Simple Reasons Why You Need A Good Trading Plan

1) Entry Plan - there's only 1 good reason for having a working entry plan, which is to make the profit faster. If you have a good entry plan with more than 50% winning rate but not more than 60% (to tell you the truth it is very rare to have an entry plan that hits more than 60% rate in the long-term) that will make your profit more than 50% faster. When the price moves in favor with your open positions, there's no problem with that. You will simply profit. But there's another side of the story when your trade goes south. This is really the point where you need a good trading plan. How you will handle the floating negative profit.

2) Money Management Plan / Lotsizing - this helps a lot. but MM is not only about the calculation of the risk to have a good lotsize then you use stop loss, or hedging or grid. It is a plan about the logic of the mathematics of lotsizing that will make you able to escape a losing trade. So MM is somehow a part of the exit plan.

3) Escape Plan - all your plans above are all useless if you don't know or you can not imagine how to end the losing trades. So before entering a trade, it should be clear to you how to escape if the trade is losing. If your exit plan is just a guessing game to you, then you are gambling no matter how good the analysis that you use on your entry plan and MM plan. There are many tricks available to exit a losing trade. You can actually find them on the internet but how to exactly use them is another story. No one really tells how. In my upcoming book (or ebook, I haven't decided yet on this) I will tell you secrets (yes contrary to what people are saying that there's no such thing as secret strategies. they really exist but they are not magic wands. they just make the direction of your trades clearer than before) or high-probability-rate principles so you will know your escape plan. The book (or ebook) will be released in the 4th quarter of 2019. PRE-ORDER IS CLOSED.

Bonus: I will conduct a one huge webinar FREE to all who pre-ordered the book. It is not free for those who didn't pre-order the book. But you can pay if you want to attend this webinar. I will be discussing one important part of the book. A complete working trading plan and the logic behind the GABot Expert Advisor that my inner circle has been using for almost 2 years now. The webinar is called DEFENSE TRADING PLAYBOOK. The schedule is on June10, 2019.

Click here to register:
https://fxfledgling.blogspot.com/p/defensive.html?m=0

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Best Price Action Trading Strategy That Will Change The Way You Trade

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What is the best Forex strategy and who is the best trader?

As I've been saying for years, all strategies have potential. You just have the patience to stick with it until you discover the real beauty of the strategy. If you keep jumping from one strategy to another to gain knowledge, you become a Jack-of-all-Trades but master of none. A "Walking Dead", the term I use for traders who know everything about Forex Trading except for being a consistently profitable. No matter what the reasons for gaining too much knowledge about Forex Trading are all negligible if you don't know how to profit. PERIOD. No excuses are required :).

It's all been said everywhere over and over, for a strategy to become a GOOD one, the trader should have a clear mind on doing it. A trader should have a clear idea of what he is doing on each step of the strategy. If you do a strategy BLINDLY by just following what you have read from books, internet, seminars or heard from other traders or mentors, everything becomes useless and pointless. That part can not be just learned from books or mentors. It's a behavior issue. You've got to dig deeper. As I've been saying for years, the Forex Market is not a two-dimensional thingy of ups and downs, or ranging and trending of the prices. It's a multi-dimensional world. Once you discover one dimension, finding others will become easy. You can scalp. You can do trend following. You can use fundamental analysis. You can also do with Technical Analysis. You can trade with Stop-Loss or without it. You can trade with small lotsizes or big lotsizes. You do risky tactics that most traders are against at, like Martingale.

For this reason, you also just have to respect other traders and most important is RESPECT their strategies. Your strategies may be working for you because you discover it yourself. Don't impose everyone to like your methods if they don't like it. They may have discovered something that you don't know and work well with them. If you are wasting your energy proving to everyone that your strategies are the best strategies in the world, then you may consider to re-assess about the way you think and your behavior. Don't grind your mind to come up with the best words to say toprove your point. COLLABORATION is the name of the game. No one is truly a self-sufficient on anything. Ego won't take you anywhere.

Live a happy life :)

So what is the best strategy in the world and who is the best trader of all? The answer is NONE.

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What's Your Investment Horizon?

Each one of us has an opinion about investment. As I've been telling everyone in the FXFledgling group before, the opinion of one person is limited to one's interest, perception, and/or experience. It is limited to one's horizon. The definition of "safe investment" is limited to one's decision on what to believe and do. There is actually no right or wrong on what to believe. It is just a decision.

