Hi all,
I’m really overdue to do this. I’ve been wanting to write about my brief Trading Journey thus far , for some time now but have never been able to put pen to paper due to a lack of confidence and self embarrassment.
But it’s time to come out of the closet and share my thoughts, experiences and views on this wonderful pass time.
I want to be completely open and transparent, and as silly as what I have to say may sound I need to say it.
By starting this thread I hope to meet some like minded traders as I don’t have any friends who are interested in Trading and this creates a bit of emptiness within.
I feel a need to share my views and opinions and hopefully with experience get better at the job.
I absolutely love trading btw even in my short time I feel as though I have found the Job I want to pursue for life.
I’ve been an avid reader of the FF forums for a long time, but my few posts that I have made come out all wrong and dumb sounding so I thought that it would be better to say it all in my own thread.
I will post all my trades, though sometimes it may be after the fact. The reason being I’m a full time carer of a 1yr old baby boy so Trading is that little bit more difficult for me.
Win or lose I will post for discussion.
So my name is Con, I’m 44yo, married with 3 children. I live in Melbourne, Australia.
I stopped working full time in Sep 09 to help my wife look after our new born baby, she has since gone back to work so I am now MR Mum.
We own our house, have no debt, so I have the luxury of learning to trade at my pace with no financial pressure which I feel is of the utmost importance.
My hobbies are AFL football, Horse racing, tinkering with Computers, Motorcycling, Cars and drinking.
So how did it all begin?
Well August 09 while slaving away as a humble Clerk for a unappreciative Transport company on Night Shift I would hear a jingle on the radio. “ Learn to Trade, it’s money making money”
It’s not often that I really care about jingles but I’ve always been curious about Trading but never understood it.
A few years prior while working for a Big Brewing company the word “ Day Trader “ became very much a buzzword.
The Herald Sun started a weekly column, everyone was talking shares, our company was also giving away company shares on interest free loans.
My work friend and I were curious as his friend was apparently a successful trader.
I remember coming home one night, setting up an online trading account with my bank and funding it with $2K.
Once it was all setup, I purchased stocks in 3 companies. A telco, a mining stock, and a new online trading company. Well to cut it short my $2K became $300 a couple of months later.LOL
In fact I remember the Telco ( Onetel?) going bust, the mining stock went from 3c to .05c and that was that. WELCOME TO TRADING !!
OK that was my intro, no homework, no recommendations nothing just jumped straight in, not even charts….
Fast forwarding back to Aug 09, I filled in a web form and was sent a dvd. I was completely stoked, loved it, the concept, the charts, the terminology, I felt like a reborn Wall Street broker. LOL
I was about to throw $3K on a 2day weekend course but I didn’t. A little voice in my head was telling me it’s a waste of money. I mean I spent $3K doing a Comptia A+ tech course which taught me nothing at all that I didn’t all ready know.
It was really just a rehearsal of knowledge needed to pass exams.
Hence I thought I should research this further before committing.
Then I found Baby Pips, a wonderful intro to the world of Forex from A-Z.
The banner links led me to FXCM, my 1st broker and a demo account was born.
So I began demo trading knowing absolutely nothing at all apart from the Baby pips school. Well how easy is this ??
The game plan was simple…A pair of Bollinger Bands were the tool of choice.
Look at the charts for 15 mins before leaving for work, place 2 trades. Come home in the morning cash them in and place another 2 trades, go to sleep, wake up cash them in and open another 2 and so on.
All trades were 100K lots and by the end of week 1, I made $1200. Week 2 I made $3000.
This was so damn easy why did It take me all my life to find this…HELLALUYA BROTHER !!!
I strung 15 or so wins in a row !!!!!! Money for Jam !!!!...... LOL
I demoed for about 1 month I think, so it was time to go LIVE. FXCM was the only broker I knew of apart from GFT. Since GFT was being referred to as a bucket shop and FXCM was a real “ Non dealing desk “ broker they got the nod.
I opened up a $500 mini account on 200-1 leverage. I loved the sound of leverage. To control $10K with a mere $50 sounded like a dream come true.
At this point of time I felt really nervous about putting on my 1st trade. Don’t know why I use to have a few bets on sports and Horseracing all the time with pretty good results, a few wins a few losses but usually around even or slightly infront so I’d think.
