How to make fast money from forex - MQL4 and MetaTrader 4

MC5 2008.07.05 11:15 #21

Hi to each and everyone of you here in this forum.

I have been a member since December 2007 and this is my FIRST (and probably my LAST) post. I have chosen this thread to post my first message because I feel this is the most appropriate section.

During the last 6 months, I have read practically all the threads here and I have nothing but good things to say about all the gurus (too many to mention names) here. The trading ideas one can learn from here is immense.

Before I became a member here, I have been trading forex for just about 2 years using systems that I developed myself because I strongly believe NO SUCCESSFUL TRADERS will post their systems in forums. Needless to say, my results have been terribly bad, busting account after account and in the course of the 2 years, I have lost USD 70K.

For your info, I am a retiree and I trade FULL-TIME.

When I first started, I got the impression from friends and the internet that making fast money from forex is SO EASY and that's the reason why I decided to go full-time. HOW WRONG WAS I.

I do not want to dwell on the experiences that I went through during the 2 years (because it can be real lengthy), but I can tell you IT'S WORST THAN GOING TO HELL!

Nevertheless, I did not give up because someone told me that YOU HAVE TO PAY TO LEARN just as you would if you were to go to a university. So, I decided to clear my mental unease and simply consider the USD 70K as my school fees and I continued my relentless search for trading ideas from the internet and I found this website and immediately became a member.

I filtered through most of the systems here, selected some that fit my aggressive personality, and demo tested them, backward and forward. I finally found a few that were profitable. I started opening accounts again and traded with REAL MONEY.

I installed all those profitable EAs' and run them in real money accounts with IBFX, FXDD and Velocity4X. And guess what? They were ALL BUSTED and it's just a matter of time. I was earning big money initially, sometimes up to 3 weeks in a row, but somehow I always ended up losing.

Money management...that's my mistake, or so I thought. I traded small lot sizes with large capital and believe me, if the market decides to go against you, it doesn't matter how much you put in......YOU WILL FINALLY LOSE!

Trading results based on demo and real money accounts ARE COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.

You can have good money management, good EAs (unfortunately there's NONE that can work AUTOMATICALLY) and set your trading hours, YOU WILL END UP A LOSER.

BUT....THERE'S HOPE for those of you who feel TRADING FOREX FOR A LIVING is almost impossible.

I do not know whether I can consider myself as one of those who are successful in trading forex for a living, but I have been able to earn my monthly expenses for the last 3 months.

I wish the way to make money from forex is so simple that I can just describe the EA that I use with the setup file. BUT IT'S NOT. The setup changes throughout the day and depends on so many factors, e.g. volatility that can happen at any time of the day, news releases.

All I can say to those who aspire to trade full-time in forex for a living are the following:-

1. ONE CURRENCY PAIR.

Just choose one currency pair that you are familiar with their respective countries economic fundamentals. Every currency pair has their unique behavior. I only trade GBP/USD. Try not to trade too many currency pairs as it can get very confusing. You want to trade for a living, so it's better to be exceptionally good at one.

2. FOREX IS NO PLACE FOR THE PART-TIMERS.

IMHO, if you want to profit from forex, you have to trade full-time. This is the only way you can become a master because you have to dedicate all your time and effort into understanding the movements.

3. MONEY MANAGEMENT.

This is extremely important. Plan what you need a month base on a realistic return of 5% per month. For me, since I need USD 3K per month, my capital is USD 60K. Once you have achieve the target for the day, go have coffee and break for the day. DO NOT BE GREEDY. This is where DISCIPLINE is ever so important.

NEVER, NEVER think of making FAST MONEY because this is the fastest way to ending your trading career.

4. TRADING SYSTEM.

To be a successful trader, you do not need ANY INDICATORS. Just get yourself familiar with the price movement. That's all you need.

Just to give an example of what I do:-

Each day, at the beginning of the Asian session, I get a feel of whether the Asians are bullish or bearish. By 10PM EST, I will be able to decide whether it's bullish or bearish. I use a Martingale EA and base on the volatility at that time, I set the pipstep. If it's bullish, I go long and vice versa if it's bearish.

Using a martingale protects me in case I am wrong about the direction, which could happen about 30% of the time. DO NOT TRADE DURING NEWS TIME because of spread widening and spikes.

I can almost guarantee that you can make USD 1.00 for every USD 1K Capital.

Do the same for the EU session and if it's not too volatile, you can make another USD 1.50 for every USD 1K Capital. Once you have made this, call it a day.

If the EU session is too volatile, DO NOT TRADE. Wait for the US session, especially after 11.00AM EST. Once you have made the required USD 2.50 per USD 1K Capital, call it a day.

Based on 20 trading days a month, you can make USD 50.00 per USD 1K Capital which is 5%.

LOOKS EASY? Not so. I am willing to bet my last penny that the majority (more than 90% of the traders) will not be satisfied with that kind of returns per day. USD 2.50 per USD 1K Capital? I must be joking. And that's why 90% of retail traders lose money.

