Originally posted by NJTrader
Yes books are great. I have read more books then I care to mention here on all kinds of trading including forex. I have been paper trading on a demo account. Not sure if I know exactly what I am doing is correct, that is why I would like to take a class to sharpen these skills. Any suggestions?
You're doing the right thing, if you're making money. I'm trading a demo account too.. Caught 30 pips in two days, max drawdown 14 pips. Not ideal, but I'm getting there.. (trade exits and scaling are things I need to work on..)
Here's why I like forex, so far:
1. A LOT of specialized electronic trading knowledge is needed to successfully short-term (even swing, in some instances) trade equities. The forex market is soooo big, that it's impossible for one player alone to monkey with the market (no Axe).
The corollary is that there aren't a lot of retail traders, so there aren't as many 'shakeouts', i.e. obvious patterns (triangles, etc) that immediately fail as soon as the dumb money is sucked in. Don't get me wrong-- you need to be smart about broker selection, since your broker knows your stops, and can move their quotes off the market to run them. Find a firm whose desk is compensated on straight salary. (GAIN capital is the only US firm with a decent reputation here and abroad)
2. Very trending.. In other words, unlike the qqq (with random 5% up days), its generally easy to establish your bias for the day/week.
3. Pure TA I trade under the influence of bollinger bands and a set of moving averages, and some (very simple) fibonacci analysis. I sell strength and buy weakness. In the short week I've been trading, I generally find two trades in about 6 hours at night, and miss 1 or two others.
4. There is so much room to be a superstar. Most of us will never trade a $5000 account to $1B. But the retail forex market is just beginning-- it will eventually have its own Teresa Lo's, Larry Williams'.. If your mind works this way, and you can achieve some decent results, it shouldn't be that hard to emulate any of the other advisory service/chatroom businesses. They can be very lucrative, and smoothe out the ups and downs of tradings. (I'm sure this advice is sacrilege on this board, but it is something to think about). The hardest part of any of that is finding someone to warehouse your series 3 after you take it..
But as to your question, I don't think there's anything special about forex that requires real training. Most of the books out there (esp. Master Swing Trader) are applicable to the forex market. The differences you can learn from watching the forex market in real time every day. Just remember that the leverage is what can really really really kill you.
regards,
laziz