james16 Chart Thread

TiaForex · #**17387** Dec 22, 2008 5:56am

Quote:

Originally Posted by biatche

Just got into this a month ago. Did live trading, im pretty breakeven on my own. Imitated trades from some uh.. 'pros with years of experience' and lost some 400 pips there lol. Never again. Never again. I went through babypips not a couple of times, but once. Went through stockcharts.com as well. I'll take everyone's advice and read all posts... if I'm ever disciplined enough to do so. That's some 1000 posts. It's definitely going to take a long while. Should I have some prerequisite readings before I get into this thread?

Everyone here is very...

Welcome and good luck.

Jim (James16) suggests 3 months of consecutive profit in demo before going live. It sounds like a drag but it saves you a ton of money in the long run. He also suggests focussing on the daily and weekly timeframes at first no matter what you see here. It helps to build up confidence which is an essential piece of the puzzle.

Sometimes you see people saying 'I only just started, and I've gone live, and what do you think of this 15minute pinbar". Everyone's journey to success is different so I'm not knocking any approach but in my opinion that puts you at a real disadvantage if you're a new trader.

Enjoy the process and we're all here for you if you need anything

TiaForex · #**17420** Dec 22, 2008 5:51pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by biatche

My goal is to earn money as fast as possible. From my 1 month of 'experience', I believe that, there's only 1 optimal playstyle for a given amount of _time_ a person can spend each day, the time he/she plays. I have the whole day and so I'm more leaning towards 5-15min TF. From previous responses in this thread, it is my understanding now that, I need to play daily/hourly so that I'm playing with the trend, and the big picture. I probably need experience on that. My purpose is then to obtain the important points of this method as soon as possible...

I'd recommend reading this thread through from the start, at least the first 60-70 pages. That'll answer a lot of your questions about time frames and bar formations. PA on the weekly is more reliable than PA on the daily, PA on the daily is more reliable than PA on the 4H and so on.

It's great that you have time, you'll learn everything quicker. If you get bored while playing the higher timeframes, I'd recommend using the extra time to educate yourself and backtest. Read this thread, and look over old charts. Perhaps use a backtesting program like VHands or forextester.

The quicker you can master the higher timeframes, the quicker you can move down if that's what you want. Many people stay on the daily and weekly because believe it or not they make more money that way. But it's personal preference. Just remember that your journey to your goals will take a lot longer if you lose a stack of money along the way.

Also if you're worried about how long it will take, I suggest you play around with a compound interest calculator. You'd be surprised how quickly 2%-4% a month compounded can become a huge some of money.

Good luck!

TiaForex · #**22168** Feb 22, 2009 4:03am

Quote:

Originally Posted by jlmac27

This is what I do.I use Oanda as my broker and MT4 as my charting.I have a hard time treating demo as real so I stick to a very low pip value and trade live.If I lose $2.00 on a trade I think I can handle it.This is just me though.
I know James stresses the use of demo.This just works for me.

This is a completely valid approach and utterly in line with James16's thinking. As long as the losses are tiny some people prefer the use of a very very small live account to demo as it gives them more focus and more appreciation of the live trading environment.

I personally don't see how you can go wrong with this approach as long as the amounts really are small, and that you're not tempted to blast up to maximum funding levels just because you've had a good run.