Sunday, May 31, 2009

Still working on it!

There's a lot to forex trading, just like any other sort of investing. The difference this time for me is that I'm using what's important to me to provide focus:
  • I have a day job
  • I don't have time to learn another profession
  • there are people good at forex trading out there who tell you exactly what they do
  • there are systems that automate those instructions
So, my focus isn't to become a forex trading guru, which is a relief for me. My focus is on understanding the tools that interpret the instructions from the gurus, test them, and if they make sense, use them to guide my trading.

I'm picking up a lot of learning along the way, learning about myself and what sort of trading style appeals to me - mostly fairly non-aggressive trading. I'm happy to make slow and steady gains.

Saturday, May 16, 2009

I've found quite a bit of info, as you can see on the right hand side.

I don't think I have the time needed to become a full time trader...I have bills to pay! However, there are tons of systems, auto trading systems, that do fairly well.

I need to be careful not to just throw money at them. Some are free, some are one time fee, some are subscription based. Some are MT4 EA's, some are parts of broker offerings, and some tie into broker offerings. FXCM is the broker that seems to have the most systems working with it, and apparently is one of the more well used brokers, if their claims to $500B moving through their brokerage each day - that's about a third of the entire forex market each day.

I'm testing a few zulutrade systems, and I need to gather up some MT4 EA's to test as well.

I'd like to find one system that does at least OK, and start with that. As my account size grows, I'd like to add in more systems.

For now, the plan is to open a mini account, and grow it until it can handle auto trading systems with full lot sizes.

I think the next step is to continue looking for systems on Zulu, so I can test a batch of them at once. There's only one on Zulu I think is conservative enough so far.

Key elements - short trade times, high win %, low draw down, at least 2.5 months time actually traded.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

What's been going on

I've spent the last few months or so traveling down different paths -
- developing a simple real estate investing tool, helps make a decision on whether a particular property is a financially worthwhile investment. Stopped working on this because I got it to the point where it's useful to me. Future - develop it into a website to help small real estate investors.
- developing a simple trading system (in the context of the stock market). Stopped working on this for two reasons - frustration with the tool, and then total information overload to the point of analysis paralysis. I've learned more since I left this project and think I can get past the frustration around the tools, and have ideas on updating my simple system. (note, I didn't say it was good, just simple :-) )
- internet marketing - tried my hand at affiliate marketing, but I think this is just not me. I'm of the opinion that I really need to market my own site, not someone else's. I've found tons of great tools, information resources, etc. This is definitely on hold until I have a site that I'm personally invested in to market.
- forex trading - this is where I've been spending a lot of my recent free time, going through educational materials, and doing practice trades on a demo account. Looking into forex robots, signal providers, as a way to get into the market without having to learn much about it....ha! I've learned a lot about my impatient style, and am learning to trust my trading instincts a little more. So...rather than entering a trade on a positive chart indicator, and then jumping out as soon as there's any sign of a loss, sticking with it for a while to see how it all plays out.

The few times I've traded my plan (either chart indicators or news) I've had a profit. The rest of the time I've had losses.

Added the link lists on the side of this blog.

Saturday, May 2, 2009

Test Post

This is to see how easy it is to post MT4 stats pages

For now I'll do this

Current