders. 98% of Forex traders are losing, but all the brokers are pushing those sim accounts. I'm guessing 90% of people probably make money on the sim, but all it does is reinforce the bad habits that make you lose money in real life. The only way to ever have a good idea that your order would have been filled in real life is for the trade to immediately go at least a little in the red before it becomes profitable.

If you are interested in indicators, Fibonacci, Gann, and Elliot are the way to go, imho. The others are just crutches; they compute price, and with practice you can approximate the same thing in your head from a simple bar chart. New traders tend to want to junk up their charts with too many indicators.

 

[Bible_Belt]

What do you mean by slippage?

I use mbtrading and have never heard of CME

Wikipedia:
With regards to futures contracts as well as other financial instruments, slippage is the difference between estimated transaction costs and the amount actually paid. Brokers may not always be effective enough at executing orders. Market-impacted, liquidity, and frictional costs may also contribute


http://www.cme.com/trading/dta/del/globex.html

You guys trading the sims should watch multiple quote feeds at the same time and see how they compare.

Here's a trading story:

I worked at a small retail shop before I was a prop trader. We helped average guys become day traders of stocks with their own money. This is back when day trading was fairly new, in the late 90's. On our computer we could watch the trades of traders trading at home, see their positions, p&l, etc. One day, my boss, who is an extremely intelligent man, turned to me in a bit of an epiphany and said with a laugh that he had an idea to make millions. He said that we could just slow down the data feed to the traders, watch the real feed that was a few seconds ahead, and then trade against all of our own traders - sell to them when they wanted to buy and buy from them when they wanted to sell. Then he said, 'But when they caught us we'd go straight to Club Fed,' and we laughed about the joke.

The point of this story is that I think the Forex bucket shops are doing the exact same thing to their traders, and unlike stocks there are no rules against it. Unless you are trading through a reputable broker like MB, interactivebrokers, or Miris who route their orders through Globex, you are making it harder on yourself than it has to be.

 

[MetalFortress]

Okay, bad advice removed. EVERY SINGLE ONE of my forex trades hit the take-profit. They were decided-on by analyzing Bollinger bands on the 1-day chart. Total profit: 3,026 dollars added to ~72,000 (what was left on my main account). Not sure of exact pippage.

Just made five more trades using the same analysis. Four of them are in the positive pips range, and one is about to hit the take-profit point.

 

[radronOmega]

Question: Do any of the free demo accounts use the same currency fluctuations that correspond to real life events? thanks

 

[MetalFortress]

Yep. The FXGame does.

 

[MetalFortress]

Now up to 85,771.96. Total P+L : over 12,000 dollars (6,500 last week, about 5,500-6,000 this week so far). Investing slowly and surely is working (only taking the trades that are at the top or bottom of the 1-day bollinger band, and have consistantly gone in that zigzag direction).