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Exactly, well sorta

March 31st, 2009

When I first started in Forex, I took an excellent course, aspects of which are  only now starting to sink in.  The course started with support, resistance and trends.   I studied those very diligently and soon was drawing great lines over all my charts.   I wasn’t familiar with many of the indicators at that point. Well honestly stated, I wasn’t familiar with ANY indicators at that point. 

The end result was a chart with many lines. And, as I’m sure many traders out there are all too well aware, it’s really hard to see the chart with all those lines.  In addition, I saw new ways of looking at the charts, most of which were not correct.  

I continued to ask questions about the values of support and resistance.  Was that EURUSD resistance at 1.335 or 1.336?  What about the other time frames? Do I plot those as well?  Where should I buy now that I have all these lines and the trend is going up? Wait, the trend went down!

And so on.

Recently I noticed that support and resistance, while very critical to my current method of trading, was not an exact science.  Sure, everyone can give out those levels. And they’re all probably right.  But it wasn’t exact. They dont match up.  

I revisted one of the begining courses I took and heard something new: “Dont expect the lines to be exact”.  I had never really heard/paid attention  to that before.  So I took a very dramatic step: I emptied my charts of all indicators!  Wow, just candles.  I took a look at the different time frames of one currency pair.  I started plotting on each time frame what I thought was support and resistance. I limited it to one support line and one resistance line per time frame.  All of a sudden, my trading improved. 

Don’t expect technical analysis to be too exact

Trading times – another excuse

March 24th, 2009

Over the past few years, there’s been many folks who are concerned they are missing a lot of trades by not trading the London session.  It’s probably true.  There are a lot of good trades at that time. Forex tends to be a bit more volatile at that time.  I currently have a full time job and getting up in the middle of the night to trade would most likely interfere more with my profitability because of the lack of sleep. 

Just an excuse?  I don’t believe so.  Don’t get me wrong. There are a lot of excuses I have.  Supper, time with the family, being tired after a long day at work and oh, dont forget that great episode of 24 that’s on, among other things.  I’m a master at excuses.  I’m working on it.

But back to the time frame.  When I do get the opportunity to trade during the day, I realize  that as long as I have a plan, a technique and I stick with it, the opportunities present themselves at all times.  

Lately I’ve been looking at the setups for the EUR/GBP.  I typically look at the support and resistance levels on the daily as well as the trend .  After defining these, I take it down to the 4 hour and look there for the Support and Resistance and the trend there.   I do the same for the one hour and then for the 5 minute.   Since I have only bits of time here and there, I stick to the concept of price bouncing off of the support resistance levels.  Depending on which time period the levels are from appears to make a difference.  If price goes through a specific level, it appears to extend a bit more if the level was a higher time frame.

Then I’ll do the same for other pairs if time permits.  If I see a bounce coming, I’ll wait for a while. If not, I let it go and try again in the morning when I awake when I’m refreshed from the sleep I did get.  

Now if I can only get rid of those excuses….wait… I missed 24 last night. Guess I’m on the right track after all.

Trading can be done any time, but every time is not a good time to trade.

Where I’ve been and why I’m here

March 22nd, 2009

Pretty exciting time ahead. I’ve had a lot of great jobs and a lot of not-so-great jobs. I’ve had good side businesses on my own and no-so good ones there as well.

After a few stints in MLM and sales, discovered I’m not a sales person.  Dont get me wrong, I believe in certain products.  I can tell anyone about them..just cant sell them.

So where to turn to make some extra money that could potentially turn into my livelyhood? Motivational books kept me looking.  Then the ideas started rolling. Came down to one : make currency in the currency market.  Forex.

Fast forward a few years with a lot of CDs, DVDs and books under my belt. Lots of Expert Advisors (EA – automated trading within Metatrader) and lots of losses. 

There is money to be made in Forex. Not overnight but most every day. And there’s lots of room for error.  It’s just a matter of probability and most importantly knowing yourself.   So that’s where this blog comes in. Tracking my trades and ideas as they occur perhaps with some comments from others and their experience. As I learn, I’ll teach others.  As others learn they’ll teach others.  There’s plenty of hype out there. This aint it.  It’s work. It’s boring at times. It tests whatever needs to be tested within you.  And it pays extremely well, when it’s not taking it back.  Sounds like a perfect place to be for me.

The best technique for making money in Forex is the one designed by you.

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