Early Trader at a Crossroads! Need Help!

[markbritton]

Hi All,

This is the first thread that I have started so bear with me whilst I bare my soul looking for answers!

I'm hoping you chaps on this forum can help me. I have been a member for some time but have only started using the forum effectively for the last 3-4 months.

I've always been interested in trading/shares etc since at school (even though I ended up in a job completely remote from this area!) and I have never shook this interest out of my head. In 2003 I started trading with a freshly opened account on IG Index. Deposited £3,000 and put my first bet on the DJ based upon a rough estimation of where I thought the market was going. I clapped with glee as I watched it rise (£10 per point) and made my first profit of £350 in a few minutes. I had no target price at that time (probably didnt even knew what that meant!) and just closed the trade when I felt like it. Thought this was easy and proceeded over the next few weeks to put different trades on in a haphazard way. My losses mounted and I just hung on and moved my stops.

Within a couple of months my entire account was gone!

At that point I left the markets alone for a while, having the odd trade now and then but ultimately losing more money - as usual.

Then in 2005 came upon Binary bets and had a hair brained idea to make quick money based upon a rudimentary look at the DJ and how many down days it could possibly have, doubling up on my losses. Made £2000 in my first month. Great!:clap: Thought this is it. Stuff SB, I'm going to Binary Trade. Did this for the next 2 years! Had some good months, had some bad months but when the sub prime mess kicked off in the Autumn 2007 got kicked right in the nuts and lost all the money I had gained over the time I was trading binaries. So after 2 years and all that effort and stress got nothing to show for it except a T-Shirt.

In 2008 Feb started looking at Fixed Odds (BetonMarkets) and signed up to a signal provider. Not done bad at all and have made about 10% ish every month on a small trading fund of £500. Tried to make a couple of calls myself but cocked them up and lost some of the money that I had gained. Still following the signals and just leave the account alone ticking over and making a small monthly gain (better than a savings account anyway but with more risk).

And then I had an epiphany!:innocent:

I logged onto Trade2win and hooked up to some of the threads for beginners. Read the infamous How to make money Trading by Trader_Dante (which I have condensed into a word document and printed out to make easier reading!), Mark William's basics of trading, Newtron Bomb's threads to name but a few. Read some psychology of trading by Bbmac and have recently viewed some excellent videos by Jarratt Davis (Invest-fx.com) on forex trading. It was as if someone has given me a pair of glasses! I can't believe I wasted so much time and money over the last few years with half arsed attempts in trading!

Anyway, now you have a bit of background on how I got here I need some advice from you good people!

I feel that I am at a crossroads in my trading life at the moment. I have a dream of day trading in the future (it does fit my psychological profile!) but I'm stuck in day job and need to make some money from my evening/early morning trading to get my account going and to give me confidence. By, the way, I'm not so stupid to say I want to day trade in the next 6 months. I know its a much longer process than that and a very big and important decision to make if the opportunity arises.

After all the reading so far I still feel that I am at the start of the true journey to becoming a half decent trader (and I havent even put a spread bet on since my recent readings) and dont know what to do next.

I have been keeping tabs on the Mr SpreadBetting system thread and have been tempted to go for it. On the other hand, I'm starting to be attracted to forex as it seems to correlate more closely to technical analysis that I have learnt so far.

As I get home around 6pm I only have 3 hours of trading if I wish to trade the US markets and could probably trade later on the forex markets (if a setup shows up). I feel that I need to trade these hours in order to start growing a trading account.

Also, how much money should I start with?

I feel that at the moment my head is spinning and I don't really know which direction to take next.

If anyone here has any thoughts or insight it would be much appreciated!

Sorry if the start of this thread has gone on for a bit but I felt you need to read a little about my background and how I got here so that you can understand where I am coming from.

Thanks,
Mark

 

[tsai/is/buying!]

One Suggestion

Hi:

I'm Dennis, and I've been trading debit spreads for two years. I don't make a lot of trades per month.
But I'm doing pretty well.

I suggest that you read books that feature interviews of a collection of traders. These interviews will reveal a great number of trading styles. See if one of these styles appeal to you. Books that I would suggest would be three books by Jack Schwager: Market Wizards, Stock Market Wizards, and New Market Wizards. I also recommend two books by John Train:
Money Masters of our Time and New Money Masters.

I'm sure that other guys on this forum can suggest many more good books on trading and trading styles.

These suggestions are not to imply that I am a great expert, but maybe they can help a bit.

Best Wishes,
Dennis H.

Best
Then, if you get good at one style or technique, you can branch out into more.

 

[aleclaw]

Hi Mark,

I started live trading forex 6 weeks ago after 3 months demo trading. After initial success I started losing more than I was winning. More winning trades than losing trades (so I was identifying potential winners with ease), but losses were exceeding gains - a typical scenario for newbie traders.
The problem was psychological - too quick to take small profits, and allowing losing trades to run on too long in the hope that they would come back - classic mistake number one.
So I googled for a forex mentor and found Ian Williams at Forex Trading Made Easy.
Initially I stopped making big losses, and now I am winning more than I lose - but this requires the courage and discipline to stick exactly to his methodology.
It is an incredibly simple methodology and I will stick with it!
Hope that helps - it works for me.

 

[bansir]

Hi All,

This is the first thread that I have started so bear with me whilst I bare my soul looking for answers!

I'm hoping you chaps on this forum can help me. I have been a member for some time but have only started using the forum effectively for the last 3-4 months.

