Interesting stories along my lessons... Chapter 2
Posted: Fri Jan 28, 2011 3:36 am
Chapter 2
The second chapter of my story began once the realization that the only way to go is to learn to trade by myself hit me.
Where do I go?
What do I look for?
Who is the best and who is not?
The only guide that I had when I began was that I wanted money. Profits. That meant pips. Most of my reading material in the beginning came from my friends who were with our former company. By then I had stopped joining the group for trading and most of them in the group decided to leave and head out on their own. Some stayed with forex and some went to look for a day time job.
I had read so many books, E books and forums it was beginning to go in circles. From my experience there are only two types of books out there.
A. The first type is the sort of books written by people who make their money by writing books. ( Read the previous sentence again. They make money by publishing not trading ). This type of books will never help newbie traders like us because it only talks about stuff that we already know exists out there. RSI, Stochastic, ADX, MA lines, Trendlines, Channels, Support and Resistance etc. What do these things mean? How do you use that?. None of these books talk about how traders use these indicators profitably. You will often see statements such as " if it crosses 20, you buy, if it crosses 80, dont trade cause its oversold. If it was only that easy everyone in the world would be trading, including the author of the book. The acid test for these people is when you ask them if they can show you how they execute a trade in real time. They wont be wasting their time writing and publishing books to make a buck if they knew half of the things that they were talking about.
B. The second type of writers and books out there are also of no help to newbies. These are written by people who mostly have traded for so long that they forget that the language they are using is probably called "tradespeak". Yes people. Its as real as English, Tamil, Malay, Urdu or Arabic. Its a language in itself even though it could be written in English. As an example I had this book by a trader called Alan Farley. It was as thick as a telephone directory. I think it was nearly a thousand pages. I read it from cover to cover thinking that there must be something in it that can help me start making some profit. I think Alan forgot that he is not talking to a bunch of traders out there. If you are new you wont understand half of what is written in it. I could not see a single chapter or pointer in his entire book that could help me. To be fair the book was full of insights. Its just that I did not understand what he meant because of all the jargon. Example?. Try using the word "Pullback" in your conversation with a plumber or a doctor. They might have a vague idea what you mean but vague is not good when you are trading. So like I said it was all Tradespeak.
So where does one go when books and other printed materials fail you?...
The Internet of course. The World Wide Web where information is free. You can find anything and everything you would ever want on the web. So I started trawling the net for anything that could help me. The net though comes with its own set of challenges. There is as much of useful information out there as there is junk. You just didnt know which was the real deal and which was just a con job or utter rubbish.
I had joined so many forums. I watched hours and hours of you tube videos. I posted topics. Sent emails. I did nearly everything that people do online to get someone to teach me how to trade. I joined some of the most viewed, read and followed postings on certain forums. I tried following popular netizens like TRO ( The Rumpled One ). I spent up to 20 hours a day just reading everything I came across. I wanted to find the holy grail of trading. How do people make profit by reading the market?. How do you make money from the market?. When do I enter and when do I exit. What is a Stop Loss and how do I pick one.
The internet had the same issues the publishing world did as far as trading was concerned.
A. Scam artists who speak in jargon and make money by cheating others.
B. Real traders who speak in jargon and just dont have time for newbies and their silly questions.
I spent the best part of eight months searching for a single forum or website which would be able help me with trading. Such a simple goal. How to pick entries and exit them. Buy or sell. 50 - 50. How difficult would it be teaching someone on how to make a 50 - 50 decision?. All the while I was trading demo accounts. I tried all kinds of indicators. There were times I had that many indicators that I couldnt even see my candlestick chart any more.
All in all I swore to myself that when I find out how to trade successfully I would write a book that will teach people in very simple basic English on how to trade.
So where did i learn how to trade and what about that book that thought trading in simple language?
Well that has to wait for my next chapter.
The second chapter of my story began once the realization that the only way to go is to learn to trade by myself hit me.
Where do I go?
What do I look for?
Who is the best and who is not?
The only guide that I had when I began was that I wanted money. Profits. That meant pips. Most of my reading material in the beginning came from my friends who were with our former company. By then I had stopped joining the group for trading and most of them in the group decided to leave and head out on their own. Some stayed with forex and some went to look for a day time job.
I had read so many books, E books and forums it was beginning to go in circles. From my experience there are only two types of books out there.
A. The first type is the sort of books written by people who make their money by writing books. ( Read the previous sentence again. They make money by publishing not trading ). This type of books will never help newbie traders like us because it only talks about stuff that we already know exists out there. RSI, Stochastic, ADX, MA lines, Trendlines, Channels, Support and Resistance etc. What do these things mean? How do you use that?. None of these books talk about how traders use these indicators profitably. You will often see statements such as " if it crosses 20, you buy, if it crosses 80, dont trade cause its oversold. If it was only that easy everyone in the world would be trading, including the author of the book. The acid test for these people is when you ask them if they can show you how they execute a trade in real time. They wont be wasting their time writing and publishing books to make a buck if they knew half of the things that they were talking about.
B. The second type of writers and books out there are also of no help to newbies. These are written by people who mostly have traded for so long that they forget that the language they are using is probably called "tradespeak". Yes people. Its as real as English, Tamil, Malay, Urdu or Arabic. Its a language in itself even though it could be written in English. As an example I had this book by a trader called Alan Farley. It was as thick as a telephone directory. I think it was nearly a thousand pages. I read it from cover to cover thinking that there must be something in it that can help me start making some profit. I think Alan forgot that he is not talking to a bunch of traders out there. If you are new you wont understand half of what is written in it. I could not see a single chapter or pointer in his entire book that could help me. To be fair the book was full of insights. Its just that I did not understand what he meant because of all the jargon. Example?. Try using the word "Pullback" in your conversation with a plumber or a doctor. They might have a vague idea what you mean but vague is not good when you are trading. So like I said it was all Tradespeak.
So where does one go when books and other printed materials fail you?...
The Internet of course. The World Wide Web where information is free. You can find anything and everything you would ever want on the web. So I started trawling the net for anything that could help me. The net though comes with its own set of challenges. There is as much of useful information out there as there is junk. You just didnt know which was the real deal and which was just a con job or utter rubbish.
I had joined so many forums. I watched hours and hours of you tube videos. I posted topics. Sent emails. I did nearly everything that people do online to get someone to teach me how to trade. I joined some of the most viewed, read and followed postings on certain forums. I tried following popular netizens like TRO ( The Rumpled One ). I spent up to 20 hours a day just reading everything I came across. I wanted to find the holy grail of trading. How do people make profit by reading the market?. How do you make money from the market?. When do I enter and when do I exit. What is a Stop Loss and how do I pick one.
The internet had the same issues the publishing world did as far as trading was concerned.
A. Scam artists who speak in jargon and make money by cheating others.
B. Real traders who speak in jargon and just dont have time for newbies and their silly questions.
I spent the best part of eight months searching for a single forum or website which would be able help me with trading. Such a simple goal. How to pick entries and exit them. Buy or sell. 50 - 50. How difficult would it be teaching someone on how to make a 50 - 50 decision?. All the while I was trading demo accounts. I tried all kinds of indicators. There were times I had that many indicators that I couldnt even see my candlestick chart any more.
All in all I swore to myself that when I find out how to trade successfully I would write a book that will teach people in very simple basic English on how to trade.
So where did i learn how to trade and what about that book that thought trading in simple language?
Well that has to wait for my next chapter.