Ist trade lasted 2 mins and I won $10.
WOW a win, I was glad to get that out of the way. No prizes for guessing what was to follow……..
I blew the account, 1st Margin Call I read about on Baby Pips, in a little over a week.
That frightened the life out of me. Not that $500 meant much to me, I mean I’ve blown thousands over the years on cars, motorcycles etc. But just the way it all fell apart after a successful stint at demo had me pondering WHY??
And all so quickly…I did the maths and thought I can’t afford to blow $25K in 12 months.
PlanB was in order…learn more and demo more!!!
I did a course offered by FXCM which was free for account holders. This was a slight step up from Baby pips. I read a book, “ Currency trading for Dummies “ great title, and some more demoing. At this point of time I was experimenting with time frames. MA’s, all the bells and whistles. Again I was having great success with Demo, $2K a week no problem.
OK ready for another shot. This time I thought $1K account was better, room to breathe so to speak.LOL
At this stage I began to observe news events and massive moves in short duration. I know you guys know where this is going, haha…
BUY the spikes was a no brainer. LOL
OK a few more failed trades. Then the big one in which I still haven’t recovered from. I know you need to move on, but 1 big loss relative to account size can leave deep wounds. This one still haunts me even though I understand why I just can’t let it go!!!
After observing AUD moves with RBA meetings, and making some good cash on the demo with this strategy I was going live.
I had convinced myself that Interest rates were NOT going up that day. EURO dramas were beginning and a bit of fear was creeping into the markets.
My plan was 5 mini lots buy or sell depending on the decision.
Eyes firmly focussed on the FF calendar, hands were shaking, nervous as… The result came out and it was a black figure, AHA I was right, ‘SELL” !!
I wanted 100 pips, I thought it was a given. It actually went my way for over 20 pips and then began reversing. Nah it can’t reverse, IR didn’t go up so I held, watched my gains go from plus $110 to minus. I told the wife what ever I say don’t let me cancel the trade…My stop was above yesterdays high, it can’t break that impossible!!
Needless to say I lost $500 in one swoop in a little over 1 hour.
I couldn’t understand till the evening news came on TV saying IR went up, WTF ???
AHHHH my mistake, I looked on the FF calendar and took the expected increase as a it didn’t happen. Looking for a red or green figure it was just black and I assumed they didn’t go up. Neglected to notice the expected column.
With my new account dwindled down to about $100 I took another dumb trade on the USD/JPY, my most hated and costly pair and saw another margin call.
OK 2 accounts trashed, demo good, what’s going on??
I can’t answer that, it still plagues me.
Method, Emotions, so many problems. They say the Markets will work out what sort of person you are and that’s dead right.
At the time I felt like a torn apart emotional wreck, these days sometimes I still do.
The problem here was that I couldn’t and still can’t replicate demo results in real accounts. So what is the solution to that??
It’s obvious isn’t it ?? SACK YOUR BROKER !!!! LOL
Not that FXCM were to blame specifically for my flaws but I felt that my account with them was cursed. Infact that was my reason on their account closure form.
A few things I didn’t like: The platform, while nice and easy to use, the EMA’s would move to a different position if you went back a few days to look at history and come back the EMA was in a different spot. WTF ??
If you refreshed it was good, but go back a few days and again it moved, how do I know which is correct??? It was obviously repainting depending on periods on your screen but it was enough to peeve me off!!
Amongst other things were I’m sure every traders pet hate, taken out by 1 pip only to see price reverse, don’t you just hate that !!!
I felt like they were gunning for my 1 mini lot. LOL
It took me a while to work out that I was putting my stops where my limit order should have been. Instead of buying or selling from that point and waiting for a retest of price, I would use stop sell or buy orders under or over the price action and putting my stop loss where the retest price action would occur.
This drove me nuts…..thankfully I don’t do that anymore, well maybe sometimes but not as regular. I was a sitting duck for the market to take me out regardless if I picked the right or wrong direction. Not to mention the risk reward ratio would be horrible with this tactic.
Please note I’m not specifically having a go at the broker only expressing my feelings and thoughts of my journey thus far.
I’ve got a lot more to add but I’ll leave it here for now and continue when I have some more time.
I hope I haven’t bored too many people…..
