Forex Trading for Earlier Retirement

mrkidd85

Someone I know has said he's doing really well on this and has offered me a trial on his tips. I come across so many Forex traders on Instagram but this lad seems genuine and I've known him to be an honest person. I have to deposit £250 minimum but was wondering if anyone else has done well through these tipsters.

Gambler101

mrkidd85 wrote: »

Someone I know has said he's doing really well on this and has offered me a trial on his tips. I come across so many Forex traders on Instagram but this lad seems genuine and I've known him to be an honest person. I have to deposit £250 minimum but was wondering if anyone else has done well through these tipsters.

You cant beat the spread, its like tossing a coin with a payout of 45p for a £1 bet.

lr1277

I am probably going to get flamed for this but here goes.

1) From what I have read, you shouldn't be using systems. Because once the conditions change, the system doesn't work any more. I have experience of this from about 16 years ago and an investment club of which I was a member.

2) There are many different kinds of trading. Some which mean you have to watch the screen every minute of every day and others where you can spend a couple of hours and then you are done. However the less time you spend at the screen, the bigger your initial pot needs to be (IMHO). Also you may need to wait longer for your trade to reach the Take Profit value.

3) If you take the watching the screen every minute style, then it can be be very very boring. Can you watch the screen all day as the exchange rate moves up and down.

4) You need to have the right psychology. I didn't for a long time and probably still don't. I had a demo account and I wouldn't trade that because I might lose money. IN A DEMO ACCOUNT!!!! You can imagine what I was like with a real account.

5) I have been on a few courses and some of them are very good taught by experienced traders. One possible reason they are doing this is to do something more interesting than watching the screen all day (IMHO). Also teaching courses uses your brain and your communication skills which some people may find satisfying.

6) Can i list those courses, probably not. However at the moment I am signed up to a broker who provides weekly teaching sessions on various subjects. My account manager can be helpful too. It helps that I am not far from London, as that is where my broker is based.

7) One thing I have been taught by my broker is money management. You will be more profitable if you manage your trades than trying to find a winning trade every time. For example if you enter trade where you can lose x pounds, then there also needs to be a scenario where you make/win 3x pounds. So say you trade 10 times, You only have be profitable on 3 trades to have 7 trades go south. It is also possible you will have all 10 trades go south.

8) You only make (or lose money) when the markets are going somewhere i.e. up or down. If the markets aren't moving then there are fewer to no opportunities to make money. However given the current geopolitical events....... But there can be whole days/weeks where the particular market you are following doesn't move far from a median value.

To wrap up, I am currently trading in a demo account with some wins and losses. Once I gain the confidence, I will move onto using real money.

HTH

lr1277

One thing I forgot to mention in my last post was Tradercast. This is not a recommendation as I don't entirely get on with it.
But the premise is that trading can be lonely and boring. So Tradercast brings together traders on one site. They share trading ideas which you can follow or not. The person who owns/runs the site is Phillip Konchar and IMHO he is an experienced trader who makes money doing this. I think he understands the different psychologies/attitudes that people bring to trading and can determine the kind of trading they should be doing. However he has only mentioned it briefly before and I haven't asked him for an analysis of me.
I think every weekday they run 2hr sessions, twice a day to go over the markets. (9:30 and 13:30).
Tradercast occassionally have meetups in London but I haven't been to one yet.
I believe there is a trial period but after that it is £40/month.

Like I said, I may not continue with them, but thought I would let you know FWIW.

HTH

jimjames

lr1277 wrote: »

To wrap up, I am currently trading in a demo account with some wins and losses. Once I gain the confidence, I will move onto using real money.

HTH

So you've been investing for 16 years and are still only using a demo account for Forex trading? I'm not sure that really shows a lot of benefit for trading but I'd expect that you will lose money once you start for real - probably the reason you've not taken the plunge yet I imagine.

grey_gym_sock

"money management" doesn't make your trades more profitable, or at all profitable. it is rather like betting on a roulette wheel in a casino. by choosing to bet on a single number, instead of on red or black, you only need a small percentage of your bets to win for you to come out ahead. but the odds are stacked against you however you bet (it's just a bit easier to see how they're stacked with roulette, because you can count the slots in the wheel).

you can also make your money last longer by not betting too much on 1 spin / trade. but this is pretty pointless, since you're almost certainly going to lose all the money you're playing with eventually. why not cut this boring process short, and go out and get a job? most jobs actually pay you (ok, except unpaid internships; and zero-hours contracts don't pay you all the time). most jobs involve some social interaction, too. many jobs (though not all) are of some broader benefit to society, unlike trading forex.

your description of trading almost made me feel sorry for lone traders. except that the solution is in their own hands: get a job instead. i know many jobs are really crap nowadays. but clearly traders are not the most desperate, or they'd have got a job already. and because they have some capital to start with. why not spend it on some kind of training for a proper job instead, so they can get a non-crappy job?

going back to trading itself, IMHO the whole system vs psychology thing is essentially a con - often, with traders conning themselves. as you say, no system works all the time. but what are "methods" of trading? in effect, they are incomplete systems: they almost tell you how to trade, but leave some of it down to your "judgement" or "psychology". so when it goes wrong, you tell yourself you misjudged the situation, or you had the wrong psychology. but if there were a right and wrong way to fill in the gaps in the "method", it could be filled in, and it would become a complete system. but we know that doesn't work. the "method" is actually useless. the whole thing is a process of flailing around in the dark, randomly losing or winning in the short term (but almost certainly losing overall in the long term), while blaming yourself for not being a good enough trader (or falsely believing you're getting better over time), when it is all down to luck.

never underestimate the ability of the human mind to see patterns where there is just noise.

"You only make (or lose money) when the markets are going somewhere i.e. up or down." ... this is mostly another way of saying that systems or methods don't (always) work. but of course you do lose in flat markets, from costs of trades, and because your capital could be gainfully used elsewhere, as could your time.

seacaitch

Suckers will always find ways of giving other people their money.

grey_gym_sock

mrkidd85 wrote: »

Someone I know has said he's doing really well on this and has offered me a trial on his tips. I come across so many Forex traders on Instagram but this lad seems genuine and I've known him to be an honest person. I have to deposit £250 minimum but was wondering if anyone else has done well through these tipsters.

anybody can be lucky trading for a while. then their luck runs out. he may be honest. he may believe it's not just luck. none of that will stop it going wrong. don't do it.

Malthusian

mrkidd85 wrote: »

I have to deposit £250 minimum but was wondering if anyone else has done well through these tipsters.

Yes, the tipsters.

Other than the people who own the forex / betting platform, they are the only ones who make money out of forex.