Newbie pointers please :)

[billnye5]

Okay i've been trying to trade for 2-3 years now and...its sorta getting there but now I'm seeming to lag in front of the market...i.e. i bet it up before it ends up going there, and get stopped out in the process.

Here are a few of the last 2 days of trading (on a free £100 thing inter trader gives you for filling out a questionnaire)

TUESDAY

BUY Dax@£2/point@9432, [email protected], carried on to 9500 where it found resistance and came back down to what, 9351 this morning? £39.60 profit

SELL Dow@£2/[email protected], bought at 17041, back to this one later...profit £65

SELL Dow@£4/point@17025, stopped out at 17066, loss £164, carried out to 17126 i believe, before retiring down to roughly 17025 later in the day and hovering 17025-17050 until where it is now, 16800 odd.

thats where I get a little confused as there wasn't much great news so it turned around and came back after i predicted it would just drop...it ended up dropping the next day once it had lost relevance.

Frustration trade, having seen the markets were deciding to rise, brought Dax@£1/[email protected], sold at 9487.2, £53.50 profit

EUR/USD thinking towards the fact that it seems to be in a steepening downward trend, along with what the ECB said/did last time making me think US is in better shape then EU so downward might continue. didn't move pretty much all night sold at .26281, brought at .26305 for a £4.80 loss

WEDNESDAY

EUR/CAD has been fairly safe to me in the past since BNP paribas came out a month ago on squawk saying sell at levels around 1.436 aiming for 1.38, considering i've been watching it and its been ranging 1.44-1.4 for the last month seemed ok to sell £2/point at 1.41414, brought back at 1.41201 for £42.60, now its at 1.403

GBP/USD sold @£2/point as bad manufacturing data from the UK, .61642 brought back at .6174 loss of £19.60

EUR/USD sell £2/point .25995 brought back at .26025 using a stop as thought of .26 as a solid new resistance level, now its .263

Nasdaq sell@50p/point at 4043.5, put a stop at 4045.2 which stopped me out for an £8.50 loss. thought it was going down as per slightly bad news from tuesday which hadn't really been looked at or factored in...

FTSE100 sell@£3/[email protected], brought back at 6582.3, wasn't really moving anywhere hard to judge if it was the correct move to back, currently at 6530, £3 profit

Dow buy@£2/point@17024, slightly better than expected jobs thought it could go back to tuesdays highs if the others followed though, before even getting chance to look back really it had fallen off a cliff and i was £80 lighter...

CAC40 with only £20 left at this point and it looking like a down day i sold cac £1/[email protected], brought back at 4351.8 for a £10.80 profit, roughly around the same level now waiting for ECB I'm guessing...

final trade before where i am now with nothing...
ASX200 seemed unaffected, if anything positively effected from the drops in the US and EU markets, didn't think it could last so sold at 5285.5, overnight it rose to 5310 and lose the last £24

got £6 left of the £100

so my question is where am i going wrong? is it not enough money to being with...am i not putting enough stops/limits in, or am i just crap at trading..

all info would be helpful thanks

 

[malaguti]

Okay i've been trying to trade for 2-3 years now and...its sorta getting there but now I'm seeming to lag in front of the market...i.e. i bet it up before it ends up going there, and get stopped out in the process.

Here are a few of the last 2 days of trading (on a free £100 thing inter trader gives you for filling out a questionnaire)

TUESDAY

BUY Dax@£2/point@9432, [email protected], carried on to 9500 where it found resistance and came back down to what, 9351 this morning? £39.60 profit

SELL Dow@£2/[email protected], bought at 17041, back to this one later...profit £65

SELL Dow@£4/point@17025, stopped out at 17066, loss £164, carried out to 17126 i believe, before retiring down to roughly 17025 later in the day and hovering 17025-17050 until where it is now, 16800 odd.

thats where I get a little confused as there wasn't much great news so it turned around and came back after i predicted it would just drop...it ended up dropping the next day once it had lost relevance.