I’m really overdue to do this. I’ve been wanting to write about my brief Trading Journey thus far , for some time now but have never been able to put pen to paper due to a lack of confidence and self embarrassment.
But it’s time to come out of the closet and share my thoughts, experiences and views on this wonderful pass time.
I want to be completely open and transparent, and as silly as what I have to say may sound I need to say it.
By starting this thread I hope to meet some like minded traders as I don’t have any friends who are interested in Trading and this creates a bit of emptiness within.
I feel a need to share my views and opinions and hopefully with experience get better at the job.
I absolutely love trading btw even in my short time I feel as though I have found the Job I want to pursue for life.
I’ve been an avid reader of the FF forums for a long time, but my few posts that I have made come out all wrong and dumb sounding so I thought that it would be better to say it all in my own thread.
I will post all my trades, though sometimes it may be after the fact. The reason being I’m a full time carer of a 1yr old baby boy so Trading is that little bit more difficult for me.
Win or lose I will post for discussion.
So my name is Con, I’m 44yo, married with 3 children. I live in Melbourne, Australia.
I stopped working full time in Sep 09 to help my wife look after our new born baby, she has since gone back to work so I am now MR Mum.
We own our house, have no debt, so I have the luxury of learning to trade at my pace with no financial pressure which I feel is of the utmost importance.
My hobbies are AFL football, Horse racing, tinkering with Computers, Motorcycling, Cars and drinking.
So how did it all begin?
Well August 09 while slaving away as a humble Clerk for a unappreciative Transport company on Night Shift I would hear a jingle on the radio. “ Learn to Trade, it’s money making money”
It’s not often that I really care about jingles but I’ve always been curious about Trading but never understood it.
A few years prior while working for a Big Brewing company the word “ Day Trader “ became very much a buzzword.
The Herald Sun started a weekly column, everyone was talking shares, our company was also giving away company shares on interest free loans.
My work friend and I were curious as his friend was apparently a successful trader.
I remember coming home one night, setting up an online trading account with my bank and funding it with $2K.
Once it was all setup, I purchased stocks in 3 companies. A telco, a mining stock, and a new online trading company. Well to cut it short my $2K became $300 a couple of months later.LOL
In fact I remember the Telco ( Onetel?) going bust, the mining stock went from 3c to .05c and that was that. WELCOME TO TRADING !!
OK that was my intro, no homework, no recommendations nothing just jumped straight in, not even charts….
Fast forwarding back to Aug 09, I filled in a web form and was sent a dvd. I was completely stoked, loved it, the concept, the charts, the terminology, I felt like a reborn Wall Street broker. LOL
I was about to throw $3K on a 2day weekend course but I didn’t. A little voice in my head was telling me it’s a waste of money. I mean I spent $3K doing a Comptia A+ tech course which taught me nothing at all that I didn’t all ready know.
It was really just a rehearsal of knowledge needed to pass exams.
Hence I thought I should research this further before committing.
Then I found Baby Pips, a wonderful intro to the world of Forex from A-Z.
The banner links led me to FXCM, my 1st broker and a demo account was born.
So I began demo trading knowing absolutely nothing at all apart from the Baby pips school. Well how easy is this ??
The game plan was simple…A pair of Bollinger Bands were the tool of choice.
Look at the charts for 15 mins before leaving for work, place 2 trades. Come home in the morning cash them in and place another 2 trades, go to sleep, wake up cash them in and open another 2 and so on.
All trades were 100K lots and by the end of week 1, I made $1200. Week 2 I made $3000.
This was so damn easy why did It take me all my life to find this…HELLALUYA BROTHER !!!
I strung 15 or so wins in a row !!!!!! Money for Jam !!!!...... LOL
I demoed for about 1 month I think, so it was time to go LIVE. FXCM was the only broker I knew of apart from GFT. Since GFT was being referred to as a bucket shop and FXCM was a real “ Non dealing desk “ broker they got the nod.
I opened up a $500 mini account on 200-1 leverage. I loved the sound of leverage. To control $10K with a mere $50 sounded like a dream come true.
At this point of time I felt really nervous about putting on my 1st trade. Don’t know why I use to have a few bets on sports and Horseracing all the time with pretty good results, a few wins a few losses but usually around even or slightly infront so I’d think.