In forex trading, it's not the brokers that you have to worry about. IT'S YOURSELF. You are your worst enemy. GREED.

Well, I hope I have impart as much of my experience to you and I hope you do not fall into the same trap as I have been during my early 2 years trading.

SO, HOW MANY PEOPLE ACTUALLY MAKE MONEY?

ALL OF YOU CAN! BUT IT WON'T BE EASY.

GOOD LUCK AND BEST WISHES TO ALL THE MEMBERS HERE.

P.S. As I said earlier this is probably my first and last post because I am one of those who does not patronise any forum except this one. As I said earlier, those people who make money do not divulge their secrets in forums. They spend much time (just as I do) improving themselves.

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PIPmaker 2008.07.30 01:38 #22

Throughput of 6000 pips per month

I'm trading since 3 years now, burned some money, made some more money back (enough to cover living expenses) and started publishing the first of my 22 strategies as ebook. (search for pipmaker on youtube)

I concur with most of MC5's statements. Yes, one can make money, but it takes time as markets shift their behavior (eventhough it's in very specific, repeating cycles). Money management is the most important yet most neglected component in trading thus in the end 2 bad trades might undo 50 hard earned, good trades. The ATM concept (a.k.a. automatic trading machines) only lasted for some limited time and the gains vanished quickly when set to parameters for "expected gains", which is double every month.

(...what do you mean "too much"?)

To that end, full time manual trading can be most rewarding once greed, fear and impatience has been mastered - at least most of the time.

I do make money by switching between specific trading systems, that fit the market condition (for each currency pair), and only stick to my top 5 currencies with 1 or 2 screen trading - based on speed. Now; I disagree about the randomness; it's a matter of selecting the correct timeframe and allowing the price to swing and the market will be highly predictable. A combination of displaced MA (3x3, 7x5), pivot, camarilla and Fibo (1.61 target) allows me to extract 200+ to 1000+ pips per week per instrument on a regular basis (that is, "net") - 3 days a week, 3 weeks a month, 9 months a year. Problem: I've seen those claims a lot during research for internet marketing together with those false "simple, easy to use, can't miss, get rich quick" systems. A high number of pips (like GBPJPY until recently) requires smaller margin. Trading with $1 or $2 then reduces risk significantly when you are wrong, allows larger swings (price travel) yet still breaking even and finally make some hundreds of $$ when you are right and allow the profits to grow. Most beginners (< 1 year) trade with $10 - $30 with < $10,000 in the account, reach a peak and have to start over again. That's not a consistent trading startegy.

Now.

The biggest challenge (still) is sticking to my own rules, and the profits are minimized everytime I violate them. Starting out with 1 minute on GBPJPY with 200 pips/hour I'm now trading H4 or H1 on approx 4-6 periods thus allowing me to trade seriously and only checking 3-4 times a day. As most of you know, most of the time the market does "exactly" what you imagined and most of the time after an unexpected round trip or two. Time enough to bang your head against the wall responding to the "wrong" market behavior. I had most successful trades while sleeping or playing with the kids as well as biggest losses watching the screen 72 hours. Well - who has not been on that road? To give you better numbers, as rookie I turned $400 into $11000 within 3 days, added some more within another 2 days and dropped the $17000 within 4 hours by not letting go a quick, over-leveraged countertrade (again, GBPJPY, my favorite Once the account was cleared, the prices came back as expected. 1200 pips on the wrong side - boy, what a ride..

As cardinal rule, I use only 25% in my account(s) thus, getting back to $0 on one account does not really violate my management rules - that's a good thing and in the end simply trashed a week with 'no profits made'. Pity - but still alive ...

TSD is my top favorite forum and all that was shared helped me to become successful and thought I share some "experience". This post doesn't have much structure - apologies for that; but I'm getting more ideas as I type, thus let me know, how I can help you best. Sharing experience, common pitfalls and mistakes might be one good way to give something back. A flexible framework to build modularized EAs might be good, too (not giving up on automation yet .

One topic might be "how many pips do we need". Just 50 pips per day, 3 days a week, 3 week a month consistently (=pip production) with 1 to 4 standard lots is another well working strategy; however, with the high volatility the timing is rather unpredictable and we don't want to take any chances - right ???

Many Pips,

Martin.

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canttradefors 2008.08.01 20:36 #23

Martin,

Thanks for your post. I am new to this forum and relatively new to Forex (about 4 months.) I am not sure if I am a typical newbie but I have already tried a number of strategies. I've taken trading classes, bought EA's, trading systems, "black boxes", E-books, hardback books, even professional trading signals - all with the same dismal results. Prior to opening a live account I had enough luck with Forex Killer to encourage me to go "live." Since then almost every trade went south. I've tried bollenger bands, MACD, Stoch, RSI and all the aforementioned "systems." As a matter of fact, I seem to have a unique ability to anticipate the direction the market will not go. For me it's not about being too greedy or too fearful or too impatient. My trades open at a loss and keep on going - we're talking 400 and more pips. No, it's not about being greedy - it's about having fun trading without loosing my shirt. Now, I know that most people will loose money trading. But I'm smart, hardworking, realistic. I don't need or want to quit my day job to make a living, I just want to have some winning trades. Except for the constantly loosing money part - trading Forex is the most fun I've had in a long time.