If you talk to a Mutual Fund salesman, he would say that you should split your money to different funds, Equity, Bond, etc. That's their training. That's their definition of "safe investment". They do that to protect their clients. This approach is very much appropriate for people who are just starting and know nothing about investments. They can start safely. But some people, even if MF has a safety net like this, they can not take the ups and downs of the daily Net Asset Value (NAV) They ended up going back to bank time deposit.

If you talked to seasoned stock investors (those who buy & hold), he would say investing in Mutual Fund, especially non-equity funds is a waste of time. For them it is slow. They can take a bit higher risk compared to Mutual Fund investors just to speed up the performance of their portfolio. This is actually right if the investor knows what he is doing. But before you get to the level that "you know what you are doing", money and time are spent or even wasted just to get to that level. If you have the courage to pursue and never quit, you will reap the rewards sometime in the future. To some people, this approach is already stressful for them, so some of them go back to slower instruments like Mutual Fund. These are the people who would say that the stockmarket is very risky and advise you not to try it.

The next level is "stock trader". Do they earn bigger than stock investors? The answer is yes if they know what they are doing. The answer can be a yes or no if one is just learning the tricks of the trade. The same scenario is seen at this level. Those who try it will end up in two ways. Those who quit and those who never stop trying, failing, and learning until they get to the point of earning big. Endless money and time that one is willing to go are spent and sometimes wasted before they can reach the point of success.

Forex Trading!!!! TADA! My favorite :) This is the most controversial in the world about money making. Many investors even think this is a global scam :( But of course, we can not blame them. Most of those who have tried this ended up busted. As with other money making machines, if people try this they end up two ways, they quit or they would do everything and spend money and time or even waste money and time just to learn the secrets of those who became successful with it. Those who quit go back to stocks, Mutual Fund, etc. But those who never give up, they may experience unbelievably lucrative money making machine they never thought possible. I've been a Forex Trader for almost 17 years now, but I'm still learning every day. I've always had a jaw-dropping experience with some traders that used to be my students but now have made it very far higher level than me. With the advancement of technology, I witness traders that CONSISTENTLY earn 50%+ per month, 100%-300% per month, and most recently one of my students showed me how to earn 100% per day (There are actually 2 of them with different styles, the other one is into Binary Options thru Forex. He said he will also share to me his secrets soon). Decades ago, without technology, these successes are impossible. Of course, many people still believe that this is not possible. Their opinion is limited to what they are trained to believe with. If we are talking about this 30 years ago, yes they are correct. But we are talking about now. Thirty years ago, if we talk about cellphones, people would say "There's no such thing as a wireless telephone. It's impossible". If we talk about the internet, people would say "You are thinking about Science fiction at its best. Television is the greatest invention there is". Each industry has a technology attach to it. Technology upgrades every six months. There may be impossible ideas 6 months ago that is very much doable now. That's the truth.

So what's your investment horizon? Are you willing to expand that horizon? Or you just want to be contented to what you currently know? There's no right or wrong answer. It's just a matter of decision. Each decision is correct. Each one of us also should respect the decision of other people on how they handle their money. What you think is right may be wrong for them, so you just have to respect that.

If one wants his money to be just in the bank and willing to lose some of it to inflation rate because he has a peace of mind doing it, contented with it, so that is correct. If one wants to scatter it in different Mutual Funds, that is correct as well but better in terms of income. If he wants to try some of it in Stocks, that is also correct and way better in terms of income. If he wants a far more exciting method, he can try Forex Trading, which is also a correct investment of money and time, and far more rewarding in terms of income.

If you invest your money before you decide on what path to go to, be sure to double check your risk appetite. That is your guide on choosing what to try. Don't just think about how big profits will be. You have to check how much emotional investment you want to spend on it and how much money and time you are willing to lose before learning it.

In case you decided to try Forex Trading or have been trying it but still failing, the upcoming release of the book, Uncharted Stratagems: Unknown Depths of Forex Trading may help you shorten your learning curve. You will learn unconventional knowledge about Forex Trading that you won't find anywhere else. It is a compilation of 17 years of experience in the industry. The result of thousands of failures and lessons encountered along the way and how traders like you can avoid it, so you can try right away what is already tested.

