Thinking of trading

[Razor75]

Hi, I am really keen to start trading but know that it can be a very difficult industry to be successful in as well as being very risky!

I have started by trying the trading platforms such as markets.com and decided that the most sensible thing to do was to use the demo mode to see how I would get on.

I thought I would follow the experienced traders and used the £10,000 of play money in the demo mode. I was surprised to see that within a week I would have lost £5000. This showed me just how difficult it is to make money.

I need to learn more about this trade before I start to spend my own money and wondered what would be the best way to approach this?

 

[Quantt]

Hi, I am really keen to start trading but know that it can be a very difficult industry to be successful in as well as being very risky!

I have started by trying the trading platforms such as markets.com and decided that the most sensible thing to do was to use the demo mode to see how I would get on.

I thought I would follow the experienced traders and used the £10,000 of play money in the demo mode. I was surprised to see that within a week I would have lost £5000. This showed me just how difficult it is to make money.

I need to learn more about this trade before I start to spend my own money and wondered what would be the best way to approach this?

My way would be, start back testing all trading strategies you can find until you find your edge, which in my case came as an idea after testing a lot of not working strategies... One more advice: do not trust the trading educators, mentors and coaches... Good luck, it is not going to be easy, but it is going to be worth it one day...

 

[dbphoenix]

Hi, I am really keen to start trading but know that it can be a very difficult industry to be successful in as well as being very risky!

I have started by trying the trading platforms such as markets.com and decided that the most sensible thing to do was to use the demo mode to see how I would get on.

I thought I would follow the experienced traders and used the £10,000 of play money in the demo mode. I was surprised to see that within a week I would have lost £5000. This showed me just how difficult it is to make money.

I need to learn more about this trade before I start to spend my own money and wondered what would be the best way to approach this?

It's not difficult to make money if you have a solid trading plan. If you don't have a solid trading plan, then you may find that making money is next to impossible. The best way to approach this, then, is to begin formulating a trading plan, preferably one of your own rather than something you buy from somebody.

 

[Brumby]

Hi, I am really keen to start trading but know that it can be a very difficult industry to be successful in as well as being very risky!

I have started by trying the trading platforms such as markets.com and decided that the most sensible thing to do was to use the demo mode to see how I would get on.

I thought I would follow the experienced traders and used the £10,000 of play money in the demo mode. I was surprised to see that within a week I would have lost £5000. This showed me just how difficult it is to make money.

I need to learn more about this trade before I start to spend my own money and wondered what would be the best way to approach this?

Provided you are prepared to put 10 years of your life to learn maybe you might find some success. The problem is that when you start you don't know what you don't know. A lot of your time will be wasted on dead ends that lead no where. There are full of BS on the internet driven by scammers, educators, brokers et al who all want a piece of the ignorant population and their money.

You can accelerate the path through the professional end. Join a prop firm's trader program. Some firms I understand will take you into their traders program for a fee but it wouldn't be cheap.

 

[dbphoenix]

Provided you are prepared to put 10 years of your life to learn maybe you might find some success. The problem is that when you start you don't know what you don't know. A lot of your time will be wasted on dead ends that lead no where.

I was fortunate in that the first book I read was How To Make Money In Stocks, in 1988. Not only did this save a great deal of time by putting me on the right track in the first place, but I was able to avoid the whole carnival aspect of trading and investing (this was long before internet daytrading) and nearly all the dead ends (the one dead end which I fiddled with for a time but abandoned relatively quickly was indicators).

For less than four bucks, it's an expenditure that could save thousands.

 

[Brumby]

I was fortunate in that the first book I read was How To Make Money In Stocks, in 1988. Not only did this save a great deal of time by putting me on the right track in the first place, but I was able to avoid the whole carnival aspect of trading and investing (this was long before internet daytrading) and nearly all the dead ends (the one dead end which I fiddled with for a time but abandoned relatively quickly was indicators).

For less than four bucks, it's an expenditure that could save thousands.

You are fortunate to be a quick learner but unfortunately not for me.

I did a 1 year diploma course in technical analysis with the Australian Technical Analyst Association in 2001. The outcome of that was I know a whole lot about technical analysis but trading unfortunately is about behaviour development and not about knowledge. We at least have something in common. I am not a fan of indicators. I am of the view that indicators are merely a derivative of price. A trader needs to learn to directly interpret price action and order flow and not some shadow of price.

Trading can be simple and you don't need any thing complex to succeed. The problem is working through all the junk that you will acquire and then getting rid of them through the learning process. This can take years and that is besides all the work needed on the "you".

 

[Quantt]

You are fortunate to be a quick learner but unfortunately not for me.

I did a 1 year diploma course in technical analysis with the Australian Technical Analyst Association in 2001. The outcome of that was I know a whole lot about technical analysis but trading unfortunately is about behaviour development and not about knowledge. We at least have something in common. I am not a fan of indicators. I am of the view that indicators are merely a derivative of price. A trader needs to learn to directly interpret price action and order flow and not some shadow of price.

Trading can be simple and you don't need any thing complex to succeed. The problem is working through all the junk that you will acquire and then getting rid of them through the learning process. This can take years and that is besides all the work needed on the "you".

Very good summary on trading (and technical analysis) ... Good stuff!

 

[dbphoenix]

You are fortunate to be a quick learner but unfortunately not for me.

Not necessarily quick. There was a lot less junk floating around thirty years ago. Since streaming data became available to the retail trader in the late 90s, the junk has become a deluge.

The best advice I got from HTMMIS was that if one wants to understand the market, study the market, not what somebody says about the market. This virtually eliminates the junk, including the dead ends and blind alleys. All one needs to study the market is a chart -- either live streaming, delayed, or replay -- a tablet, and a box of pencils.

 

[Lee Shepherd]

Not necessarily quick. There was a lot less junk floating around thirty years ago. Since streaming data became available to the retail trader in the late 90s, the junk has become a deluge.

The best advice I got from HTMMIS was that if one wants to understand the market, study the market, not what somebody says about the market. This virtually eliminates the junk, including the dead ends and blind alleys. All one needs to study the market is a chart -- either live streaming, delayed, or replay -- a tablet, and a box of pencils.

Then the charts would be affected by all this 'junk' as you call it ???

 

[dbphoenix]

A chart is nothing more than a record of transactions. There are moments when these transactions can be affected by news, but the effect of the junk -- newsletters, advisory services, BSH recommendations, articles, "analyses", blogs, TV shows and assorted hucksterism -- tends to be self-neutralizing, even more so over a longer term. A weekly chart, for example, is not going to be affected by what some sell-side analyst somewhere said about something or other. Otherwise everybody would be following Abby Joseph Cohen. The chart, therefore, illustrates the dynamics of demand and supply without regard for what any given individual thinks about it. What fuels the demand or the supply is another matter.

 

[darktone]

Theres something to be said for striping things back and writing out your executions on a piece of paper.

 

[EnlightenedJoe]

Theres something to be said for striping things back and writing out your executions on a piece of paper.

I'd thought you'd prefer photoshop. Why write it when you can paint any picture you want ? $6 wheat, 4k dax, easy piecy.

 

[darktone]

Mind you, theres always some wonker out there piling up risk trying to work themselves straight who wouldnt have much to write

13000