I'm Nearly in THAT 90% Category

Yes yes, we all know of the "90% of traders fail" comments, the thing is I really don't want to be one of those. I'm going to be brutally honest about myself here, and what I'd like from people who read this is advice. When I say advice, I mean any advice, even if it's give up. I'm not expecting for 'magic' solve all answers, even if no one reads this I think by writing it down and reading it for myself might help, therapy almost!

First off, let me tell you about my background, this is just so people can get a general idea of why I'm trading and what I'm trying to achieve. I'm 28, and a law graduate who incidentally doesn't work in the law field. I currently work nights in a hotel. The reason I took this job is it fits in perfectly with my trading. I'd like to eventually trade full time from home. That's it, no ifs no buts. Trade full time from home.

I'm single, no kids, no mortgage. I've small outgoings, mainly rent and bills.... the usual. In order to make forex my main source of income, I would need to earn between £12,000 and £15,000pa to live quite comfortably.

Now, I've been trading forex for three years. The first year and a half was on a demo account, this easy I thought, I'm making thousands. I invested £400 and promptly blew my account in a little under two weeks. Why? I knew NOTHING. My leverage was stupidly high, the lot size I was using was too high, I had no idea my emotions would suddenly come into play and effect every decison I made.

So, a year and a half on, demo trading up until then. Reading everything I can. Studying, practicing, re-reading the same books and internet forums. I invest £1000,
"this time I'm ready, this is it, this is the time". I use leverage of 1:100 and a lot size of 0.2. Careful money management is my plan. Don't run before you can walk. Start slow this isn't get rich quick. Build on this capital now until I can make consistent profits. I have a tested system and strategy. I have a trading plan. I know what times suit me and what times don't. I know what pairs I'm going to trade.

Everything starts off well, I make a few quid here and a few quid there, at the end of the first week I'm up with consistent profit. I'm using a simple macd crossover on a 5min chart with Heiken Ashi bars for entry and using the H1 for S/R levels. Typically I'll take profit around 5 pips. Why? I don't need to make that much money, this is a business for me, a living, only make what I need. 5 pips, 4 times a day with careful money management was my plan, easy huh! I avoided fundamentals like the plague. The thing I found I was saying was... "why the f**k didn't I leave that trade open? I could've hit my target for the week with that one trade". Never the less, I was making profit... lets not get greedy, take the profit, take the profit, take the profit was my motto. I'm quite an emotional person by nature, I'm not that greedy, in fact I'm quite risk averse. Occasionally the price would go in my favour, I'd take the profit bang on the mark before it turns the other way. "See", I'd say to myself, "imagine if you left that open, then you'd be sorry".

Into the second week and I got greedy, opening a trade against my trading plan, I never should've opened the trade and I got burned, and rightly so. I lose the profit I made the week before. I say to myself, "it's ok it's only the profit from last week" and "we all have to take losses every now and again". I trade without Stop Losses, prefering a mental Stop Loss if you like. I decide when the trade is no longer valid. I go on to make a few consecutive wins that week, enough to keep me in the game!

Third week and it falls apart totally. Monday starts of as usual, a couple of good trades, perhaps could've left the positon open a bit longer but still made some profit. I open a position, the price moves in my favour, I don't take the profit this time too early, before I know it the price is going the other way and I'm down. Closed the trade. I went away from my computer for half an hour or so, come back and low and behold, the price went the way I thought it would. Ok so what do I do next time that happens, hold the trade of course, have confidence in yourself, expect a bit of DD every now and again. The loss was big but not massive, just one of those things I tell myself, emotion, was very negative and I was very pissed off with myself.

A few days later (after two or three small good trades) the same thing happens again, ok this time I'm going to hold it for a bit, grow some balls!! Don't take losses, not everyone has to take losses It's going to turn round and come my way, BANG emotions come flooding in, screaming CLOSE CLOSE CLOSE. I close and make another loss the same size as last week. My account from an intial £1000 from having a high of £1080 inside two weeks, now reads £850.

