Since this is my first post, I should probably give a brief introduction of myself. I just graduated with a BS in physics and I'll begin my work on a PhD in physics this fall. Since I will now be earning a salary for the first time in my life (as opposed to an hourly wage), I plan on setting money aside to invest.
My mother took me to a 4x Made Easy class last year. It didn't take me too long to figure out that 4xME was just a waste of money. But, on the bright side, I did learn about the Forex market during the seminar. I've been paper trading an account with CMS over the past 3 months, as well as doing a lot of reading on money management and technical analysis. But so far, I've mjust hovered around breaking even.
There seem to be a number of knowlegeable traders on this forum. I was hoping some of you would be kind enough to answer some questions for an eager-to-learn future speculater.
1) I seem to get much better results when I simply draw trend lines rather than use indicators. Basically, for a long position, I just draw a support trendline, enter the trade on the third touch and exit the trade when either the price goes a little below support or reaches a point just below resistance (I flip things around in the obvious manner for a short position). My question is, is there anybody here that trades off the just the charts (i.e. just drawing support and resistence and looking for bar patterns), or do nearly all succesful traders use some sort of indicator or combination of indicadors?
2) If you do use an indicator, how do you combine what support, resistence, and bar patterns "say" with what your indicator tells you to do, while at the same time mantaining strict discipline in your trading?
3) For long term trades, do you thing it is important to know what percent of people are holding buy and sell options on your currency? Or is that information already reflected in the charts? (I don't trade options, so I may have the terminoligy wrong here, I think put and call options might be the correct term, in any case, let me know if the question isn't clear)
4) Since I will begin graduate school this fall, I don't anticipate having a LOT of free time to trade. So that either means setting up Visual Trader to automatically trade for me, or just focusing on long term trends. Does anybody know if it is possible to write a program on Visual Trader that will raise stops along a pre-defined trendline (i.e. I would draw the trendline, fingure out the slope, and have the stops and limits move up at a rate equal to the slope of the line).
5) I've read a lot about the importance of the close in technical analysis books. And I can understand why that would be the case in a market that is only open a certain number of hours per day. But, since the forex is a 24 hr/day market, does the close of a period in ANY time-frame (other than the close of a week) hold any special significance?
6) Does anybody here make trades based on bar or candlestick patterns alone? I aske just because it seems like that might be easy to program, and would have the potential for a lot of trades, but perhaps those trades wouldn't be so successful.
7) Lastly, I read a number of money management techniques that suggest staggering your stoplosses. I guess I can't follow the logic on why this would be advantageous. If I decide I am willing to lose x dollars on a trade, why would I then say I am willing to lose y dollars on that same trade? Does anybody here stagger their stops? If so, can you explain the reasoning behind it?
Thanks in advance to anybody that chooses to answer one or more of my questsions. Hopefully I will be able to return the favor by becoming a contributing member of this forum some day (as opposed to somebody with a bunch of questions and no answers) .
My mother took me to a 4x Made Easy class last year. It didn't take me too long to figure out that 4xME was just a waste of money. But, on the bright side, I did learn about the Forex market during the seminar. I've been paper trading an account with CMS over the past 3 months, as well as doing a lot of reading on money management and technical analysis. But so far, I've mjust hovered around breaking even.
There seem to be a number of knowlegeable traders on this forum. I was hoping some of you would be kind enough to answer some questions for an eager-to-learn future speculater.
1) I seem to get much better results when I simply draw trend lines rather than use indicators. Basically, for a long position, I just draw a support trendline, enter the trade on the third touch and exit the trade when either the price goes a little below support or reaches a point just below resistance (I flip things around in the obvious manner for a short position). My question is, is there anybody here that trades off the just the charts (i.e. just drawing support and resistence and looking for bar patterns), or do nearly all succesful traders use some sort of indicator or combination of indicadors?
2) If you do use an indicator, how do you combine what support, resistence, and bar patterns "say" with what your indicator tells you to do, while at the same time mantaining strict discipline in your trading?
3) For long term trades, do you thing it is important to know what percent of people are holding buy and sell options on your currency? Or is that information already reflected in the charts? (I don't trade options, so I may have the terminoligy wrong here, I think put and call options might be the correct term, in any case, let me know if the question isn't clear)
4) Since I will begin graduate school this fall, I don't anticipate having a LOT of free time to trade. So that either means setting up Visual Trader to automatically trade for me, or just focusing on long term trends. Does anybody know if it is possible to write a program on Visual Trader that will raise stops along a pre-defined trendline (i.e. I would draw the trendline, fingure out the slope, and have the stops and limits move up at a rate equal to the slope of the line).
5) I've read a lot about the importance of the close in technical analysis books. And I can understand why that would be the case in a market that is only open a certain number of hours per day. But, since the forex is a 24 hr/day market, does the close of a period in ANY time-frame (other than the close of a week) hold any special significance?
6) Does anybody here make trades based on bar or candlestick patterns alone? I aske just because it seems like that might be easy to program, and would have the potential for a lot of trades, but perhaps those trades wouldn't be so successful.
7) Lastly, I read a number of money management techniques that suggest staggering your stoplosses. I guess I can't follow the logic on why this would be advantageous. If I decide I am willing to lose x dollars on a trade, why would I then say I am willing to lose y dollars on that same trade? Does anybody here stagger their stops? If so, can you explain the reasoning behind it?
Thanks in advance to anybody that chooses to answer one or more of my questsions. Hopefully I will be able to return the favor by becoming a contributing member of this forum some day (as opposed to somebody with a bunch of questions and no answers) .