replies to queries

Q. Can you tell what price I should enter a trade from the charts you post.

A. No, I do not give financial advice and the point of this blog is to give you information on how you can do it yourself. Hire a signal service or managed fund if you want the easy route.


Q. How long does it take to learn to make money at trading?

A. Impossible to say, some people make it within a few years, others spend many many years and others will never make it. On average 15% of retail traders do make it. But most media reports are of the massive failures, because bad news sells better than good news.


Q. I notice price takes less time to fall than it does rise. Why is this?

A. Humans are generally negative in their outlook and when something as important as your money is being lost in a falling market, people will close the position and not take a hit. Market timing of entries and exits would eliminate much of that problem, which is how pro money make money.


Q. Can I trade with x amount?

A. You can trade with one penny if you wish, but it will never amount to anything. You need a few thousand USD or Euro to even scrape a living from trading. Not all trades will win and managing money on small accounts is critical, there simply is such little margin for losses that climbing back up from losses will be tough.


Q. Why dont you use indicators?

A. I have no desire to trade like the 85% of retail traders and loose. Price is the only indicator I need and plotted against time as a candle suits me just fine. All indicators have price somewhere in their make up as a variable and a math function built around that. Why manipulate price into a nonsensical distracting indicator and pretend it is a confirming signal when there are more accurate ways to see price shown as a candle?


Q. What time frame should I trade?

A. One that is suitable to your funds and risk appetite. You cannot trade high time frames with low funded accounts and you wont be able to take draw down either. If you work during the day you cannot trade anything less than a daily chart, unless your boss has no problem with you using company time to trade.


Q. Are there times in the market when it is risky?

A. The market is always a risky place and anything can happen. But the announced ahead of time news releases are common times around which not to place trades. Price can swing wildly on news releases and you can chose to close open trades, tighten stops or take profits and adjust position size.


Q. Do robots work?

A. Ask me again on April 1st.


Q. How does high frequency trading work.

A. They are very expensive trading robots costing one million+ dollars and the algorithms are trade secrets. The hint is the secret part.


Q. What is the best pair to trade?

A. Pick one and learn how it works, all pairs have a character and get to grips with it over time. The spread of the pair can also be a factor such as non majors where the cost in trading them in the spread alone is expensive.


Q. I keep getting into trades which work for a short time, then reverse and stop me out. What am I doing wrong?

A. The obvious answer is the most logical one. You entered in the wrong direction and at the wrong time. Your chart reading skills need work. The right thing you done was having a hard stop set.


Q. Sometimes I sit watching the charts and waiting for an entry, when suddenly the market takes off without me and I cant get an entry.

A. New guy alert!......you should know well in advance which direction you want to go and a narrow price range where you will place the trade. If you dont do this you will ultimately loose your funds. When price moves suddenly and keeps on going, it is likely it is from higher time frame cycles. All is not lost once you can find where the next probable area is for price to react, and wait for a pull back before that. If price moved in the direction opposite to where you thought it was going to go, its time for more chart reading time and find out the reason why you picked the wrong direction.


Q. I get bored waiting for big moves and want to scalp on the 1 and 5 minute charts and pull even a few pips out of the market.

A. Good luck with that and if you can make money doing it, you will be only the third guy ever that I know of who managed to pull it off. Given the broker spread and the narrow ranges involved it is a tough way to trade and what is helpful is having a healthy heart and be mentally stable. Because soon into scalping you may develop problems in either of those areas!

And to be correct the term I use in Points. Percentage in point (pip). Forex traders really destroy the meaning of what is already defined.