Ist trade lasted 2 mins and I won $10.
WOW a win, I was glad to get that out of the way. No prizes for guessing what was to follow……..
I blew the account, 1st Margin Call I read about on Baby Pips, in a little over a week.
That frightened the life out of me. Not that $500 meant much to me, I mean I’ve blown thousands over the years on cars, motorcycles etc. But just the way it all fell apart after a successful stint at demo had me pondering WHY??
And all so quickly…I did the maths and thought I can’t afford to blow $25K in 12 months.
PlanB was in order…learn more and demo more!!!
I did a course offered by FXCM which was free for account holders. This was a slight step up from Baby pips. I read a book, “ Currency trading for Dummies “ great title, and some more demoing. At this point of time I was experimenting with time frames. MA’s, all the bells and whistles. Again I was having great success with Demo, $2K a week no problem.
OK ready for another shot. This time I thought $1K account was better, room to breathe so to speak.LOL
At this stage I began to observe news events and massive moves in short duration. I know you guys know where this is going, haha…
BUY the spikes was a no brainer. LOL
OK a few more failed trades. Then the big one in which I still haven’t recovered from. I know you need to move on, but 1 big loss relative to account size can leave deep wounds. This one still haunts me even though I understand why I just can’t let it go!!!
After observing AUD moves with RBA meetings, and making some good cash on the demo with this strategy I was going live.
I had convinced myself that Interest rates were NOT going up that day. EURO dramas were beginning and a bit of fear was creeping into the markets.
My plan was 5 mini lots buy or sell depending on the decision.
Eyes firmly focussed on the FF calendar, hands were shaking, nervous as… The result came out and it was a black figure, AHA I was right, ‘SELL” !!
I wanted 100 pips, I thought it was a given. It actually went my way for over 20 pips and then began reversing. Nah it can’t reverse, IR didn’t go up so I held, watched my gains go from plus $110 to minus. I told the wife what ever I say don’t let me cancel the trade…My stop was above yesterdays high, it can’t break that impossible!!
Needless to say I lost $500 in one swoop in a little over 1 hour.
I couldn’t understand till the evening news came on TV saying IR went up, WTF ???
AHHHH my mistake, I looked on the FF calendar and took the expected increase as a it didn’t happen. Looking for a red or green figure it was just black and I assumed they didn’t go up. Neglected to notice the expected column.
With my new account dwindled down to about $100 I took another dumb trade on the USD/JPY, my most hated and costly pair and saw another margin call.
OK 2 accounts trashed, demo good, what’s going on??
I can’t answer that, it still plagues me.
Method, Emotions, so many problems. They say the Markets will work out what sort of person you are and that’s dead right.
At the time I felt like a torn apart emotional wreck, these days sometimes I still do.
The problem here was that I couldn’t and still can’t replicate demo results in real accounts. So what is the solution to that??
It’s obvious isn’t it ?? SACK YOUR BROKER !!!! LOL
Not that FXCM were to blame specifically for my flaws but I felt that my account with them was cursed. Infact that was my reason on their account closure form.
A few things I didn’t like: The platform, while nice and easy to use, the EMA’s would move to a different position if you went back a few days to look at history and come back the EMA was in a different spot. WTF ??
If you refreshed it was good, but go back a few days and again it moved, how do I know which is correct??? It was obviously repainting depending on periods on your screen but it was enough to peeve me off!!
Amongst other things were I’m sure every traders pet hate, taken out by 1 pip only to see price reverse, don’t you just hate that !!!
I felt like they were gunning for my 1 mini lot. LOL
It took me a while to work out that I was putting my stops where my limit order should have been. Instead of buying or selling from that point and waiting for a retest of price, I would use stop sell or buy orders under or over the price action and putting my stop loss where the retest price action would occur.
This drove me nuts…..thankfully I don’t do that anymore, well maybe sometimes but not as regular. I was a sitting duck for the market to take me out regardless if I picked the right or wrong direction. Not to mention the risk reward ratio would be horrible with this tactic.
Please note I’m not specifically having a go at the broker only expressing my feelings and thoughts of my journey thus far.
I’ve got a lot more to add but I’ll leave it here for now and continue when I have some more time.
I hope I haven’t bored too many people…..