So as a successful trader what advice to you have for this newbie?

Sincerely,

canttradefors***

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95032792 2008.08.09 00:53 #24

try a ton of stuff.! then go back to trend and strength ..thrend and strength. Read a lot of books and pick one or two tips to define these things. Then trade. whats your top .. whats your bottom? what happens at the top.. what happens at the botttom? how do you measure it.

Am I making money/.... hmm. rollercoster s were meant to be ridden! Also, don't buy eas' .. learn to program. ITs easier and cheaper than what your doing.

Also, you nor anyone else in the market has no clue how far a market will go up or down .. all you can do is take a signal ..make your cash and run like hell.

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fvpillc 2008.08.15 12:03 #25

My Newbie Experience

Hi All,

I'm new to this forum and new to forex trading. I had a lil glimpse of forex back in feburary less than a week later of knowing what forex is i burnt 800 bucks of my 1k account and realised.. emotions play a huge part in this game.

I gave up and started to investigate managed accounts which led me to EA's. I agree that you can probably make more money trading manually, but you still can make some dough from EA's.

i think with EA's it's all about diversification of EA strategies and finding ones that you pay a subscription for ( they will monitor their EA, people will be monitoring the EA and the combination of the both will provide some details or enhancements on the 'next steps') will help alot.

Either use EA's as a 'guideline' as you learn or make sure you monitor them. Also i dont believe overpriced courses will help you, there is enough free info out there or low cost ( like this forum) that are leaps and bounds better!

accounts:

managed:

open for 2 months ( the !@#$@'s for dropping my account 10% the first month!!!)

started : $1000

now: $994

FXCM :

2 weeks ago started trading this again from before. Using a $100 EA as a guide

started: $200

Now: $1,400

Other:

Started Mid july, was doing alot better until I did manual trades

started:$500

Now: $ 900

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mikelina 2008.11.16 12:54 #26

hello to all,

i am newbie to forex market (actually jumped here from stockmarket)

still i haven't earned anything, just wandering around some months now and looking for indicators, systems, ea's, opinions, other's experience and knowledge..and i would like to thank you all in this forum, for sharing info and helping others.

although i strongly believe that sharing knowledge means progress for anybody, i am convinced that many people out there don't like to share anything (that is how majority of people behave, i don't blame them...)

i have burned 7 or maybe more demo accounts in fxdd and fxmeta and still trying to figure out what is going on, how the market works, what's the news impact, the credibility of sup/res lines and have used some eas from elite section that found profitable but i am scared to use any of them with real money, probably because i don't fully understand the way they work and strategy they use, and i am not able yet to change the settings..

also i am not a programmer, but i consider myself 'number's familiar'.

in this effort , i was always wondering what is the background of those

people that actually make money consistently from forex market (are they highschool graduates, mba'ers, economy graduates, mathematicians, engineers, working in forex teams,?)

what probability do you consider that has a private investor in this game, to finally grab some of those money, money that was exclusive privilege of banks a few years ago... ?? who do we compete with?

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McPip 2008.11.18 22:49 #27

Hi all,

I am also newbie. Man this thread is kind of like trading therapy. Thanks to everyone for your insights...they really help to ground a person because looking at the results in this particular forum of some of the EAs can really make you get off track.

I read this entire thread and see that it is getting off track so wanted to pose the original question again perhaps while using a more specific example. There are a couple of EAs that are listed in the trading results that NewDigital maintains that look really impressive over a long period of time.

Are those results not achievable in real time? If the answer is that they ARE NOT achievable, then.....

1) Is it because brokers will close down your account if they find that you are running a successful EA as another poster mentioned (why would they do this if they are making pips?)

2) Is it because the data streams in demo accounts and real money accounts work differently?

3) Is it because when we say "blow up your account" that this means that the system experiences drawdowns that are higher than were expected but that the system still makes money if you work your way through them?

4) Is it because of technical issues that arise with Metatrader or with the EAs that eventually lead one to lose a substantial amount on one trade (e.g. the EA places the trade but before it can place it's stop you lose your high-speed internet connection?

So, to be really specific, if I started trading the Alpha09 system when the developer released it to this forum more than 1 year ago, why would I not have achieved the results that are being posted on this forum? Oh, and I am not asking because I am challenging anyone...I am just looking for more grounding because I am at least smart enough that they are too good to be true and that I want them to be true (which could be very dangerous). So, I am looking for more grounding I guess so that I don't lose all of my capital.

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Linuxser 2008.11.19 23:56 #28

EternalFxStudent:
Hi all,