Frustration trade, having seen the markets were deciding to rise, brought Dax@£1/[email protected], sold at 9487.2, £53.50 profit

EUR/USD thinking towards the fact that it seems to be in a steepening downward trend, along with what the ECB said/did last time making me think US is in better shape then EU so downward might continue. didn't move pretty much all night sold at .26281, brought at .26305 for a £4.80 loss

WEDNESDAY

EUR/CAD has been fairly safe to me in the past since BNP paribas came out a month ago on squawk saying sell at levels around 1.436 aiming for 1.38, considering i've been watching it and its been ranging 1.44-1.4 for the last month seemed ok to sell £2/point at 1.41414, brought back at 1.41201 for £42.60, now its at 1.403

GBP/USD sold @£2/point as bad manufacturing data from the UK, .61642 brought back at .6174 loss of £19.60

EUR/USD sell £2/point .25995 brought back at .26025 using a stop as thought of .26 as a solid new resistance level, now its .263

Nasdaq sell@50p/point at 4043.5, put a stop at 4045.2 which stopped me out for an £8.50 loss. thought it was going down as per slightly bad news from tuesday which hadn't really been looked at or factored in...

FTSE100 sell@£3/[email protected], brought back at 6582.3, wasn't really moving anywhere hard to judge if it was the correct move to back, currently at 6530, £3 profit

Dow buy@£2/point@17024, slightly better than expected jobs thought it could go back to tuesdays highs if the others followed though, before even getting chance to look back really it had fallen off a cliff and i was £80 lighter...

CAC40 with only £20 left at this point and it looking like a down day i sold cac £1/[email protected], brought back at 4351.8 for a £10.80 profit, roughly around the same level now waiting for ECB I'm guessing...

final trade before where i am now with nothing...
ASX200 seemed unaffected, if anything positively effected from the drops in the US and EU markets, didn't think it could last so sold at 5285.5, overnight it rose to 5310 and lose the last £24

got £6 left of the £100

so my question is where am i going wrong? is it not enough money to being with...am i not putting enough stops/limits in, or am i just crap at trading..

all info would be helpful thanks

where are you going wrong?
where I think you're going wrong, is that I can't see any sort of strategy. You follow advice from newsfeeds, you try and second guess news events, you're trading against any sort of trend, and when you do trade with an established trend, you are unhappy that it's not moved enough so you exit.
get an entry rule, an exit rule and stop punting at £4/point on an index with just £100 regardless if it was free or not.

Is it not enough money?
No, if you were given £50k free likely that would be blown away in short time also. Don't mean to sound harsh

Are you crap at trading?
No, you're not trading. You're simply guessing at the moment. Its a job, a science, a business. treat it like one

my advice is get a strategy that doesn't involve trying to second guess something that you could go back and understand where you would get in, where you should reasonably exit and if that "backtest" shows positive, try and run with that strategy and fine tune that.

you must have heard all of these things before

 

[billnye5]

i'll take that on board thanks

reacting on news feeds instead of before feeds and only if the news favours the trend, would that be a good place to start?

 

[malaguti]

i'll take that on board thanks

reacting on news feeds instead of before feeds and only if the news favours the trend, would that be a good place to start?

my advice is get a strategy that doesn't involve trying to second guess something that you could go back and understand where you would get in, where you should reasonably exit and if that "backtest" shows positive, try and run with that strategy and fine tune that.

if trading news in the past has shown a positive expectancy as mentioned by DJ then you are off to a good start, but you are still just second guessing in my opinion

 

[billnye5]

maybe trading it when its outside expected parameters, say jobs expected 200,000, if it ranges between 150k-250k then leave it if its 149k sell if its 251k buy, instead of trading when its a little better than expected
maybe yesterday i should've left it as it was 213vs207 expected wasn't much better than they thought, but traded the PMI as, based on 50 being a mid-point it was 25% lower (i think...) i.e. 58 expected 56 actual, something like that