Britintexas
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By means of introduction, I have been browsing (stalking!) this site on and off for a good number of years. Many thanks to so many people who have made such valuable contributions and have saved me and no doubt others in investing in dubious training courses and setting us on the right path...
The headline lessons I have learnt over the last few years as a beginner are:
1) In many ways until you have blown up your first account you don't realise what a serious business trading is and how much respect it deserves. Just try to limit the account blow up to as little meaningful money as possible! (Im not sure the same lessons are learnt when demo trading - worthwhile as it is vis-a-vis practising entries and exits etc...)
2) Money Management and Position sizing are crucial elements of trading but often underplayed. I have found that these two disciplines alone give big confidence when entering a trade - knowing that the overall risk if the trade goes wrong is calculated and containable.
3) I have moved away from leveraged products and have stuck to stocks - purely for risk management benefits initially. If you start trading leveraged markets make sure you know what you are doing ; the blow out risks are higher.
4) Sufficient capitalisation is important. Enjoyable as it is to play the markets with a couple of grand, the temptation to go beyond recommended % of capital risk per trade becomes immense when you soon bore of making a couple of quid here and there. That was how I blew my first account. I then saved for a few years to have (for me) a decent sized account that would allow for some meaningful profits given the activity that went into trading.
5) By all means dream big, but be realistic. Get rich quick may happen to a few but not generally to most. My original target was simply to beat the returns that a bog standard stocks and share unit trust were returning. Hopefully we'll all do much better than that as we progress, but don't think that will happen overnight. Excessive greed is a killer...
6) The information available is so vast that you can feel swamped by it. Initially - if not for longer - stick to simple trading strategies and build from there. The strategy is one thing; hitting the button is another. I needed a simple strategy with good risk management to give confidence to hit the button with a clear head. Start simple and build from there is my advice..
Finally - T2W is a great ally to have. Thanks to all
The headline lessons I have learnt over the last few years as a beginner are:
1) In many ways until you have blown up your first account you don't realise what a serious business trading is and how much respect it deserves. Just try to limit the account blow up to as little meaningful money as possible! (Im not sure the same lessons are learnt when demo trading - worthwhile as it is vis-a-vis practising entries and exits etc...)
2) Money Management and Position sizing are crucial elements of trading but often underplayed. I have found that these two disciplines alone give big confidence when entering a trade - knowing that the overall risk if the trade goes wrong is calculated and containable.
3) I have moved away from leveraged products and have stuck to stocks - purely for risk management benefits initially. If you start trading leveraged markets make sure you know what you are doing ; the blow out risks are higher.
4) Sufficient capitalisation is important. Enjoyable as it is to play the markets with a couple of grand, the temptation to go beyond recommended % of capital risk per trade becomes immense when you soon bore of making a couple of quid here and there. That was how I blew my first account. I then saved for a few years to have (for me) a decent sized account that would allow for some meaningful profits given the activity that went into trading.
5) By all means dream big, but be realistic. Get rich quick may happen to a few but not generally to most. My original target was simply to beat the returns that a bog standard stocks and share unit trust were returning. Hopefully we'll all do much better than that as we progress, but don't think that will happen overnight. Excessive greed is a killer...
6) The information available is so vast that you can feel swamped by it. Initially - if not for longer - stick to simple trading strategies and build from there. The strategy is one thing; hitting the button is another. I needed a simple strategy with good risk management to give confidence to hit the button with a clear head. Start simple and build from there is my advice..
Finally - T2W is a great ally to have. Thanks to all
