Discussion
t.robuk said:
Instagram is full of big follower count types running ads flogging courses or sig groups - loads of teens now doing it - some make a few grand and all is well, but I would imagine the wider picture is a grim one.
The person selling the course gets a kickback from the broker. Roughly 1/3rd of what the client invests. So minimum deposit is £350, they get about £100. Then they get a small kickback from every trade, maybe £1 or so. The instagram person actually benefits if they lose money, as they have to deposit more. If they invest £350 and take out £1k 20 trades later that's not good. I've been seriously tempted to sign up to one and trade from a dummy account to see quite how much they lose, but life is too short.
FWIW, I don't trade FX, but trade commodities and all newbies at work take at least 3 months to get signed off to trade, it then takes them another 6 months or so before they really know quite what they're doing, and another 6 months before they get good at it. As a rule, anyone with less than 12 months experience loses money, and that is with all the data feeds and real time information we have to hand, and with the mentoring and oversight from some good, experienced guys. The idea that anyone can just start as a hobby and be good at it, especially when trading your own money is bonkers.
I tried this about 10 years ago so things might have changed since then. Basically I didn't trade with real money (you can get "test" accounts) but to cut a long story short I could never get trading to work, but here are some of my random observations from that experience that may help you:
1) Look at a poster called "cloggie" on forex factory, who although apparently successful has not been active for along time but has some interesting insights and is very much at variance from 99% of other forex traders.
2) forex has a low barrier to entry and is one of those things where there is 99.99% spam / rubbish / people trying to make money off of "teaching" forex or suggesting the next big thing (tip - if they are so confident how come they don't invest their own money in it)
3) the way to make money in forex trading is to correctly time the peaks and troughs and pullbacks in the price before it goes the other way. That's it. In theory very simple, in practice very hard.
4) There is no point trading the news - by the time the news is out there it will be reflected in the price. When I was learning there were Bloomberg terminals which professions / institutional traders hired at great cost to get the news fed to them a fraction of a second before it became publicly available.
5) forex trading is essentially a random gamble. For all the "systems", methods, techniques, tools, analysis available most at great cost to your wallet, etc etc you are essentially trying to predict the future based on past events, a woeful task that will generally end in failure. Where the skill element comes into it is using stops religiously to ensure you limit your losses. With the current wild fluctuations in the market, and short term swings this is made very difficult as you will hit your stop without having sufficient time in the trade to ensure that you make any significant return.
6) The "direction" of the commodity is what you should be aiming to predict which again in principle sounds straightforward if you can eyeball a graph and understand the longer term landscape,again short term blips mean that your stop will be hit almost immediately.
7) Psychological price points eg 1.00 : 1.00 EUR to GBP the price might be "testing" the price point as part of its downward trajectrory, if it breaks through then it may make a further jump and some pips may be won. Bear in mind there are countless automated programs already set up to look for exactly this pattern / price behaviour and they will be set to buy / sell when it occurs.
8) The main thing to be successful is to have discipline - how easy will you find it to not get rid of your position when the losses are mounting. Basically you need to be emotionally detached from your trades, not so easy when it is your money on the line. You need to be like a robot with your stops - if the price hits x or y then you are out, no ifs or maybes. This is the only really skillful element in forex trading, everything else is essentially gambling.
9) Decide whether you are a day trader or in it for the longer term eg months / years. Day trading / scalping is very nerve wracking and you are looking to scrape a few pips here and there. To be successful your trades will on balance need to net more pips than they lose. If you are doing longer term trades then you will probably have fewer positions open and will probably have a wider range between stop positions.
1) Look at a poster called "cloggie" on forex factory, who although apparently successful has not been active for along time but has some interesting insights and is very much at variance from 99% of other forex traders.
2) forex has a low barrier to entry and is one of those things where there is 99.99% spam / rubbish / people trying to make money off of "teaching" forex or suggesting the next big thing (tip - if they are so confident how come they don't invest their own money in it)
3) the way to make money in forex trading is to correctly time the peaks and troughs and pullbacks in the price before it goes the other way. That's it. In theory very simple, in practice very hard.
4) There is no point trading the news - by the time the news is out there it will be reflected in the price. When I was learning there were Bloomberg terminals which professions / institutional traders hired at great cost to get the news fed to them a fraction of a second before it became publicly available.
5) forex trading is essentially a random gamble. For all the "systems", methods, techniques, tools, analysis available most at great cost to your wallet, etc etc you are essentially trying to predict the future based on past events, a woeful task that will generally end in failure. Where the skill element comes into it is using stops religiously to ensure you limit your losses. With the current wild fluctuations in the market, and short term swings this is made very difficult as you will hit your stop without having sufficient time in the trade to ensure that you make any significant return.
6) The "direction" of the commodity is what you should be aiming to predict which again in principle sounds straightforward if you can eyeball a graph and understand the longer term landscape,again short term blips mean that your stop will be hit almost immediately.
7) Psychological price points eg 1.00 : 1.00 EUR to GBP the price might be "testing" the price point as part of its downward trajectrory, if it breaks through then it may make a further jump and some pips may be won. Bear in mind there are countless automated programs already set up to look for exactly this pattern / price behaviour and they will be set to buy / sell when it occurs.
8) The main thing to be successful is to have discipline - how easy will you find it to not get rid of your position when the losses are mounting. Basically you need to be emotionally detached from your trades, not so easy when it is your money on the line. You need to be like a robot with your stops - if the price hits x or y then you are out, no ifs or maybes. This is the only really skillful element in forex trading, everything else is essentially gambling.
9) Decide whether you are a day trader or in it for the longer term eg months / years. Day trading / scalping is very nerve wracking and you are looking to scrape a few pips here and there. To be successful your trades will on balance need to net more pips than they lose. If you are doing longer term trades then you will probably have fewer positions open and will probably have a wider range between stop positions.
Forex gets a bad press due to the amount of folk out there who are scamming, or selling courses/ea's/,mentoring.
I have been looking into it for the last few years, gave up trying to trade myself a while ago, generally anyone offering insane monthly returns upwards of 10% stay away from. Likewise mentoring / courses, everything you need is online, babypips, there will be a small number of trustworthly trade copiers, i am still to find someone, if anyone knows of a decent one let me know
I have been looking into it for the last few years, gave up trying to trade myself a while ago, generally anyone offering insane monthly returns upwards of 10% stay away from. Likewise mentoring / courses, everything you need is online, babypips, there will be a small number of trustworthly trade copiers, i am still to find someone, if anyone knows of a decent one let me know
layercake said:
Forex gets a bad press due to the amount of folk out there who are scamming, or selling courses/ea's/,mentoring.
I have been looking into it for the last few years, gave up trying to trade myself a while ago, generally anyone offering insane monthly returns upwards of 10% stay away from. Likewise mentoring / courses, everything you need is online, babypips, there will be a small number of trustworthly trade copiers, i am still to find someone, if anyone knows of a decent one let me know
@kez.the.guru tells us you can make 5-figures a month with his 'Autotrader' getting involved in his team I have been looking into it for the last few years, gave up trying to trade myself a while ago, generally anyone offering insane monthly returns upwards of 10% stay away from. Likewise mentoring / courses, everything you need is online, babypips, there will be a small number of trustworthly trade copiers, i am still to find someone, if anyone knows of a decent one let me know
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