Week 1
(Adding 1 week later.)
Decided to just jump in back to forex. I've been playing with this thought since 2019 when I bought my first investment book. Only that I haven't had anything to invest back then. And for the years to come.
I've been dreaming about this to come, but actually the greatest hindrance was myself: a young dude with no money, little discipline, frequently anxious, sometimes depressed. It took a decade for this to change.
Get a degree, start a career, start another. Earn almost no money, then some money, then quite a lot of money. (Why spend energy on investing well, if you only have a few months worth of emergency savings?) Manage to save most of it by not spending too much on worldly stuff. Getting to know myself through various challenges: getting married, keeping friends, volunteering.
Then, I read A Wealth of Common Sense by Ben Carlson. Awesome book! Started index ETF investing, exactly a month before the market crashed last year. Kept on investing during the bear market since then. It's hard, but I think, a lot less harder than live trading individual assets. I don't want to trade individual stocks, bitcoin, whatever because I think I'd suck at asset selection for investment purposes. Also I'm learning a lot about economics - it's easier to learn during a bear market because you get to see all these things happen.
Then why do I want to trade forex at all?! It's not the money, but some kind of other interest. I have money and a good source of income. My goal is to pick this up as a hobby and then kind of a "side gig" in the following years.
The first week's plan was:
(Adding 1 week later.)
Decided to just jump in back to forex. I've been playing with this thought since 2019 when I bought my first investment book. Only that I haven't had anything to invest back then. And for the years to come.
I've been dreaming about this to come, but actually the greatest hindrance was myself: a young dude with no money, little discipline, frequently anxious, sometimes depressed. It took a decade for this to change.
Get a degree, start a career, start another. Earn almost no money, then some money, then quite a lot of money. (Why spend energy on investing well, if you only have a few months worth of emergency savings?) Manage to save most of it by not spending too much on worldly stuff. Getting to know myself through various challenges: getting married, keeping friends, volunteering.
Then, I read A Wealth of Common Sense by Ben Carlson. Awesome book! Started index ETF investing, exactly a month before the market crashed last year. Kept on investing during the bear market since then. It's hard, but I think, a lot less harder than live trading individual assets. I don't want to trade individual stocks, bitcoin, whatever because I think I'd suck at asset selection for investment purposes. Also I'm learning a lot about economics - it's easier to learn during a bear market because you get to see all these things happen.
Then why do I want to trade forex at all?! It's not the money, but some kind of other interest. I have money and a good source of income. My goal is to pick this up as a hobby and then kind of a "side gig" in the following years.
The first week's plan was:
- Start reading babypips again - fortunately I have read like 70% of it and have notes at hand. Time for a refresher.
- Set up a demo account @ Pepperstone with MT5
- Find a good trade journal app with a proper free tier, settled with Forexbook
- Find a good, simple strategy to follow. Decided on Trading Made Simpler (TMSr). Add charts, set up 8 pairs in a profile.
Experience
It went well. Placed some nice trades, mostly around LO time. Actually I don't care about the results yet. No position sizing or money management whatsoever. I'm not there yet. Let's just feel the market a bit.
I care about how I feel. I got excited, checking the charts every hour. Now I know how hard it is to be in the market. Prices jumping all over. I'm making quick, hasty decisions which is suboptimal. But it doesn't matter, this is demo. I have all the time in the world to experiment.
Next week's plan
- Don't add any more indicators or try different strategies. Stick with TMSr. H4 charts fit my daily routine well.
- Try some trade management as described by Robinhood, with scaling out from the position.
- Analyze each trade during the weekend. What went well? Did I miss something? Etc.
- Set a stop and just let myself get stopped out instead of worrying about the trades. This is harder than expected.
- Make a trading plan during the weekend a bit. At least record the main trend direction for each pair and know whether I'm trading against the main trend.
--I'm a demo newbie, please be cautious.