hello from cape town, south africa

[shafiek]

hi, my name is shafiek and i am from cape town, south africa. i just joined the forex mentor program and i am looking to expand my network in the forex world.

i am relatively new to forex still trading off demo accounts, hopefully going live this month. i am looking for any help or advice in reagrds to forex trading. im not sure which broker to use and anyone out there who is using a broker that is going well let me know please.

i am a 25 year old male and i am looking forward to getting started and becoming a full time forex trader. i dont know any other forex traders where i live so i really rely on the internet for guidance and help with forex.

thanks and successful trading to all
shafiek

[raa]

Hi, Shafiek and welcome! This site has some great information re brokers and many other things. Check out forum sections. Good luck!

[capsmart]

Hello Shafiek.
Welcome to the club. This is the place to find the info you need.
Concerning brokers they are all after your money one way or another. They trade against you. Your loss is their win. You cannot avoid this for the moment. Try to stay with the big ones. I would suggest to open a demo with a metatrader broker in order to have your indicators and then trade with OANDA. They have the lower spreads from what I know. Less than 1 pip for Eur/Usd.
On the other hand since we are aiming for larger targets like 50 or 70 pips 1-2 pips make no difference. But why pay for a coffee 1.5 if you can have it for 1.3?
Metatrader brokers that are reliable (according to me of course) are Alpari UK, IBFX or FXCM. I am using all of them and have no problems.
Later on you should consider an ECN broker. Those they charge commission but offer you the current bank spread than can be as low as 0 pip (not often). They usually need larger deposits and the minimum to trade is 1 lot.

[raa]

Vassilis, just to update your post, the broker Marc is describing as one of the best, Ducascopy, is ECN broker and very recently they started to take new traders with as little as 1000 USD deposits and with minimum 1,000 units lots, i.e. micro-lots! I am looking forward to move there myself.

[capsmart]

Good news !!!
From what I know it takes some time with the paperwork to open an account with them. (about 2 weeks)

[shafiek]

hi

thanks for taking the time to reply to my message. so how long have you been trading and are you currently a member of the forex mentor program? any advice for a beginner in the forex world seeing that there is so much info out there it can get overwhelming at times. hope your trading is going well.

thanks
shafiek

[shafiek]

hi

thanks for replying to my message. how long have you been trading for? how has the trading been going for you thus far? any advice for a beginner in the forex trading world.

thanks
shafiek

[capsmart]

Shafiek
As far as I am concerned, I am trading forex for the last 4 years and I trade full time for about 1 year. I cannot say that I can live from forex trading but the last 4 months, since I joined this program I do not have losing months. The profits are not big but at least they are not losses. Before that it was one month up one month down (or more lol).
My biggest problem is discipline and something that is difficult for you now, small lot size. When you open a 10.000 trade (100 dollar capital) even if you make 10 pips you only made 10 dollars so you wait till you make more. Then the trade goes against you and you are loosing 20 dollars, an amount that is easily affordable and therefore you start playing with the stop loss (if there is one) and before you blink twice you are at -100 dollars. There starts the pain. Should you accept the loss or will it come back? You promise yourself that if it goes back to entry level you will close the trade and NEVER move the stop loss again. BUT... if price moves fast and you have a 10 pip profit you start again thinking what you could buy with the next 200 you will profit from this unexpected 200 pip move (that never comes by the way), or it comes after you closed the trade because you could not sustain the loss any more.
It sounds like a drunk monkey jumping around but this is exactly how our brain works.
Good luck my friend.

[raa]

I can only concur with Capsmart. However, I also believe that if you are really think you have a right thingking behind the trade and your analysis tells you you did right backed by multiple different reasons, and there is a reason behind market behavior not as expected (like news out), then I can see a reason to move SL and go into "covering" mode. I did this several times lately and eventually all winners, however it does involve big risk and you have to have a psychie for it: believe that you are right and have ball to keep buying in into losing position (keep shorting when it is going up or longing when it is going down). Then you don't need to have price to return to the level where you have entered originally, you will have an another level, based on arithmetical average where you will break even. And if you calculate your positions right, even if you screw up with initial thinking about direction of the move (due to new, etc), a typical pull back after the strong move will see you gaining some profit. At this point my motto is don't be greedy, collect some profit and escape. Live to fight another day. This is how it happened with me shorting Cable last days.

PS it may sound naive but in a year time I see myself as professional trader earning main income from FX. I did well in a corporate world but I only want to puke when I think about working there for years and years and years more. My vision is successful trading and running an investment company if my results are so good.

[capsmart]

Raa
I want to wish you all the best with the investment company.
I would be scared to trade OPM (other people money).

But a note of caution. This averaging down technique cost me three years ago all my year profits. In just two weeks. The thing would keep going up and up for two weeks. Of course after closing my position price reversed but I was so much depressed that I could not trade for a month. I remember the amount lost. 6000 euros.