hello

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brewski1984

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hello,

been reading this forum for a few months now thought i would say hi. i had absolutely no idea about trading 6 months ago and i guess you could say i still have absolutely no idea about trading now!! ive found lots of good information on here but had to sift through an awful lot of crap to find it though... the constant digs at oildaytrader is always amusing lol no offence matey(y) ill always remember mobanded and 4xpipcounters topics. ive found the topics for newbie traders very interesting and haven't actually needed to post up any questions yet as ive just searched this forum for answers.

anyway, been testing some moving average and support/resistance strategies on a spread betting demo account as well as a few live trades just to get the feel for it. I've mainly been trading the FTSE so far, although i keep seeing things like the gbp/usd up 150 points in a day and dreaming of incredible wealth!! annoyingly, every single live trade i enter ends up never even going into a profit but on the majority of demo trades i make 30-40 points really easily. i guess either psychology or my lack of a genuine working system has a big part in that but its just really annoying lol. I have an idea on a couple systems i'd like to use but it seems it takes a lot of time to refine them to be profitable, im unsure what timeframe to use and what stop loss/targets to set etc but ill get there. i guess anyone can buy/sell on a MA or support/resistance but its once youre in the trade that determines if youre profitable?? Haven't really managed any kind of profit yet but i guess id rather lose money at the start and work at fixing it than win loads and be led in to some false confidence that im an awesome trader only to reach the inevitable conclusion.

anyway ive said too much lol
 
Anyway the basic answer to your question is that technical analysis is a load of crap
 
Keep trading DEMO or micro account for pennies until you're consistently profitable and know WHY you're profitable. Biggest mistake I made was trading real cash before knowing what I was doing. If you really want to give your money away just pm me and I'll sort you some account details :)
 
ok, let me rephrase that:

Technical analysis (by which I mean charting... the definition is loose... obviously markets do not move entirely by fundamentals...) is total bull****. I know ****loads of succesful traders. The ones that do not appear to be there by luck either don't use technical analysis, or use it as a crutch, by which I mean they make their decisions respectably then justify it with TA.
 
arabianights said:
ok, let me rephrase that:

Technical analysis (by which I mean charting... the definition is loose... obviously markets do not move entirely by fundamentals...) is total bull****. I know ****loads of succesful traders. The ones that do not appear to be there by luck either don't use technical analysis, or use it as a crutch, by which I mean they make their decisions respectably then justify it with TA.
Click to expand...

That's me f**ked then
 
seriously man... even the theory behind TA makes no ****ing sense... they basically take the exact same assumptions as EMH then come up with complete bull****... EMH at least makes logical sense with those assumptions!
 
I don't believe you have to be a fundamental trader to have an edge... I just think squiggly lines are ******** and if you can make money using them you're better off not using them :)
 
arabianights said:
I don't believe you have to be a fundamental trader to have an edge... I just think squiggly lines are ******** and if you can make money using them you're better off not using them :)
Click to expand...


No, I agree with this completely. All I use is price and sup\res. I'm trying to get my head around all the fundy's though.

To answer the op - You'll see alot about TA but most of it is sh1te... Just find something simple that works for you. Support and resistance is the best place to start imho.
 
I don't recommend the op finds "something that works for him". That's asking him to be fooled by randomness. Unless he can explain why it "works for him" and suggest a statistical test to show it ain't chance...

It's a bit like finding an alternative medicine* that "works for him".

*Want to know what they call alternative medicine that works? Medicine.
 
arabianights said:
I don't recommend the op finds "something that works for him". That's asking him to be fooled by randomness. Unless he can explain why it "works for him" and suggest a statistical test to show it ain't chance...
Click to expand...

Aye, I did say in an earlier post that he should know why he is profitable before going live. To be fair I'm still a relative newb so I'll shut up and let you more experienced traders provide the advice...
 