If you wish to grab a copy of the book click this link to pre-order...
https://fxfinnercircle.blogspot.com/p/awaken-forex.html?m=0

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Multiple Exit Methods On Closing A Trade

Is closing a trade still a mystery to you? Maybe you have been thinking how to really plan on closing a trade to maximize profit. Many discussions about Forex Trading have put so much attention and focus on how to enter a trade. You will see thousand of ways on how to analyze the chart technically and interpret the news for fundamental analysis for a good and proper trade entry. If analyzing the entry is a difficult task to do, to most of the traders, planning the exit is even more difficult. In analyzing and conceptualizing of achieving a successful exit, the basis of the exit should be in agreement exactly with the entry plan. Aligned. The reason for the exit should be well thought and doesn't rely on a simple Stop-Loss or Hedge (when trading without Stop-Loss).

In this post we will discuss overview of the different exit plans that you can do to close a trade. With a pinch of creativity, you can explore different ways of using them. Some of the exit methods can give you mediocre result. Some are hard to implement but with perseverance you may possibly achieve them with high winning rate, and most of the these exit methodologies should be implemented with extra care as it can do harm to your fund if not executed with a good overall plan.

• Hard Stop-Loss - Success Rate: Poor, many traders have been evangelizing the use of hard stop-loss, but do you know that poorly plan stop-loss is more risky and harmful than a trade with no stop-loss. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that a stop-loss is a bad idea. It is actually a good idea to use this but if you use it just because your basis are just simple supports, resistances, or ATR, then you are in big trouble. It should be more than that.
• Dynamic Stop-Loss - Success Rate: Poor on slow reversal, Excellent in sudden reversal, this is a calculated hidden stop-loss that gets triggered when there is a very quick reversal like the flash crash. The dynamic stop-loss is a proprietary concept by the one who discovered it, so it can not be discussed here. It is a method that can not be implemented manually. The good news is a tool is available online that you can use as a complete exit tool for your scalping. It includes the dynamic stop-loss. You can download it from this link. https://www.mql5.com/en/market/product/27235. 
• Hedging - Success Rate: Good, in implementing this method, you can use the hedging trade with the same lotsize as the original open trade or you can use higher lotsize. Escaping the hedge is the hardest part. The best tip that I can give you is to plan how you can reach the break-even point then you can decide if you still want to profit from it or close it to free you from stress and just start over again. The first step in escaping the hedge is to analyze again the general direction of the price then take appropriate action to at least reach the break-even point. 
• Averaging - Success Rate: Good, in this method you have to open more trades at a specific time interval to average profit until it becomes positive. The best way to implement this is by combining it with a very good entry plan that determines the general direction. Do not implement it right away if the analysis of the direction is still aligned with the position. When the trade reverses that's the time you put the averaging to work.
• Grid - Success Rate: Good, this is somewhat the same with averaging because you also need to open more trades here and you also need to average them. The difference is you don't do it at a specific time. You have to open more trades with a specific distance, so trades are lined up like a grid. The best way to implement this is the same with Averaging.
• Trail Stop - Success Rate: Good, this is already available in MT4. It is good in preserving your profit when the price moves along the direction of your position. Explore more this feature then you will discover that it does not only save your profit. It does more.
• Cut Loss - Success Rate: Very Poor, to some of the traders, they panic when a trade goes south. They resort to this when they can no longer think of something to do to save their losing positions. I would say if a trader does this. He doesn't have a complete trading plan. He analyzes only how to enter a trade but doesn't bother to think about how he can complete that trade by planning first how to exit it before opening the trade.

Research more on how you can do the exit methodologies I listed above. Google is your friend. You will not get the exact answer from Google but you will surely get the hint to complete your plan. The best tip that I can give to you for your success is try to combine two or more of these exit methods, you will discover new angles of ideas that you never thought before.

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Forex Trading Myth

Somebody asked me...

STRANGER: Can I actually replace my full-time job with income from Forex trading?

ME: Yes. How much is your job salary?

STRANGER: $50,000 a year. Can you show me how?

ME: Your freedom depends on how much you are willing to invest. How much you are planning to invest for your initial fund?

STRANGER: $200 only. It's too risky.

ME: Ok. But it will take you 11years or more to earn $50K per year with that kind of investment, if and only if you can consistently earn 5% a month. That's on compounded . (Boom)

The Myth 

Many traders have been dreaming that they can really achieve their dream life with just a $200 of investment. They think that it's a magical get-rich-quick scheme that will give them unlimited income with a few dollars.

