23/03/2016
The Market is a law unto itself , it moves how and when it wants to, usually in the opposite direction that you and I ,and the other 98% of traders predict. you can lose your shirt and more by just turning your back on your charts for 2 minuets or less, and all this after spending good time and money on training courses, webinars, publications, most of which need a Business Degree to understand or implement in a way to be successful in the real life pastime of Forex Trading, and it sucks, even when you do everything by the book that you've been taught and learned over the last goodness knows how many years , well.. guess what, once you're hooked, you will probably stay hooked, and I myself have got 3 T shirts to prove it.....
I've learned the hard way, not to say I didn't make money, my first encounter with Forex was in 1990 when I paid R6000 (half of the cost, you could share the R12000 with another delegate, sharp marketing, good money 20 years ago) for the program and 2 day intro to Forex. I looked thru the program which was with the GFT platform and put it on the back burner for 10 years, my existing business was doing OK so I neglected to take it any further. In 2000 I bought an updated PC program for R10000, and even then didn't give it much attention, then in 2008 the wheels came off the entire worlds businesses and economies, and my business was one of the casualties, I closed it in 2009. I was more than a little miffed, I had just invested in a new vehicle and trailer to the tune of R475000, luckily I was able to sell on the vehicle, I looked around to see which assets could earn me a living , and as I was familiar with Pastel Accounting and Payroll I chose to swat a few months and sat the Payroll Installers Certification exam, which I passed with a 84% pass, unfortunately pass rates don't make for business opportunities or employment , all business was bad, so it was look again Mister.
So then, it was a case of I had spent a lot of money on Forex (training) so it was about time it started paying off to some kind of degree, I opened a USD10000 account with GFT in the US, didn't trade it, moved it to London when the US govmt started putting in controls which at the time didn't encourage traders to hold accounts in the US. I then learned (you learn something new every day in Forex) that GFT was a Market Maker, (explain later) which gave me an excuse to Close the account without ever trading it ,(cold feet more than anything else).
I did then open an account with a STP ( Explain) London Broker , the Rand was quite reasonable at the time and R70000 bought me USD8000, they gave me a sign up bonus of USD250,leaving me with a USD account of USD8250, and on reflection, was just about the minimum account to make a reasonable living to start with, remember I had to make a living.
I attended another 4 Day course , which turned out to be mostly Fibonnacci based trading, and not what I was looking for, ( I wont bore you with my thoughts on Fib) .
In September 2012 I placed my first Trade, and in 14 months I turned my account of USD8250 into USD28293, Profits of +- 240% , it was done by the seat of my pants with no real planning or strategy and what would be referred to as reckless trading in the least, since then , I had blown 3 accounts to the tune of about USD 13000 .not very clever you might say.
By now it was obvious that I had to get my game into some kind of order , and find that magic Strategy, or pack it in , so being the simple minded kind of person that I am, and being totally confused considering all that I had been told/ taught/brain washed, call it what you like , I came to the conclusion that the KISS principle was the best way to go, the most outstanding comments from many successful Traders was to Trade what the Charts were showing/telling you, not what you Wish or Think they are going to do, in my mind the references to higher highs ,lower lows, Fibonacci , breakouts and such is no more than window dressing of some one who is trying to justify they're existence . The truth is the charts are not predictable, no matter what strategy you use, the only truth is what you see in front of you, lagging or not, its real, as for price of the pair, its irrellevant, you and I are trading MOVEMENT, NOT PRICE. and it is to this end that I use the indicators and methods that I do, the only factor outside of the charts is the influence of the economic news, which doesn't tell you what to trade but rather when not to trade, even with the readings which are available ,different traders trade news in different ways, which is another unpredictable, and what we do is to try trade the Probabilities.
So I now have a System, a system that has Rules and a few Indicators to help out, and if traded by the Rules, should return better than the Savings account in the Bank