Ok so what do I do? I know, I've been playing around with Systematic (automated trading using robots) through the broker Alpari. I've had numerous demo accounts and It's been fairly successful. I'll put that £850 into Systematic, sort my automated portfolio out and let some robots trade for me, the demo has been good.

Two days later my account now reads £350.

HELP! I really am stuck for ideas now. Don't get me wrong, I realise £1000 in the grand scheme is nothing. I was not expecting to go full time on £1000 I was using this to get the emotional side of trading with real money.

Are some people just not cut out for trading? If there are any newbies reading this please take this advice. Forex is not easy, emotions are everything in this environment, I underestimated that when I first started. I used to be of the belief that anybody can do anything if they try hard enough. I've been doing this for three years and am still no closer now as to where I was when I blew my first account! Maybe I need to change my strategy, maybe I need to start all over again. Maybe I need to read more books. Maybe I need to control my emotions more. MAYBE MAYBE MAYBE.....

0.2 lots = ~£1/pip?

Don't use automated robots - you don't know what they're doing. Not all people are cut out for it, but you can do a few things to reduce your emotions. The secret is to just not give a f*ck.

Masquerade said:

0.2 lots = ~£1/pip?

Don't use automated robots - you don't know what they're doing. Not all people are cut out for it, but you can do a few things to reduce your emotions. The secret is to just not give a f*ck.

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I will NEVER use automated accounts again. I didn't like the idea in the first place, it was just that the demo I had was good, making fantastic returns, and I thought it might reduce some of my emotions because I can 'trust' a robot more that myself!

I know I know, but I was stuck, made losses and thought f**k it why not, they have as much chance as I do at making money.

0.2 lots, yeah near enough £1 a pip

All robots will do (if they're doing something wrong) is lose your money quicker than you can.

£1/pip is still using a fair amount of leverage on a 1k account. It depends on your style but it's still a decent size. I'll give you a clue that your edge if you have any is tiny on the small time frames.

Masquerade said:

All robots will do (if they're doing something wrong) is lose your money quicker than you can.

£1/pip is still using a fair amount of leverage on a 1k account. It depends on your style but it's still a decent size. I'll give you a clue that your edge if you have any is tiny on the small time frames.

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I sort of understand what you are saying. Here's the thing with me though. Trading with smaller lot sizes meant I tended to overtrade. I felt as though I needed the slightly larger lots to gain a reasonable profit margin. I don't scalp per se. I don't make lots of trades all day......

:idea: you've given me an idea. If I'm using an M5 chart for entry and an H1 for S/R with £1 a pip lots, why not up my timeframe to H1 for entry... let my profits run more and use a stop loss? Why was I using M5 for entry and H1 for S/R, if I'm looking at H1 for S/R I should just be trading off that timeframe right?????????

God, are they the words of a desperate man

I'll let you know tomorrow - these are the words of a tired, pissed off person with a splitting headache, I need to think about it and this isn't the best time for me.

For now while i'm here, don't think about the money as such. Money makes money, focus on the returns on your account. You can chuck a few more k in once you figure it all out and be on your way to achieving your goals.

Also, all s/r shows up on any time frame be it M5/M15/M30/H1/H4 - just you need to distinguish the major points which you may not see on M5. Also if you're planning to hold trades for any decent time you're best off picking a time frame which reflects it.

I realise S/R shows up on all timeframes but I use a macd cross on the m5 (with heiken ashi bars) then refer to H1 with candles to cross reference if it is a good time to open a position based on longer term S/R which is easier to see on this timeframe. What I am suggesting is forget the m5 and use the same method but only on H1.

I say same method, I'd have to alter it slightly... on M5 I wait for the cross, then open a position 2 bars later, on H1 I guess I'd have to enter on the cross.

Perhaps I should forget the macd cross altogether and go for pure nakedness. Price action after all, is where it's at. Just S/R, and go for longer trades, not swing trading but intra-day.

Still... thanks for the thoughts and for your time masquerade,

Chris

I know exactly where you're coming from - It's not easy this game. I blew my account to bits a year ago and that was after around 3 years of learning - I thought I knew everything. Like you, emotions dictated my trades and not my strategy - My account went from making 10-15% a day when I got lucky to losing 50% in a day when when I got unlucky.

