PYenner

Doc Some comments on an earlier post, then I will try to have less to say. A Type Personalities and the markets- The over-achievers may be drawn to the markets, challenge, reward, risk, ego validation, its all there for the adventurer. Just the cocktail they go for, make it a double, no, gimme the bottle. The markets are certainly not a place for the faint hearted. Superwoman hits the wall- With hitting a wall there is a loss of abilities or options in the sense that you have to treat some areas as no-go zones for your own protection. With falling down a hole there can be a loss of dreams, the gut felt ones that are near the core of a person. Those can take decades to replace and then only with watered down versions in comparison. In both cases perspectives are gained that few have, but at a hell of a price. The brilliant thing about your dream is that it has a double reward system built into it. A fuller reward than the rest of us can take from the markets. Well done, the constructive dreams are the hardest to find and pursue, but they are the only ones that really count for much. Some quotes from Eleanor Roosevelt- A woman is like a tea bag- you never know how strong she is until she gets in hot water. Do what you feel in your heart to be right - for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't. Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people.

Torero The mistakes were ones I have made before and partly continue to make. The denial is more in continuing to trade without fixing them all. They will repeat until they are fixed. On the large account I could avoid losses by trading with the trend and letting a trade go into drawdown until the trend rescued it. It didn't stop me trading. On a small account drawdown is paralysing, it is better to take the loss sooner so you can continue trading. Of course if you call the trend wrong and allow drawdown, that is double trouble. If you overtrade that is triple trouble, so guess what I did... yeh all three at once. The only thing I did right was close out at the mental (well chosen term) limit. Yeh, the price came back 50 pips the next morning too, rats. A bunch of sadly familiar mistakes, the temptation to overtrade looks to be the most persistent denial. Go to so much trouble to analyse the market to reduce the gamble and then introduce gambles of my own making. On the loss of equity, I was both fearful and determined. I have tried to trade back blown demo accounts and know it is close to impossible. Nerves took the equity down to 60% before it came up again. At that level it was serious but not desperate. I think the reason I could sleep was that I recognized that stupid mistakes had caused the damage, not bad luck. Mistakes can be learned from. Blaming luck would be a greater denial. Overtrading should be less tempting as the equity becomes more comfortable. Less stress, less temptation. Less temptation, less stress. It has been a full on 6 month battle against the forex learning curve to get this far. To me a 5k account is not a comfortable equity, 15k has been my initial target. The platform from which to approach the future.

Thanks Doc and Walter. Watched my brother overwork, he is still on Prozac 7 years later. Came close to doing the same but stopped short of Prozac. Watching a cousin do the same thing, risk trading off health to achieve goals. Few understand what they stand to lose, by the time they learn its a bit late. Yes, addictive nature, true. Only a deliberate persistent intervention might succeed. It does need to go on the list sooner rather than later. Thanks for the wishes. Regards

Hi Blowfish Yes the mind is the greatest friend and the greatest liablity. Doc has just opened my eyes to the fact that I treat myself worse than I would treat a slave, so much for my mind. I was running a long term trade for the first time. A month in the stalking, a week in this final rise. The steps were coming about a day apart but being used to following my trades I insanely attempted to track a continuous trade continuously. I think in future I will have to do as others do, set a timetable and to hell with what I miss. That or just get used to leaving a trade running "blind". I seem to have made enough mental adjustments to read the market ok. That has been the first priority. But have failed totally at managing myself, don't even have a plan for that. It was more myself that I was forcing, I had actually waited for the market to come to me, but then all the sideways nonsense was doing my head in. Thinking about what Doc said, I began to realise that the bulk of my life has been run by instinct rather than reason, kind of driven but to what real purpose or gain? Only rarely have I stepped back and chosen to set my instinctive nature aside and take a more deliberate approach. I see many here talking of the deliberate steps they take to ensure quality of life, or mind. I have to start managing myself much more sensibly. In the last 15 years, Xmas day is the only day off I have had. A few years had months of 80 hr weeks, the record was a 120 hr week. That is the sort of nut I have been, but it had been the only way to get ahead and out of a hole. Now I work part time but the mental slave driving thing still goes on. The last time I tried to have a walk on a beach it failed, the schedule in my head just kept on reciting what needed to be done. Somewhere down the line life somehow got too serious. A lack of alternatives had a lot to do with that. Time to make myself smell some roses. Can I just say thanks to some really decent refreshing people I have encountered here. I think I have just passed the 5% test if you know what I mean Very exhausted but very happy to finally have found a vocation, next priority may be a vacation. Cheers to all.