The Reality 

This kind of mentality makes them trade with large lotsizes with a very small fund on a live account. They usually ended up disappointed. To achieve the freedom that you've been dreaming of, you have to plan for it. Learn Forex trading at least how to earn safely and conservatively if you have a job. It is possible to earn 50% a month or more (believe me, I have friends who earn this much trading Forex fulltime) but you have to invest a lot of time and money before you can come up with the best trading plan that you have longed for. Since you are having a 9-5 job, you have to be realistic on your plan. Aim for at least 5% a month safely (very doable).

If you want to replace your job income with trading income, do the math. If you earn 5% a month with Forex trading, you need to have at least $85K fund to earn $4,250 a month, or $51K a year.

If you are only willing to invest $200 for this, you need a good consistent system that can make you earn 5% a month to make $85K money in 11 years.

So how much you are willing to invest?

PS It will take you more than 11 years to earn the dream fund if you will withdraw some profit along the way.

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More About Trading Psychology: Confidence

What is confidence? How it can make or break you as a trader?

Trading confidence is the psychology of initial success. it is the feeling or belief with a firm trust that you can rely on a strategy or trading plan. It is the psychological tool that traders have and use to fight fear and all emotions related to it. How do we gain confidence? We get it once we achieve the first success with any strategy that we come accross with.

A trader must be aware that confidence, while it is one of the best emotional tools we have to fight fear on trading, confidence can also mislead us to do something stupid. Sometimes too much confidence makes us think that our strategy is the best strategy and it always has its magic. This can lead you to increase lotsize more than what is stated in your trading plan. Over confidence can also make you enter pre-mature trades. For example, if you have 5 conditions in your strategy then your current analysis meets only 4, because of your confidence in your strategy plus greed, you won't wait for the fifth condition to appear. You will open a trade right away.

Confidence can also make us tweak strategies irresponsively. Tweaking, exploring, and experimenting are important for you to discover good strategies, but you have to do it right. You can not expect success if you keep integrating all strategies you find into one analysis. You have to be careful in combining different analysis. This is common to old traders that have been using generic strategies in predicting price direction. When they see a new strategy, they do their analysis using it, then at the other part of the analysis they will check their old generic analytical tools to confirm. There are 2 things may happen, 1) you will fail. 2) you may experience success but it slows the profit. You are not sure if it's really working or you just got lucky. You can't really tell at an early stage. In order for you to confirm that it really works, you have to do the same analysis for a long period of time and no short cuts. Based on what I have observed with hundreds of students that I've had, on the next trade, they would tweak even more.

To be successful, keep it super simple. Just follow the trading plan exactly the way it is stated in the rules, no ifs no buts. If you think there's a better way of doing it, (good, you are thinking) do it in a separate account for at least 3 months. 

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Why Forex Signals Don't Work

What are Forex Signals? According to Wikipedia "A forex signal is a suggestion for entering a trade on a currency pair, usually at a specific price and time. The signal is generated either by a human analyst or an automated Forex robot supplied to a subscriber of the forex signal service."

How the signals are sent to the clients? Forex signal providers are using different media on sending signals. They usually use one or more of the following; Twitter, FB Messenger, Telegram, test messages, emails, etc.

What are the problems with Forex Signals? 

As you can see in the definition of Wikipedia, a Forex signal is a suggestion for entering a trade on a currency pair at a specific price and time. The problem with this is no matter how good the entry suggestion, many subscribers will not get it right. This is because the signal is all about the Entry Plan. It doesn't mention what kind of Money Management to be used and most importantly, it doesn't tell the Exit Plan applicable to the entry plan. So what subscribers are getting is an incomplete suggestion. Some signal providers are sometimes giving Stop-Loss level as a part of the signal. Yes, SL is an exit plan. But SL is the lamest of all exit plans. If your SL is not a well thought and baseless SL, it is as bad as without SL with no basis. As I've been saying for years now, SL and no-SL are equally risky if you don't know what you are doing.

Another reason why Forex signals don't work is psychology. Traders have different attitudes towards trading. It will create a whole book if we are going to discuss everything :). If a strange Forex entry suggestion is given to a trader. The trader doesn't know what to expect from it. He doesn't know how the entry plan is analyzed. The trader is not prepared for that trading plan. He is not trained how to handle that kind trading plan. So the result of his trade will be erratic. As well as the behavior is most likely erratic. Most of the time, he panics.

