How to learn to trade?

Mikkel · Sep 13, 2015

kut2k2 said:
Hi, Mikkel

Most have given you good advice. Except volpunter of course. He's a troll. Do yourself a favor and put him on ignore.

My two cents:

Stick with demo accounts until you are comfortable trading. There's no rush at this stage of your life.

Timeframe: start with eod (end of day) data as your basis. You can always go to higher or lower timeframess from eod if you want to later.

Instrument: you already have MetaTrader so maybe try forex first. If that is a poor fit, try trading stocks. Futures and options are more advanced stuff and require a lot of study before you try trading them.

Strategy: here's the most fascinating part (for me anyway). Which strategies are you familiar with? Which one makes the most sense to you? That's the one you start with -- in a demo account. If that doesn't work out, go to the second strategy that makes sense to you. And so on and so on.

Good luck with your training.

Thank you! I'll try with eod

Mikkel · Sep 13, 2015

nakachalet said:
@Mikkel

yes, mikkel, you are right, if you might suspect that it was a fluke.

and i am always very happy and thankful that i have had many flucks last week alone.

here is another chart dated 2015-09-11. enjoy and have fun studying it.

I don't know what a fluke is, I know the technical words in spanish (I know that I have to learn their english translation

ops

Could you explain it?

wwatson1 · Sep 13, 2015

Well your in a better position than when I started. You had to be glued to a computer and minimum account deposit was 5k, leverage was crap and the commissions where high.

Now you can trade from your smartphone with ultra low commissions, low starting balance and trade very small size to learn. I wish you the best of luck, you have the right attitude and the tools are available so good luck my friend

Mikkel · Sep 13, 2015

wwatson1 said:
Well your in a better position than when I started. You had to be glued to a computer and minimum account deposit was 5k, leverage was crap and the commissions where high.

Now you can trade from your smartphone with ultra low commissions, low starting balance and trade very small size to learn. I wish you the best of luck, you have the right attitude and the tools are available so good luck my friend

Thank you very much! I have the tools, now I have to use them haha

wrbtrader · Sep 13, 2015

Mikkel said:
Thank you! I'll try with eod

I will repeat...do not trade now (simulate or real money). You're about a year or more away from such.

In contrast, you're at the University and should be continuing your education while learning as much information as possible about the IBEX, Bolsa, Forex (you seem interested in forex because of the software you have...a software you currently do not know how to use) and anything else involving Spain's financial markets.

In the meantime, you can also concentrate on developing a local network with others like yourself and hopefully a few are more advance than you or become more advance than you. Therefore, your time right now and for about a year is best spent on learning and understanding that if you want to trade for a living (you've implied such)...best to first learn the business aspects of trading and to grow a personal (in person) network with your peers there in Spain...the latter down the road will pay dividends as you get closer to a career as a trader regardless if its retail or institutional.

Simply, don't be lured right now into any kind of trading. This is a seductive profession and most that get involved in trading while having not properly prepared...they stay involved until one day they conclude...it doesn't work. This forum is littered with comments by traders as such...traders not able to look in the mirror to see that they themselves created the problem and continue doing so.

Last time I'll repeat this message to you but its obvious others will encourage you to get your feet wet now...that's the start of the temptation...seductive aspect of trading for a newbie.

Mikkel · Sep 13, 2015

wrbtrader said:
I will repeat...do not trade now (simulate or real money). You're about a year or more away from such.

In contrast, you're at the University and should be continuing your education while learning as much information as possible about the IBEX, Bolsa, Forex (you seem interested in forex because of the software you have...a software you currently do not know how to use) and anything else involving Spain's financial markets.

In the meantime, you can also concentrate on developing a local network with others like yourself and hopefully a few are more advance than you or become more advance than you. Therefore, your time right now and for about a year is best spent on learning and understanding that if you want to trade for a living (you've implied such)...best to first learn the business aspects of trading and to grow a personal (in person) network with your peers there in Spain...the latter down the road will pay dividends as you get closer to a career as a trader regardless if its retail or institutional.

Simply, don't be lured right now into any kind of trading. This is a seductive profession and most that get involved in trading while having not properly prepared...they stay involved until one day they conclude...it doesn't work. This forum is littered with comments by traders as such...traders not able to look in the mirror to see that they themselves created the problem and continue doing so.

Last time I'll repeat this message to you but its obvious others will encourage you to get your feet wet now...that's the start of the temptation...seductive aspect of trading for a newbie.

I get your point and even though there is people that encourage to directly start to learn by trading itself I think that is more logic what you say.

Before doing something you have to know it, if you do you will have more chances of success when you do it than if you start doing it directly without the necessary knowledge. If you do it that way you will do a lot of things wrong and acquire bad habits.