Sounds like a nice life Walter. Yeah, the air around trees is special, a good place to be.

Thanks Torero Yes, I made things worse by demo trading on a $100K demo account which is a breeze compared to a startup account. The stakes are so much greater when your equity is limited and when you are trading out of your own money instead of out of profit. On top of that is the awareness of exponential potential, which might change a person's life, or simply waste their life chasing a false promise. Doc Oh dear, confession time. Meditation? puts me to sleep (all go or all stop). Yoga or pilates? try zombie hours, dozing off at the desk, coffee and smokes to stay awake, arrgh. Okay bullseye on that one. My frustration comes largely from impatience, forex moves a turtle speed. Yes it is all in the mind isn't it? The size of the stake has a lot to do with it. I am comfortable with a certain level of risk or gambling, but as the stakes get higher there comes a struggle with risk aversion. The strangest thing of all is that when I do take some damage it bothers me less, I can sleep like a baby afterwards, weird!!

Thanks Doc I could use some talk on "chart stress", after 3 hours of jumping at positive and negative signals I look back at a chart that went nowhere useful and wonder why the hell I reacted so strongly to it. Then I come to this forum and can find myself wanting to fire bullets at any slightly "off" attitude from others, more perceived than real perhaps. The markets are a bit like trench warfare. It seems to flow over into the real world too easily. The chart entrainment seems to be making me jumpy or paranoid(?) towards other people. Don't know what to make of it.

Doc "Remove yourself from capital drawdowns, both in the markets and in life." Never a truer (or sadder?) word spoken, hard but necessary, particularly when it is family. The 90% failure rate is the biggest obstacle I see to altruism. In one sense your help might shift that balance a little, but when dealing with individuals there is the apprehension that you may likely help them to fail. Thats the bit that bugs me. You can say "they didn't have what it takes" but once you become involved you cannot fully step aside from the consequences. Helping a capable person improve would be good, but that leaves 90% who will not make it. I don't have an answer for that.

Doc Only you can say how much meat you want to put in a free sandwich. Its for you to say.

Hi Cowpip Yes, I should probably keep my mouth shut and quit distracting Don from his job. It would take a lot of elaboration. The short answer is that cable is 300 pips below the rest of the majors. Either cable goes up 300 pips or the rest of the majors come down. A couple of the signals were given in the thread "cable breaks out of 2-decade range" but there is much more to it than stated. Perhaps we should wait a while and let the market do the speaking.

A record 2.0000 plus is a realistic target about this time imo. Luck

Sound answer Doc. They used to say that Fred Astaire was the greatest dancer, yet Ginger Rodgers did all the same steps backwards. The market leads, we learn to stay in step. Change what you can change but accept and come to understand the market as it is. Same with human nature. Live with it and learn from it, yeh?

It made me smile. There is some truth in it, a demo account does not prepare you for the real thing. There is a whole lot of new psycho stuff goes on when you first trade live. It is so easy to spook yourself and feel like the world is turning upside down. Reliance on a tested plan can be the only solid ground you can find to stand on. It can be a lonely and testing experience. Thats where forums like this can be a sanity saver.

TheBramble I like the way you think, like a hunter We are actually in agreement on most points. The leaders are driven by a profit motive, understanding where and how they make their profit is the key to predicting their moves. They are traders too, they follow profit/risk rules. They are potentially predictable and exploitable just as "the public" are, because they follow trading rules.

