Forex price action secrets

Price action trading: the untold secrets

sfl 1 Comment
18 min read

I know a lot of traders who try to become profitable using a multitude of indicators (or a combination thereof). Hell, it was my strategy for about a full year when I was starting out trading! It didn’t work for me. While indicators are not inherently bad, there’s a good chance that it didn’t work out for you too. If it did, a lot more than the 10% of traders that are said to be profitable in this business would make a killing, but they don’t.

 

Gradually though, I started to change the way I approached trading and immersed myself in price action trading. By now, price action is my main way of trading and my Trade Advisor students can attest to how effective it is.

 

But… Price action is a whole other beast.

 

Different species. Stands apart from all the other technical analysis tools.

 

And a lot of traders don’t understand how to trade it.

 

It’s understandable though.

 

It’s not an indicator in the traditional sense. You can’t read price action in the unambiguous way you can know if the RSI indicator has crossed the 70 mark. It’s the reason beginning traders flock to indicators you can quantify easily. RSI, MACD, Stochastic, ATR. The list could go on. While these indicators have their use, they’re not something I solely base my trading ideas on. Most of them are lagging and just plain not working as a trading strategy.

 

Believe me, I’ve built trading robots based on about every popular indicator (or combination of indicators) you can find. It’s a trap for beginning traders and every single one of them loses money on it.

 

Indicators money trap
Money trap

 

Instead, learning about price action is the best way to become a profitable trader.

 

And I’m going to tell you the price action secrets that matter. The ones you need to make the best trades. But first, we need some background.

 

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What to do on weekends to improve forex skills

How to improve your forex skills on weekends

sfl 2 Comments
5 min read

I have a confession to make.

 

I’m completely addicted to trading.

 

I just love the charts. Regardless if I’m winning or losing. I love analysing price action, testing strategies and finding trading opportunities.

 

Sounds familiar, you say?

 

It’s not uncommon. We forex traders are a passionate breed. However, after 5 days of trading, the retail forex markets close. Time to relax and spend time with friends and family. But weekends are also the perfect time to sharpen your forex skills! It’s when most of us actually have some time to research, learn and improve.

 

 

The three great essentials to achieve anything worthwhile are, first, hard work; second, stick-to-itiveness; third, common sense.

― Thomas A. Edison

 

 

“But the markets are closed! What is there left to do?”

 

Actually, there’s plenty to do in weekends if you want to sharpen your forex skills! Here are my top 5 tips to improve my forex knowledge in weekends.

 

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Reasons why most traders lose money

5 critical reasons why most traders lose money

sfl 1 Comment
6 min read

“Why do I keep losing money?”

 

This question used to keep me up at night.

 

Have you ever wondered this too? I have, over and over again.

 

Losing traderWhen I was still struggling to become a profitable forex trader, I was desperate for the answer. Not only that, I wanted to identify the various pain points that made forex traders lose money. Find a structured way to tackle them. I wasn’t going to be a losing trader forever, no way. So I started researching.

 

 

Why do traders lose out?

 

The short answer is of course because it’s really hard to be consistently profitable.

 

But why? There are enough traders with a proven track record, so it must be possible. During my search, I’ve identified 5 of the most important reasons why traders lose out. I’m pretty sure that at one point or another, I’ve been through them all. But once I started working on them, I noticed a real turnaround in my trading performance! I couldn’t believe this, it really worked.

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Forex FOMO

Battle Forex FOMO, the fear of missing out

sfl 12 Comments
7 min read

FOMO – Fear Of Missing Out.

(Go straight to the 5-step battle plan)

 

Wikipedia says that FOMO is “a pervasive apprehension that others might be having rewarding experiences from which one is absent”. In other words: the nagging feeling that other traders are making big profits and you’re letting the trading opportunities slip through your fingers. To counter this feeling, you enter trades way too quickly.

 

Afraid to miss the next big move.

 

 

Stanford research has shown that what investors fear the most is not the risk of a loss per se, but the risk that they may do poorly relative to their peers.

 

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forex trading gear

Essential Gear for Forex Traders

sfl 1 Comment
6 min read

Linux, raspberry pi, gadgets; the whole nine yards.

 

I confess. I’m a technology geek.

 

While forex trading is my passion, I’ll be sure to surround myself with all the tech to be as productive as can be. It probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that over the years, many equipment setups have been put to the test: different gear, tools, software and hardware.

 

gear on table

 

The best equipment allows you to focus on what’s important to you: trading. It doesn’t get in the way, and instead helps you to achieve the best work you can. This essential gear makes the life of a forex trader easier.