I've always been interested in trading/shares etc since at school (even though I ended up in a job completely remote from this area!) and I have never shook this interest out of my head. In 2003 I started trading with a freshly opened account on IG Index. Deposited £3,000 and put my first bet on the DJ based upon a rough estimation of where I thought the market was going. I clapped with glee as I watched it rise (£10 per point) and made my first profit of £350 in a few minutes. I had no target price at that time (probably didnt even knew what that meant!) and just closed the trade when I felt like it. Thought this was easy and proceeded over the next few weeks to put different trades on in a haphazard way. My losses mounted and I just hung on and moved my stops.

Within a couple of months my entire account was gone!

At that point I left the markets alone for a while, having the odd trade now and then but ultimately losing more money - as usual.

Then in 2005 came upon Binary bets and had a hair brained idea to make quick money based upon a rudimentary look at the DJ and how many down days it could possibly have, doubling up on my losses. Made £2000 in my first month. Great!:clap: Thought this is it. Stuff SB, I'm going to Binary Trade. Did this for the next 2 years! Had some good months, had some bad months but when the sub prime mess kicked off in the Autumn 2007 got kicked right in the nuts and lost all the money I had gained over the time I was trading binaries. So after 2 years and all that effort and stress got nothing to show for it except a T-Shirt.

In 2008 Feb started looking at Fixed Odds (BetonMarkets) and signed up to a signal provider. Not done bad at all and have made about 10% ish every month on a small trading fund of £500. Tried to make a couple of calls myself but cocked them up and lost some of the money that I had gained. Still following the signals and just leave the account alone ticking over and making a small monthly gain (better than a savings account anyway but with more risk).

And then I had an epiphany!:innocent:

I logged onto Trade2win and hooked up to some of the threads for beginners. Read the infamous How to make money Trading by Trader_Dante (which I have condensed into a word document and printed out to make easier reading!), Mark William's basics of trading, Newtron Bomb's threads to name but a few. Read some psychology of trading by Bbmac and have recently viewed some excellent videos by Jarratt Davis (Invest-fx.com) on forex trading. It was as if someone has given me a pair of glasses! I can't believe I wasted so much time and money over the last few years with half arsed attempts in trading!

Anyway, now you have a bit of background on how I got here I need some advice from you good people!

I feel that I am at a crossroads in my trading life at the moment. I have a dream of day trading in the future (it does fit my psychological profile!) but I'm stuck in day job and need to make some money from my evening/early morning trading to get my account going and to give me confidence. By, the way, I'm not so stupid to say I want to day trade in the next 6 months. I know its a much longer process than that and a very big and important decision to make if the opportunity arises.

After all the reading so far I still feel that I am at the start of the true journey to becoming a half decent trader (and I havent even put a spread bet on since my recent readings) and dont know what to do next.

I have been keeping tabs on the Mr SpreadBetting system thread and have been tempted to go for it. On the other hand, I'm starting to be attracted to forex as it seems to correlate more closely to technical analysis that I have learnt so far.

As I get home around 6pm I only have 3 hours of trading if I wish to trade the US markets and could probably trade later on the forex markets (if a setup shows up). I feel that I need to trade these hours in order to start growing a trading account.

Also, how much money should I start with?

I feel that at the moment my head is spinning and I don't really know which direction to take next.

If anyone here has any thoughts or insight it would be much appreciated!

Sorry if the start of this thread has gone on for a bit but I felt you need to read a little about my background and how I got here so that you can understand where I am coming from.

Thanks,
Mark

Hi Mark,
I would recommend the following procedure.
1. Don't use a live account.

2. Open a demo account and use that instead.

3. Pick one market to start with and learn it inside out. If you're looking at Forex go for a major pair like Eur-Usd or Gbp-Usd.

4. You need to figure out a strategy and write it down in detail. You then need to stick to it and test and refine it over many weeks/months/years until you have something that works for you and which you can execute with discipline.

5. You need to find out what time frame you're comfortable with. TD recommends the higher time frames, 1hr, daily etc.

6. It's great fun, honestly... enjoy the journey but don't go in with real money until you've
at least laid the foundations. Keep a journal of all your trades.

For myself, I'm not exactly qualified to spout advice like the above but after many years of plugging away on Demo account I am now in my third consecutive winning month. If I can keep this going then I will be looking to go live on a micro account fairly soon.

Stick around T2W there's some top notch help here if you put some work in yourself.

Best Regards,
Neil

 

[bfirth]

hey mark, well looks like lots of good advice already,
my story is i gave up my day job 6 months ago to day trade, and like everyone else found it not as easy as i thought.
my thoughts are just about everyone can do this, you just need TIME,lots and lots of it. Use a demo account i know people say its not like using real money,and thats true it hurts a lot less find a simple system and STICK to it, don't keep tweaking adding changing it, Learn how you and the system work, if you use it long enough it starts to come together.
Normally a coupe of times a day i see trades, which are not signaled by my system but i KNOW what they are going to do. is this because i tweaked my ema/fib/stoc blah blah? nope its because iv sat and watched the market, and watched, and watched,
take encouragement that most people after going through what you already have have quit. good luck
bry.

 

[markbritton]

Thanks for all the help guys. Been while since I last looked at this thread.
I work full time and so was available to trade 6am - 7:30am and on the evenings. I did indeed choose one instrument - cable. I liked the volatility and momentum that the pair had in the mornings as the London Session opens.
I basically trade the Asian Breakout and often set a straddle before leaving for work. I also keep an eye on divergence and trade off this.
Overall, I am quite happy now with my trading, especially as I now treat it as a business. I take 15-20 pips out of the early morning momentum when possible and can take 50 or so pips occasionally if I am about at the right time for a divergence play.
To put it simply - you need a plan, you need to focus and you need to use proper money management. Dont trade on a whim, dont try to make 200 pips a trade. It just doesnt work. I now like to take small bites from the market and to do it CONSISTENTLY. I have no plans to look at other markets at the moment until I know cable like the back of my hand!