Naturally, the days when I made 10-15% a day I was a trading god, the other days were losses to be expected. All until my account went bang and I was left with a zero balance, a pi$$ed off missus and majorly dented pride.

I took a year out and learned to play poker with a fair amount of success. This taught me to control my emotions, be patient and use proper money management.

Now i'm certainly no superstar trader, I have opened a SB account with ETX capital for the free £100. Guess what, with my new found patience and without my emotions leading my trading decisions my strategy works and works very well.

My point here is that the problem is you and only you. If you have a strategy that works you need to learn how to stick to it. I learned my lessons playing poker, you can learn yours any way you like but until you do, you'll keep spewing cash.

Don't give up, just understand the problems and work to sort them out. Once you are under control your strategy, if profitable in the first place, will look after your account.

LiamH said:

I know exactly where you're coming from - It's not easy this game. I blew my account to bits a year ago and that was after around 3 years of learning - I thought I knew everything. Like you, emotions dictated my trades and not my strategy - My account went from making 10-15% a day when I got lucky to losing 50% in a day when when I got unlucky.

Naturally, the days when I made 10-15% a day I was a trading god, the other days were losses to be expected. All until my account went bang and I was left with a zero balance, a pi$$ed off missus and majorly dented pride.

I took a year out and learned to play poker with a fair amount of success. This taught me to control my emotions, be patient and use proper money management.

Now i'm certainly no superstar trader, I have opened a SB account with ETX capital for the free £100. Guess what, with my new found patience and without my emotions leading my trading decisions my strategy works and works very well.

My point here is that the problem is you and only you. If you have a strategy that works you need to learn how to stick to it. I learned my lessons playing poker, you can learn yours any way you like but until you do, you'll keep spewing cash.

Don't give up, just understand the problems and work to sort them out. Once you are under control your strategy, if profitable in the first place, will look after your account.

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:idea::idea::idea: IT'S ME THAT'S THE PROBLEM

Everything you've said can be applied to me there. I think you're right, it was the emotional side of trading that did me. When I had a few consecutive wins I was a trading legend, was going to come on these boards to help newbies. The bigger losses were just losses at first, everybody has them, then just like you said I've no account left! I was scared to let profits run, I let losses run because I was too scared to take the loss. Scared... emotional.... yes Liam, you're right......

I'm sh*t at poker, my poker face looks like I've been smoking too much of those 'funny cigs'. I might take up some kind of sport where I might get hurt to get those emotions under control.

i am prolly the last person to give u advice here, but since i hav a great teacher who trades and everything it would be very bad from me not to at least try to share some of the things he taught me..
So it should be smth like this, as i do it at least.. I trade on hourly chart always i hav a demo account, about a year and a half now, i never blew it, i was just in a big minus, and when i started making plus the company (is) would just shut my account down, it happened 2 days ago i made 500$ in 2 weeks and they shut my acc down, and i didn't save my info :/
anywayz, the thing is, since ur trading as u are like i said, try to trade on hourly chart when u enter position look at price on hourly and then search for entrance on 15m and lower, that's low probability u can do wrong, check your abc's and take into consideration the S/R of the price cause it means alot :/
see now the USD/JPY is turnirng around, i went into that trade yesterday, my bad call i guess, but the impatience sometimes gets me and i'm trying like u very hard to control emotions especialy when u want a trade to go well and it rly doesn't ;_;
hope this all makes sense..

HONEST OPINION

Give up trading and don't look back , otherwise you will just have a dead cat bounce.

Trading is the most difficult thing to do AND IT CAN TAKE 10 YEARS TO BE SUCCESSFUL and already you sound lost .

Don't need to blow more money ,have any more pain of losses and misery

O D T

sangfroidFX said:

Ok so what do I do? I know, I've been playing around with Systematic (automated trading using robots) through the broker Alpari. I've had numerous demo accounts and It's been fairly successful. I'll put that £850 into Systematic, sort my automated portfolio out and let some robots trade for me, the demo has been good.

Two days later my account now reads £350.

