;
I have traded over 20 years
useing various ideas and systems there are enougth out there for every day of the year.
1st don't use too large a position (no more than 5% on a trade)
2nd set a realistic stop (i use 22 pips on all trades)
3rd demo for a while and learn trade patterns

I trade 6 currency pairs and aim for 60 pips net a day, once i hit my daily target i stop.
Best time to trade is from 7am to 11am and 1.30 to 3 pm
Finding the right form of trading is important i like scalping and short trades where i only look for 10 pips.Don't overtrade.

In all theatres of life you will find criticism.The hardest thing is to persevere.
I've never been bothered about being a day trader and also sell on ebay.
You make your own luck
all the best Michael

hi Zorba,

I agree with timidtom,

please keep writing, don't edit it, just let it flow onto your keyboard,again wishing all the best. and hope you find lots of pips,

Regards

@timidtom - Thanks for the link to james16's thread, it looks like a good read. FF has some real gold in there but an awful lot of noise; you really have to know where to look (I don't).

@lowfat - Thanks for the encouragement and the book tip.

@mcartz - Excellent tips, and it's great to see someone who is out there living the dream! It's also reassuring to see that I've started off on the right footing with risk management.

@Scoundrel - I'll do my best and thanks for the wishes.

This has been my first week where I haven't been at work full time, but the kids have been off school so I've kept the 'new job' to the minimum. I'm still running Net Trap although I'd appreciate another half hour in bed, so I've decided to write myself an EA to do the job. Full-on trading is yet to start.

Given that the bulk of the systems I've purchased and use are non-discretionary (i.e. they have very clear setup, entry and exit rules) in theory I should only need to enter a trade and then exit according to rules with little management in between.

In practice, this past fortnight has proven to be more challenging. I have tweaked, chickened out, trailed stoplosses, removed stoplosses, skipped trades due to 'bad' feelings and generally meddled in traded. Nevertheless, all this tampering didn't result in abject failure. I was able to collect some modest profits on most trades - as they hit some resistance and start going against me I would just shut them down. According to the systems though, they should have been left to run and some would have made more pips.

This has got me thinking though. Is it ok to withdraw from a trade early if you have reached your pip target for the day/week? Or should you scale your position size down before entering that trade in order to cover your goal. I guess that scratches on another question - what is more valid, a pip target or an ROI target? Thanks to ReviewTeam's explanation of ROI in another thread, I'm now not sure what I should focus on. My take is pip target for now, then when that is up to a good average I can work out the staking I need to make that a good ROI.

Trading details aside, I think I'm still in the honeymoon period of trading full time from home. Granted, I'm not totally full time as I do a day a week of part-time at my old place, but I'm totally enjoying being home so much. A few trades here and there, a bit of reading up, cups of tea and video games when I'm bored. However, the pressure isn't on to perform just yet (it's a semi-holiday for now) but if I haven't got a trading plan in place by the end of October I'll be disappointed.

I guess that's a theme - do you wait for the full benefit or do you settle for less in order to have some benefit? I seem to be doing the latter in both trading and life at the moment. It doesn't bother me, apart from the worry that I'm cutting my profits and letting my losses run. When things hit a losing streak, I can't necessarily bring my losses in early can I?

I've also spent a bit of time improving my MT4 programming which will hopefully pay off as time goes on. I'm going to have to add it to the timetable though!

Hi Zorba

I'm new to this forum. I read in June you were thinking of making the transition from part-time trader to full-time, how did you get on?

I am currently looking for a trading system that doesn't take much time and like you would need to fit it in around work until I could make a steady income. Can you suggest ones that worked for you? There are so many people advertising their systems and having already tried a couple that failed, I don't want to throw my money away - again!

Thanks in advance for any advice!!

Hi Michelle and welcome to the thread. I'm still making the transition from very-part-time-purchaser-of-mechanical-systems to fully-aware-full-time-day-trader but it's an enjoyable one. It would be good to know what systems you have tried and why they didn't work for you (perhaps you will find other comments about them in the 'System Reviews' area of the forum), and what kind of time of day you like to trade. There are many systems out there and none are holy grails, but some are passable if you can follow the rules carefully and not get distracted by losses. Perhaps once we know more of your previous systems and what your style is we can recommend a few. What I really would recommend to *anybody* is the Babypips School website - it's free but worth a lot and if you follow it through carefully and make sure you understand it, you might not even need someone else's system in the future.
I would also recommend you look at the system reviews here as they don't really pull any punches or try and sell anything - you might get an idea of what you might like. But come back with more details too if you have the chance!

Z

Hi Z

Thanks for the reply. I started off with the TUFXP and found I didn't have the time to devote to this. I tried a few EA's, can't remember their titles but I found the occassional loss wiped out the profits. I tried a night time service from Mark Rose but again this did not make any profit. I am a shift worker, therefore a system that is flexible with times would suit me or one that does not require any action after 8am. I have read the baby pips and found it useful. I tried doing my own thing in the mornings trading the GBP/USD with on / off success. I need a system that doesn't require you to invest too much time. Set & Forget systems before 8am or after 10pm would suit me.

There are so many systems out there - any suggestions from those who have tried and tested, would be much appreciated!

Thanks!

Hi Michelle

Obviously I can't advise anything as I'm not qualified and if you're in this game at all, you're prepared to lose money :-)

But what I would definitely do is get the free 3 ducks system from Captain Currency as that seems pretty flexible on entry times. I would also suggest sticking to the longer time frames for trades if you can. I would have suggested Forex Net Trap too but as you might know, the only way to get that is to shell out over 2k on a bundle from Agora which might not suit you (the other products are either stale ones, information ones or sports betting). I will instead suggest ForexMorningTrade by Mark Fric which is priced very reasonably (you get a reduction if you try and leave the page!) and can be traded as an EA or manually, which is up to the user. The webpage is one of these awful EA sales pages but the system and support are very decent. I would generally stay away from EAs or at least keep them trussed up like Hannibal Lecter (I'm looking at you, Megadroid) but this one seems very reliable and simple. It comes with indicators if you want to trade manually with help, or you can just read the manual and go off the charts. It sounds like I'm selling it but I just like it. There's a very wordy thread over at T2W if you want to check it out first, but be warned it suffers from their usual low signal-to-noise ratio.

It's important to get familiar with one or two systems, then see if you can cement the babypips knowledge with those systems. Examine losing trades and see if some other approach (pivots, support and resistance, fibs for example) would have alerted you to the potential loss. At least that's what I'm doing. Note that I'm not yet earning a living from this so my words are, at best, entertainment.

Z

PS the clickbank link above belongs to ReviewTeam and was added by them which is fair enough, it's their forum :-)

Forgot one thing - how did you find TUFXP? I was attracted to it by the price - I call it Selfridge's Syndrome where I think 'it must be good, it's so dear compared to everything else out there' a.k.a increasing entropy on the Money:Sense ratio.

Hi Z

Don't think TUFXP was the best system for a beginner, although it showed you entry points, there was lots of false signals to enter a trade and being a beginner at the time - finding the right time to exit a trade was nail biting stuff! I believe Cash Master has refined the strategy for TUFXP and is making it work for them.

I used MegaDroid without success. I thought about Net Trap but I believe it runs past 8am monitoring.

Thanks for the suggestions - I appreciate it and would rather listen to advice from honest people on the forum than some of the advertising hype for these products.

I am not yet comfortable with - pivots, fibs etc as I have not traded for over a year - I was learning but I got disheartened by poor performing EA's and systems that promised the world and delivered only a big fat loss - so I decided to take a break from it all.

Thanks for your help - Good Luck!