WalterW Find your input on many threads to be solid and constructive, thanks for the work. RSB is worth a good long Google, much is out of date but still informative. RSB London has been #1 forex trader since way back. Net profit flow is from all other international banks into RSB London. Used to be lots of Sirs on the board. I can only offer input on spot forex which has the advantage of having 10 pairs within the majors. Essentially 8 must be monitored to understand the state of play in the 2 RSB sucker trap pairs. Unfortunately it gets complicated before it begins to get simple, I suspect from your motto that you already know that. I looked at the VSA thread but while I have not used that indicator, it appears to rely on transient volumes which to me seem to be frequently misleading. Such moves often appear to get dissipated to no obvious gain shortly afterwards so I suspect they may be just more manipulated signals. I follow the longer trends in the prices relative to each other, not in absolute prices. Trends in the 8 "arm and leg" pairs tell me what the bank is doing. Often it provides no more information than to tell me where prices are within the swing ranges of the two sucker trap pairs and the only trade available is to wait for a bigger movement then trade back towards centre of the range. Sometimes a recognizable pattern shows up that can be traded longer term or with at least some awareness of the longer trend when scalping swings. There are some whole new ways of thinking involved, one is about the mechanics of forex trading at bank level, that is the bank's weakness, its actions are visible for the most part. It counters that by building years of trading expertise and tactics into the trading software, they know how traders think and stay one step ahead of them. Even when you know the long term trend you still have to think tactically, their tactics aim at burning both bulls and bears, that can mean 100-300 pips in drawdown but a nice bonus swing trade if you have been undertrading with that opportunity in mind. The four Franc pairs are the easiest place to start, you will find a one to one relationship. Two pairs apply only to GBPJPY, two apply only to EURUSD. After that it gets more complicated. This is not the place, nor is it yet the time no get into it. Nor do I have the time or ability to answer questions from what might become a feeding frenzy. Sufficient thought will be rewarding I believe. If a Franc based account makes a buy in GBPJPY, it shows up as a pip movement and volume one in GBPJPY and also in GBPCHF (crudely). Footprints are left that can be followed. Only banks trade Francs When you are dealing with a con, ignore the words, the suit and the haircut, keep your eyes on what the hands and legs are doing under the table. What they do is what they are, what they look like is not what they are.

It is strange reality that both an argument and its counter-argument can be equally true, you just have to look at each argument from its own perspective. It remains that only trading will shift prices. The other aspect is, to what extent do prices honestly represent market sentiment and to what extent does price manipulation by the big money misrepresent market sentiment? In Forex RSB, the Royal Scottish Bank, has been the most successful trader among the big boys, imo they have monopoly control of prices and can and do misrepresent market sentiment to their advantage. That is how they got to be winners and it is how they stay winners, by staying in control of the prices we rely on for interpreting market sentiment. Following their "smart money" seems the logical analytical method to me. So now there is a third argument that splits market forces into leaders and followers, getting one step ahead of the leaders is my goal. Following the followers seems futile to me, like walking into a sucker trap. Is it logical or merely cynical to follow the "smart money" rather than the price/market?

The advice of a trader with 20 years experience (Simon Harris) was- "Don't ever regret taking a profit, only to find that the price continued to move your way". To me, taking a profit is beating the game, doing your job. Pat yourself on the back for getting it right, first and foremost. The question really splits into two parts. For the first part, when a swing goes as expected, I am happy to get 80% or more of the expected movement and to achieve safety from an exit that might be a bit early. That is the basic daily trade, the one you have "signals" for. The second part, when the movement goes further than expected, has to be treated as a second strategy and you can only trade such a strategy if you have a signal for it that can be relied on. If you don't have such a signal then you have done all you can do for the present. The aim is to go in search of signals that you are currently unaware of. They may exist, they may not. But until you have a relible signal you should stick to the strategy you have because gambling leads inevitably to losses. To me, leaving a portion of the trade running in the hope/risk of a windfall is gambling and likely to be a waste of time and effort, a distraction from the real issue which should be about looking for a usable signal.

Cooter Yes, MetaTrader4 for bucketshops. There is some hope that this may become a defacto standard platform, or at least provide newcomers with something common to judge inhouse platforms against and perhaps encourage "top" outfits like Dell and CMC to improve their user-unfriendly and far from "transparent" trading platforms. Anything that slows the sharks down gets my vote. I use 2 letter codes for the major pairs because I am trading all 10 at a time in demo, just makes no sense to use 6 letter codes when 4 of the letters are redundant within the majors. There is some method in the madness ok?