.

Click to expand...

Are you using Alpari's Systematic?Did you lose #500 pounds on systematic?

http://forum.alpari.co.uk/thread6140.html

http://forum.alpari.co.uk/thread2870.html

5 pips is NOISE... random orders

you are pissing in the wind

oildaytrader said:

HONEST OPINION

Give up trading and don't look back , otherwise you will just have a dead cat bounce.

Trading is the most difficult thing to do AND IT CAN TAKE 10 YEARS TO BE SUCCESSFUL and already you sound lost .

Don't need to blow more money ,have any more pain of losses and misery

O D T

Click to expand...

I respect your opinion oildaytrader however.... I can't quit, I can't give up. The more people tell me I can't do this, the more I am determined.

Re-funding my account this morning and trying a few things out. It's money I can 'afford' to lose. I say afford, no one can afford to throw money away but what I mean is it's not rent money or food money! I have a few new perspectives and a couple of ideas.

As I think Edison once said after inventing the light bulb... "I never failed, I just found 1000 ways that didn't work".

arabianights said:

5 pips is NOISE... random orders

you are pissing in the wind

Click to expand...

I think I've come to the same conclusion. I've tried everything to make a few quick 'risk free' pips without actually scalping. I once even tried fading the spike. Now THAT is pissing in the wind!

edit... Oildaytrader, yes I lost £500 on alpari's systematic in the space of three days. If only I'd come across your thread earlier! Having said that I still would have done the same as I was in the frame of mind that I know best.

sangfroidFX said:

I respect your opinion oildaytrader however.... I can't quit, I can't give up. The more people tell me I can't do this, the more I am determined.

Re-funding my account this morning and trying a few things out. It's money I can 'afford' to lose. I say afford, no one can afford to throw money away but what I mean is it's not rent money or food money! I have a few new perspectives and a couple of ideas.

As I think Edison once said after inventing the light bulb... "I never failed, I just found 1000 ways that didn't work".

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Refunding your account is the most stupid thing you can do.Just throwing good money after bad , especially as YOU ARE NOT READY TO CLEAN THE MARKETS.

First take a break and have a rethink about your strategy, money managment , expectancy etc

First find and develop a few systems that suits your personality.

I think the important thing for you is to keep your good money management (apparently you have) so that even a lot of bad losers wouldn't be hard to win back when you're slightly better. Forget reading about new stratergies or whatever, read about money managenet, and RISK CONTROL. All we can do (especially in Forex) is control our risk, the gains come after! I recommend the book "Trade your way to financial freedom".

Why don't you try moving up a timeframe? Some more experienced traders recommend starting on the weekly, if you are profitable for a month, then down to the daily, 4H, 1H, etc...

If you can't trade longer time frames because of the wider stops, try something in between, 4 Hour is apparently easiest for newbies. As you know, 90% or whatever fail at Forex, and from the 10% that do make profits, it's only about 1% that day trade (apparently).

sangfroidFX said:

I think I've come to the same conclusion. I've tried everything to make a few quick 'risk free' pips without actually scalping. I once even tried fading the spike. Now THAT is pissing in the wind!

edit... Oildaytrader, yes I lost £500 on alpari's systematic in the space of three days.

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Alpari should not be offering these robots to customers.Pure irresponsible bucketshop .

I had found a system that worked, suited my style and what I needed from the market. However my personality and emotions put paid to that. As I see it, the only way I can overcome emotions and get a grip of the psychology part is to trade with real money.

I could trade a million pound demo account but never ever feel the emotional side of things unless it's my own money. Does that make sense?

sangfroidFX said:

I could trade a million pound demo account but never ever feel the emotional side of things unless it's my own money. Does that make sense?

Click to expand...

Yes, complete sense.

But why don't you start off say, about half of what you were going to start off with?

Do it like this, week one you're trading 0.50p per pip instead of £1. If you make money after week one then you trade 0.60p per pip, moving up 10p every profitable week. If you lose after one week, move back to the previous dealing size. That way, if you're good, it won't be long before you're trading for nice amounts.

In 4 months you could be trading £2.50 per point.