Ok this post is for me to brag a little, cut me some slack as I seldom have a chance to do so :P Few days ago I suddenly had this thought: Why the heck am I not demoing more? I really believe that there is a lot to learn from demo trading, and so I've started scalping and demo trading a lot more based on the lower TFs. The goal is to get consistent enough at it so I can start scalping on my live account. So my last 8 trades on two different demo accounts are all winners atm (Hopefully not a fluke)! Of course anything can change later, but I've secured profits on majority of the trades. And I did learn a lot. Every pro trader I came across on forums will preach the same thing: there is no way to get good at trading without thousands of hours and many years of chart time. And that is exactly what I'm trying to achieve.
I also noticed that I committed many common mistakes in my demo trades. As a note to myself, I want to list the core of my trading in three points:
- Identify S/R and Supply/Demand levels
- Wait for Price Action bar there
- Ensure there is space for the trade (no nearby trouble area, good RR)
All three are absolutely important, most of the time when I neglect any one of the points I'll lose, and mind you that still happens A LOT even though they seem like simple points. Of course there is a lot more, higher TF trend, big picture story, chart pattern etc, but I realized that somehow those three are sufficient to make a profitable trader.
Those are great results. Can you explain why you vary so much on your lot sizes for the different currencies?
ReplyDeleteAh u noticed! Ok here is a confession, I try to risk 2% of my balance on every trade, and I have an excel to help me calculate my position size for the FX trades so the lot size for my FX positions should be correct. However for my Commodities and Indices trades, I'm kinda lazy to calculate the correct lot size so I just entered a small lot size for each. Of course this is not something I'll do with my live trades, and I'll probably need to get more diligent with practicing proper sizing on my demo trades as well.
ReplyDeleteThat makes sense. How long were your scalping trades on average. Your results didn't show the closing time. Unless I missed it.
ReplyDeleteHi Steve, the MT4 tab I screenshot only shows the current trades, closed trades and other transactions are found on the Account History tab.
ReplyDeleteTo be honest I only started learning how to scalp, so far most of my trades last between few hours to around a day or two, so I guess it really isn't hardcore scalping. Thing is, I identify levels and setups based on the hourly and above TF and try to get a more precise entry using the lower TF, so in fact I'm not sure you can even consider this scalping :P
The really pro guys are able to just take a 1 min or 5 min chart and make 100+ trades a day (check out Ken of AceGazette). I simply don't know how to do that and will focus on getting the basics right for now before I move on to such advanced stuff.
I remember reading one of Ken's posts where he did that. That was very impressive.
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