Bit off topic but hadn't heard of EMH before, just googled it and found a wiki page - Looks interesting. I've not read it all yet but regards TA - Is there not an argument that if it gets you in with a 50\50 shot and you manage the trades for better than 1:1 RR you can be consistently profitable, whatever the method? In other words.. random entry?
 
i appreciate all your replies :D

i wouldnt say i know absolutely nothing about trading now but im not too stupid as to think i know everything

to be honest i know i shouldnt use real money yet but i just wanted to get a feel for it and an insight into the psychological parts, ive been using IG's tradesense thing where it starts off 10p a point and goes up every 2 weeks. ive only lost about £60 so far and most of that has been a couple beatings at 50p a point but im not really worried. im not too keen on the guaranteed stops meaning extra spread plus ive found that capital spreads on the demo account have tighter spreads than IG but i guess thats a different topic.

i first started off looking at TA, the MA and MACD etc all gave me a different visual representation of what was happening but i found that it was just lagging. id enter a trade when MACD crossed on the chart, only for the price to go the other way and the MACD not be crossed anymore. i entered a few trades when stochastics were at like 9 and 13 (luckily on demo!) thinking theres no possible way price could go any further down and got stopped out a while later. that was the point i started looking into support/resistance and trying to make a system with that. ive been using the previous days highs and lows as a start.

in reply to the above post, i also had the idea that if you were to set a stop and limit of for example, 20 and 30, you could just randomly enter a trade at any point and if you left it to run you would only need 2 wins to cover 3 losses. although not long after that i realised that if you werent to just randomly enter a trade you might not suffer the 3 losses. i dont know if that completely relates to your post but its too late for me to look at EMH as ive got to be up at 5am
 
LiamH said:
Bit off topic but hadn't heard of EMH before, just googled it and found a wiki page - Looks interesting. I've not read it all yet but regards TA - Is there not an argument that if it gets you in with a 50\50 shot and you manage the trades for better than 1:1 RR you can be consistently profitable, whatever the method? In other words.. random entry?
Click to expand...

No
 
brewski1984 said:
i appreciate all your replies :D

i wouldnt say i know absolutely nothing about trading now but im not too stupid as to think i know everything

to be honest i know i shouldnt use real money yet but i just wanted to get a feel for it and an insight into the psychological parts, ive been using IG's tradesense thing where it starts off 10p a point and goes up every 2 weeks. ive only lost about £60 so far and most of that has been a couple beatings at 50p a point but im not really worried. im not too keen on the guaranteed stops meaning extra spread plus ive found that capital spreads on the demo account have tighter spreads than IG but i guess thats a different topic.

i first started off looking at TA, the MA and MACD etc all gave me a different visual representation of what was happening but i found that it was just lagging. id enter a trade when MACD crossed on the chart, only for the price to go the other way and the MACD not be crossed anymore. i entered a few trades when stochastics were at like 9 and 13 (luckily on demo!) thinking theres no possible way price could go any further down and got stopped out a while later. that was the point i started looking into support/resistance and trying to make a system with that. ive been using the previous days highs and lows as a start.

in reply to the above post, i also had the idea that if you were to set a stop and limit of for example, 20 and 30, you could just randomly enter a trade at any point and if you left it to run you would only need 2 wins to cover 3 losses. although not long after that i realised that if you werent to just randomly enter a trade you might not suffer the 3 losses. i dont know if that completely relates to your post but its too late for me to look at EMH as ive got to be up at 5am
Click to expand...

Ok brewski I ain't gonna bother to read all that cause I'm lazy, and I also have to be up at 5am every ****ing day so don't expect me to be sympathetic about that :LOL:

Basically, if you think you can make money off simple buggering around with indicators, you're wrong. Why? Because if it were that easy, many others would be doing it. What would be happening if they were doing it? The prices of the assets would be going into line with value. Instantly. Certainly far faster than you can piddle with a spread betting account.

You need to find somewhere where you have an edge over the market. Think about that more carefully. It isn't goign to be with TA.
 
ok thanks for your advice arabianights, just one more question though... the red writing is telling me im a moron for taking your advice?? lol
 
Hello only me again lol

Thought I'd post back, have took your advice and started looking at support/resistances. I've been using the 1 hour timeframe to find these and it seems to be working well. I have drawn lines across the graph and it's quite amazing to see price move up and down between these lines, I certainly understand now how it's no coincidence when price reaches a certain level then goes the other way. I still have a few questions though.

I understand that buying support and selling resistance is the thing to do but after trying this on a demo account over the last couple months it seems wierd that with the Ftse in such an obvious uptrend, I was constantly going against that trend by selling resistance?

Another question I have is say resistance is at 6000, if the price reaches that level and nothing happens ie. It doesn't straight away bounce off resistance level, is that an indication that there won't actually be a lot of action at that point. Surely people have orders set up to either take their profits or enter the trade at that level so when it touches it the first time is when it should make the movement?
 
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