That's what I think so I will take your advice. Thank you very much!

Hooti · Sep 13, 2015

wrbtrader said:
I will repeat...do not trade now (simulate or real money). You're about a year or more away from such.

In contrast, you're at the University....

I support wrbtrader’s posts. There is an example here on elite trader of a university student learning to trade based on what his professor recommended.

Go to the general "forums" page near the upper left hand corner of this page. Once you are in "forums", then do a search (on the upper right hand side) though the forums for the member "Lajax" and look at his sequential threads on NQ-price action (with a thread for each of the below steps). [edit -- links added below.]

You will see a process of learning from observing <--> back testing <--> forward testing <--> sim trading <--> live trading. And going back and forth as necessary until your stats carry across. You don't have to follow DB Phoenix (as Lajax did) to use this process. Whoever you follow, working a process like this... because you have to learn your own way to trade regardless, IMO the process is as much or more important than who you follow. Once you have the process, if you run into a problem you just go back and work it through the process; or if you want to add something new to your trading, the process is one way to do it.

Look at how much time Lajax spent before even considering sim or live trading. And it appears the wrbtrader is recommending even more of a base of understanding before trading.

I will say that it is easy to overtrade in an effort to reach 100 trades in each step of the process as Lajax did – a natural tendency. The truth is in the saying: “the faster you go the longer it takes”.

http://www.elitetrader.com/et/index.php?threads/price-action-nq.289300/

http://www.elitetrader.com/et/index.php?threads/price-action-nq-ii.290256/

http://www.elitetrader.com/et/index.php?threads/price-action-nq-iii.290851/

http://www.elitetrader.com/et/index.php?threads/simulated-combine-nq-i.291787/

http://www.elitetrader.com/et/index.php?threads/simulated-combine-nq-ii.292323/

fxwizard · Sep 13, 2015

@OP: You need some sort of theory on which to base your trades.

For beginners, the best theories books would have to be:

1. How I made $2M in the stock market by Nicolas Darvas
2. How to make money in stocks by Williams J. O'Neil

Those will give you the theories. But you also need to know the method. These books will give them to you:

3. The master swing trader by Alan Farley
4. Reading price charts bar by bar by Al Brooks

In short 1+2 cover the "what do I trade", while 3+4 will explain "how do I trade them".

Mikkel · Sep 13, 2015

Hooti said:
I support wrbtrader’s posts. There is an example here on elite trader of a university student learning to trade based on what his professor recommended.

Go to the general "forums" page near the upper left hand corner of this page. Once you are in "forums", then do a search (on the upper right hand side) though the forums for the member "Lajax" and look at his sequential threads on NQ-price action (with a thread for each of the below steps). [edit -- links added below.]

You will see a process of learning from observing <--> back testing <--> forward testing <--> sim trading <--> live trading. And going back and forth as necessary until your stats carry across. You don't have to follow DB Phoenix (as Lajax did) to use this process. Whoever you follow, working a process like this... because you have to learn your own way to trade regardless, IMO the process is as much or more important than who you follow. Once you have the process, if you run into a problem you just go back and work it through the process; or if you want to add something new to your trading, the process is one way to do it.

Look at how much time Lajax spent before even considering sim or live trading. And it appears the wrbtrader is recommending even more of a base of understanding before trading.

I will say that it is easy to overtrade in an effort to reach 100 trades in each step of the process as Lajax did – a natural tendency. The truth is in the saying: “the faster you go the longer it takes”.

http://www.elitetrader.com/et/index.php?threads/price-action-nq.289300/

http://www.elitetrader.com/et/index.php?threads/price-action-nq-ii.290256/

http://www.elitetrader.com/et/index.php?threads/price-action-nq-iii.290851/

http://www.elitetrader.com/et/index.php?threads/simulated-combine-nq-i.291787/

http://www.elitetrader.com/et/index.php?threads/simulated-combine-nq-ii.292323/

Wow Lajax did a great job!
Behind any good work there's a process so yeah I will have to follow the process.
Thank you!!

Mikkel · Sep 13, 2015

fxwizard said:
@OP: You need some sort of theory on which to base your trades.

For beginners, the best theories books would have to be:

1. How I made $2M in the stock market by Nicolas Darvas
2. How to make money in stocks by Williams J. O'Neil

Those will give you the theories. But you also need to know the method. These books will give them to you:

3. The master swing trader by Alan Farley
4. Reading price charts bar by bar by Al Brooks

In short 1+2 cover the "what do I trade", while 3+4 will explain "how do I trade them".

Thanks!!
I'll search for them. Any other book recommendation?