Hi Thunder Tried Dealbook360 demo platform and did not like it. Also did not like the fact that the company won an award for having 100% profit increases for 6 years running, that used to be their customers money. Much prefer MTB4 platform. Two places with unlimited MTB4 demos are LLC and Alpari. Not recommending either. LLC drops market feed and Alpari recently has frequent requotes. Oanda used to be a better place to start trading, more flexible "lot" sizes. Their charts are not good compared to MTB4 though. Increasingly people seem to be recommending avoiding traditional "bucketshops" and going for Direct Access ECN where there is no dealing desk to play dirty tricks on you and no conflict of interest. Bucketshops win when you lose, that makes them dangerous. There are not many ECNs yet, EFx is one. Do check them out and find one with a demo platform. I rely on the charts on an MBT4 demo platform regardless of which account I am trading (because I use many charts). Don't be in a hurry to trade live, there is a lot to learn, make your mistakes with play money first. London start onwards seems to offer best trading, 0800GMT to 1600, sometimes 2000.

To me Fx seems out of whack, GBP and EUR too high, USD and JPY too low. British Government complains GBP is overvalued, then GBPJPY etc keeps going up. Swap rates should not have that much influence, so why?

You are not alone Don. Got burnt a few weeks back, bone headed stubborn stupidity in my case. You have a robust system, it is the market that is shifty. Good luck

Many major pairs offer good swap payments on a long, few offer payments on a short. This may contribute to the "always rise" effect. Also once a trader notices the "always rise" effect, they tend to trade with that, rather than against it, so experience then contributes to the rise effect. In the analogy to stock markets and large funds, I had wondered if funds had been relying on EURUSD as their Blue Chip "always rise" investment. Which leaves me wondering where they will go as EURUSD settles in its place and moves up and down with all the rest, no longer a particularly steady riser. A cynical answer to the question of what fuels this bull run, might be that banks make money from burning speculators. When only bears are in the market then the banks burn the bears by driving prices up. Banks move the prices, bucket leveraged traders have less impact on prices.

Yes, PY = GBPJPY Yes, volume = tick volume Yes volume indicator vague, it serves me more as a fake detector, stay out message. There are 3 signals for the PY and EU up together pattern. They have been there for a week. Main signal- EURCHF hi (near recent top of market) Secondary signals- USDJPY hi (near recent top of market) and GBPUSD lo (300 pips below recent top of market) Still calling up as long as EURCHF stays up

The common indicators are statistical indicators, despite the fact that most people seem to be relying on them I believe them to be sucker traps. Have a guess why bucket shops are happy to provide an assortment of indicators. They work the same was as a roulette wheel, you win often enough to think you are onto something but then you lose just often enough to give your winnings plus some of your own money to the bank. Any system you rely on has to be backed up by your own savvy IMHO, knowing when to stay out, regardless of what your indicator or system may be telling you, is a damn good insurance policy. There will always be another day if you are cautious, but if you blow your startup money there may not be another day.

Recommend you do your demo trading with someone that offers the MBT4 platform and an account that doesn't expire. Coesfx is unusual, they have non-bucket accounts for bigger accounts only and bucket accounts with MBT4 platform. The smaller accounts with high leverage are sucker traps IMHO, $US5k at 100:0 is actually risky, too you must stick to half lot trades at first, 1 lot is overtrading IMHO. Trading with just one position is tedious and difficult but unless you are rich I don't know where else to start. MBT4 platform = bucket account, it can't be used for non-bucket accounts, sadly. The reason for recommending MBT4 even though it is a bucket platform is that it is a whole lot better than any of the cumbersome treatcherous in-house platforms. Also better charts than many. For a demo, it doesn't matter so much if it is bucket trading, even though you will have to relearn everything if you even go live trading and non-bucket. From memory, GBPJPY swung 3,500 pips last year, EURUSD moved about half that speed. But longer term trading is far more complicated than it looks at first, don't let the $ signs blind you, it isn't Xmas every day. In GBPJPY it is often necessary to trade just the first half of a swing, eg buy the bigger dip only and get out sooner rather than later near halfway. Midswing has a lot of sideways and reversals and it is a lot more dangerous to enter near midswing. The 5 Major currencies have 10 pairs between them, they work a bit like an octopus with 10 tentacles, interelated and working together and sometimes against. Its a dance with 10 dancers, follow just 1 dancer and you are missing a bigger picture. GBPUSD is a big mover but to me seems more difficult to predict than GBPJPY.