Please help a newbie develop a plan!

[peithia2]

Try before you start

I will have to agree with most of the previous opinions. This is one of my rare visits to this forum and I just wanted to say that trading skill is the product of a relevant academic curriculum and experience gained by "trial and error" (unfortunately).
However, I would suggest before you start trading for good, it's better if you try your skills in financial online games, where the stakes are not as high as in the real deal. Something like what WallStreet Challenge offers, perhaps.....

Good luck

 

[Paul Wilson]

Cheers for the replies everyone.

Since the start of this post I have made fantastic progress. I have gone back to the drawing board, and I now know pretty much know what i'm up to.

In fact over the last 6 weeks, since I went live, I have averaging around 14% a week, and have more than doubled my account. This may be luck. But every trade I have put on has been planned and has done well(apart from one).

I trade EOD data. I mainly look for patterns. Particularly H+S tops, triangles and flags. I find it easy to identify other patterns aswell, now I know what I'm looking for. I use candlesticks to idently possible continuations and reversals. I do somethimes dabble in S=R breaks and bounces, same with trendlines. With these I also use a couple of indicators. I also trade pull backs after an MA crossover. I use a 200 MA to give me some idea of the bear/bull characteristics of the stock.

Every trade is compared with the health of the governing indice.

My trading is not mechanical at all. At the mo I am just in the FTSE100. It only takes a few minutes to flick through the charts to find something interesting to add to my watch list. The watch list is then purged every Sunday to get rid of the "non tradable" stocks.

If everything carrys on as it is I will be looking to migrate to the Q's as I understand the pattern are more frequent and juicier. There are also some nice high value stocks with decent movement.

This may seem like I am doing a lot, but I find this easy to manage, even holding a full time job. I only have a maximum of 3/5 trades on at anyone point. The max capital risk per trade is 1%. I don't need to go any higher than this as I am well aware this game is more get rich slow, than get rich quick.

I may have only just started posting more frequently on the board as of recent. But I have spent many hours reading posts from the more experienced members.

I would like to actually thank everyone who has contibuted to the boards. It may take a while to sift though the posts until you find something of personal value, but it is there. Also a pretty friendly buch here.


Been a pretty hectic couple of months really...

Anyways cheers for the replies guys - Paul.

 

[Paul Wilson]

I'm sorry but I must disagree about the comment of having a "relevant academic curriculum". I believe comments like this may put off potential first time traders. Trust me, you do not need a degree, or even a high school education for this. If you want to work on the floors then yes. But not if you want a pretty cool hobby.

No offence, and my apology if I misinterperated it.

 

[rathcoole_exile]

Cheers for the replies everyone.

Paul,
congrats on your progress. It's obvious from this thread and your posts on other threads that are developing a worthy system combined with sensible risk- and money- management.

If it's not too late for me to recommend any reading for you, may i do so now ?
There are dozens of excellent books that can help traders, new and veteran; and there are hundreds of simply gargabe junk written by morons for morons.
If I had to limit myself to just a couple of books for my entire life, the list would comprise:
2 books by Alexander Elder: Trading for a Living, & Come into my Trading Room plus the excellent heavyweight book by John Murphy on Technical Analysis.

By the way, by subscribing to Stockcharts I gain access to John Murphy's thrice weekly technical commentaries. He rarely makes any recommendations, it's not designed for that, but his insight and comments about various charts is an education in itself.
Maybe that's the "academic curriculum" you need ?

anyway, apologies for the intrusion, just my 2 baht worth .......

Garry

 

[damianoakley]

Hello.

Ok I am very new to the whole trading thing and am looking for a bit of advice. I would be very grateful for some feedback.

I need some advice on developing a "simple" trading plan. I have a dabble in spreadbetting a while ago. I made a bit of money, then stopped as soon as I realised I knew absolutely nothing about the markets.

Since then I have being doing my homework and learning as much as I can. I have been frequenting these boards for some months now too.

Anyway, question time...

1. Could anybody recommend a market(s) to "learn" on? I'm kinda after something that is easier to spot the trends and isn't going to murder me if I get anything wrong.

2. What is the best time scale to trade for a beginner? I have internet access early mornings and evenings mostly after 6pm. So I cannot devote all day every day for monitoring individual trades.

3. Erm can't think of anymore specific questions at the mo...


Basically I am a beginner, with little or no experience of the "live" markets. I have read plenty of books, checked loads of websites(I like it here tho), and am having an information overload.

I am not going to risk a single penny on the markets until I develop(or someone helps me develop?) a simple system that I can paper trade for at least 3 months and makes a profit.


I'm not after anybodys secret trading strategies here. Just advice on where exactly to start properly. There is a lot going on in this game and it is very overwhelming.


If anyone can point me in the right direction I would be eternally grateful. Also if anyone has any questions or would like to elaborate on the anything in this post please ask.


Thanks - Paul.

Hi Paul,

Just seen your thread.

The thing with the financial markets is that they are vast - your choice of what to trade is absolutely huge and this can overwhelm a lot of beginners.

You can trade timeframes from 1 minute to 1 hour, from daily to weekly, youcan trade forex, stocks, commodities, bonds, futures.....and then you can spreadbet, trade CFD's or trade Direct Access......see what I mean, absolutely vast.

So how on earth do we choose what to trade out of all that lot?

Well, the first thing you need to do is ask yourself what you think will best suit you. Do you think you are the sort of person who could sit at a computer for a number of hours and day-trade minute-by-minute? Is your personality better suited to just checking the markets once a day for an hour?

Once you've decided that, I would choose one market that you feel that you understand and try to develop a strategy to trade it - that's the difficult part, but there's plenty of people around here who can offer some assistance, some good and some bad, but I'm sure you'll start to see who talks sense and who doesn't.


Thanks

Damian