The last two weeks have been less about trading and more about learning and continually realizing how little I actually know. I also used the opportunity that came with Black Friday discounts to purchase some upgrades for my computer setup.
In terms of a trading strategy, one of the things I noticed is that most of the free Forex courses that are available on the internet will teach the theory behind technical indicators, talk about fundamentals, risk management, and so forth. They're basically handing you over a tool box, briefly explain how the tools work, but then you're on your own to figure things out from there. I believe what then happens for the majority of people - and that's exactly what I was doing - is that they take a chart, slap on a couple of technical indicators they like but which are more or less unrelated to each other, call that their strategy, and then enter trades based on whatever they believe those random indicators are telling them.
Then the majority of people tend to lose the majority of trades and blow up their accounts.
It's a bit of mystery why that's happening, because they're doing exactly what they're supposed to do according to whatever technical indicators they're using. It's almost like a conspiracy and as soon as they enter a trade, the market always does the opposite of what it was supposed to do!
Again, that's exactly what was happening to me in my first few weeks of live trading.
I didn't really understand why this is so common until I saw how professional, profitable traders work and what kind of strategies they are using. Then suddenly it all became clear to me. If I wanted to summarize it in a few sentences, I would say that in order to develop a strategy that provides an actual edge, you need to layer indicators on top of each other in a meaningful way, so they complement each other. Most technical indicators have their strength and weaknesses. In order to mitigate the weakness of a certain indicator or an entire strategy, you need to identify which other indicator(s) can help with that. It's even likely that some indicators need to be applied and checked on higher or lower timeframes than the one you're intending to trade in. I've seen different approaches from professional traders, in both directions, confirming setups on lower timeframes (e.g. 15min or 1h) and managing trades on higher timeframes (e.g. 4h or daily), and vice versa.
As I mentioned in previous blog entries, I believe it's possible to self-educate oneself about all of this and eventually develop a proper strategy. However, that will require a significant amount of time and money. Also, I thought to myself that just because it's possible doesn't guarantee that I'll get there eventually. So I decided to look into one of the mentorship programs that my broker Global Prime recently started offering. Those mentorship programs are currently free for active traders who have a live account with them, although that might change in the future. I am now learning a strategy which looks for setups on the 1h/4h charts, then takes and manages trades on the 15min chart. It's a fair amount of material to go through and internalize. I should be in a position to start experimenting with actual trades in the coming weeks.
As for my PC setup, I decided to purchase an external monitor for my laptop and use that for now. This gives me 3 screens on 2 computers in total and I can take this external monitor with me when travelling. I went with a brand called 'GICHAT', which I had never heard of before, for the portable monitor. It turned out to be an extremely positive surprise, the quality of the monitor exceeded all my expectations! The built-in monitor of my HP laptop is already excellent, the visual quality of this portable one is even better.
I also purchased a new Logitech keyboard while I was putting in the Amazon order for the monitor. I'm very happy with that as well. It looks stylish, has several cool lighting effects that can be fully customized, and typing on it is very comfortable.
This is what my trading desk & office looks like:
I still want to purchase 2 full-size monitors and a monitor mount to use with my desktop PC, but this should do for now.
No comments
Post a Comment