 

The best equipment to be most productive as a forex trader.

 

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How cognitive biases will affect your trading

sfl Leave a comment
6 min read

More than anything, trading emotions can hurt your account balance.

 

Or, as the famous trader Jack D. Schwager said in Market Wizards:

The key to trading success is emotional discipline. If intelligence were the key, a lot more people would be making money.

 

The wave of trading emotions

Emotions make us enter the markets at the wrong time. Exit at the wrong time. There’s the fear of missing out (FOMO). Emotions probably make us take wrong decisions in between as well. It is the reason we lose out, even when our trading strategy is solid. We are bound to make the wrong errors over and over again, unless we are aware of what’s working against us.

 

Trading cyclus

 

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Turtle traders rules

A free turtle traders forex expert advisor

sfl 1 Comment
5 min read

Ah, the turtle traders. The legendary experiment.

 

The stuff that makes the hearts of all traders tingle with excitement. No? Well, it makes me excited at least, don’t judge 🙂

 

The Turtle Traders Experiment

 

“We’re going to raise traders just like they raise turtles in Singapore.”

 

Set in the 1980s, Richard Dennis (one of the most successful traders back then) strongly believed that trading could be taught. When he started out his plans to teach a group of 23 people to become great traders, many were sceptical though. This is how it worked: he gathered a small group of traders – the Turtles – and gave them a 2-week training course on a simple trend following system. With these clear instructions, the turtles were given a trading account and had to trade the rules they were taught for one month. After the month, the ones that were successful were given a larger trading account from Richard’s own money to trade.

 

Money

 

Fast-forward 5 years and his turtles had earned an aggregate profit of $175 million. The experiment was an enormous success and showed that given a simple set of rules, anyone could be made a successful trader. Some of the original turtles went on to keep trading under their own accounts and were incredibly successful at it.

 

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Trading like an astronaut

Why thinking like an astronaut will make you a better trader

sfl 2 Comments
6 min read

Frustrating, isn’t it?

You are trading for a while now, learned the fundamentals, created your trading plan – but still lose money.

It’s like building a sailing boat and learning how to navigate it. Everything lines up and you set sail, only to have a big wave tip you over when you’ve almost got to your destination.

You feel you’re close to reaching your goal but every time, something’s holding you back.

 

It’s exhausting.

 

But what if you could change your strategy and become more resilient to those big waves? Implement changes in order to make the scales tip on the right side of the trading equation?

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Forex MT4 MetaEditor

MT4 EA Course: our first forex expert advisor

sfl 4 Comments
9 min read

This article is part of a series. Here are the other parts:

 

Welcome to the second part of our MetaTrader4 Expert Advisor course! Missed the first part? Go read the MT4 EA course Intro now, I’ll wait!

 

[includeme file=”wp-content/post-includes/expertadvisorvault.php”]

 

In this part, we’re going to learn how to use the MetaEditor – the Integrated Development Environment or IDE for MetaTrader4 – to develop those exceptional expert advisors! I’ll show you around the editor and we’re even going to create our first expert advisor. Let’s call that EA the Forex Wall-E.

Get it? Robots, automated programs. Ah, moooving on!

Forex Wall-E

 

After this article, you will feel comfortable with the MetaEditor and know how to create a new expert advisor. That’s almost halfway to raking in those pips with our automated strategy!

 

These are your first steps into a new world – with a huge potential pay-off.

Ready?

Let’s do this.

 

 

“Invest in yourself. Your career is the engine of your wealth.”

– Paul Clitheroe

 

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Forex VPS hosting - network cable

4 forex VPS deals to make your trading more reliable

sfl Leave a comment
2 min read

As I’m sure many of you do as well, I’m using MetaTrader 4 as my main trading platform (using FxPro as my broker of choice). Running automated strategies poses a challenge however: you need to continuously keep your computer running to let the expert advisors make trades! That is something I’ve done in the beginning (yeah..), but it’s not very practical. I have since moved on to use a forex VPS hosting solution, something that allowed me to log in to my MetaTrader 4 instance whenever I wanted to without having my computer running 24/7.

 

Good forex VPS services set themselves apart from other VPS hosting companies by catering specific to the needs of forex traders. They make sure that maintenance only happens when the markets are closed, they offer regular backups and redundant servers. Some even offer free Expert Advisors as part of the hosting package.

 

Over the years I’ve used various forex VPS providers, so I’d wanted to give an overview of the good and cheap (but reliable!) VPS forex hosting companies that I know offer quality hosting that is reliable, affordable and will run your MetaTrader 4 platform without issues.

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