So next time that you subscribe to a Forex signal, be sure the provider is giving you the whole package. It should include a money management plan, exit plan, and a clear training on what the signal is all about so you will behave properly on execution.

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On Learning Forex Trading: Start It Right

Newbies can relate to this...

You are seeing many tips and lessons in the internet on how to trade from different veterans and mentors. You have tried many of them but failed. So most of the newbie traders have thought that the internet is full of pretenders, fraudsters, and charlatans. So they would hate every Forex mentors they have seen online because they think they are fakes. Hold your horses. It may not always true. I think many of these Forex mentors have no intention to trick you. I think they are only guilty of one thing... They made you drive a BIG TRUCK right away... What⁉️⁉️

Forex Trading Is Like Driving

Learning how to trade is like learning how to drive. If you don't know yet how to drive, you can not expect to learn driving with a big truck. You will feel overwhelmed and may not learn it. Even if you do, the whole learning process is very hard, a very terrible experience. To avoid this bad experience, start it right. Start with a small car. It's the most easy and convenient way to start. You have to feel first how driving is. The learning curve will be shorter. The same with Forex trading. You should start small. While learning how to trade, you have to have a good feel of the market price movement first. To achieve that you have to start trading with a demo account right away, not to profit right away, but to feel the movement of the price. Immerse yourself to grasp the feeling. Absorb the idea that it's not just ups and downs, not just ranging and trending, and it's random, very difficult to predict the future price. Baby steps. You don't have to learn everything all at once. Learn one at a time. Learn while you are doing it. Just know where to get any information in case you come across a situation that you need help to learn something. Start learning using any customized tools that you come across with. Remember you don't have to master how each tool works. You just need to feel the experience of the market. Having a real feeling about the market can make you use any tool and indicator at your advantage. Any strategy taught to you, you've got a big chance to achieve success.

Enjoy the weekend :)

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The Reality of Trading with Stop-Loss

If you are new to trading and you choose to trade with SL. There are different emotions involved once an SL is hit. no matter how good your strategy on setting SL, sometimes SL will be hit. You have to train yourself to live and accept the reality that sometimes your SL would be hit, or else you will find yourself "Revenge Trading". This is the reason why some traders prefer to trade without SL. KNOW THY SELF. It is the key, then choose the method appropriate for your personality. Once you find yourself, stick for the style you chose for a long time. Master it.

Just remember, trading with or without SL is equally risky if you don't know what you are doing. Perfect your craft.

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What Makes A Successful Trader?

There are two ways on listening to a music. Those who just feel the rhythm of it to relax and enjoy. The second way is diving deeper to the emotion of the rhythm, absorbing the lyrics, learning the relevance of each note and putting oneself to the story it tells for complete immersion. The first one is for enjoyment, the second one is for mastery. When listening to the music, both ways are fine. But if you are aiming for mastery, you should be doing the second one.

The same with Forex Trading, there are also two ways to do it. Most of the traders are learning the chart, candlesticks, indicators, trendlines, channels, price actions, fibonacci, etc. They focus on the obvious angles of the analysis. They observe the ups and downs of the price movement. They focus on what they see in the chart based on common knowledge. That would make you enjoy trading. The second way; the hard and painful way is always ignored. Because it requires diving deeper beyond the obvious, absorbing what's behind the chart, learning the relevance of each candlestick, indicators, etc., and putting oneself to the psychology and behaviour of the whole market, and knowing the story it tells beyond fundamentals and news, knowing entirely new dimensions of possibilities. If you aim for just knowing how to trade, you do the first one. But if you aim for mastery, you should be doing the second one. The second one is not quick, not overnight. It may take years to master. All those who invented the indicators and methods are all masters. They jumped beyond the common knowledge. That's why they came up and invented something. They invented tools to make trading easier for ordinary traders to learn trading quickly instead of aiming for complete mastery.

In the Apprentice Program, we will be discussing about this tools in order for them to achieve quick success possible. Tools will be introduced, but members should be smart, patient and not lazy enough to follow exactly how they are used. The bottomline is... they should be profitable after the program, the easy and quick possible way. The goal is ambitious. But it's too early to say that it's not possible. We are choosy on admitting participants as 100% profitable students is the overall objective. We are accepting only for smart, independent, resourceful and not lazy traders to achieve this.

Join here if you think you have what it takes to be an apprentice. It's free... http://eepurl.com/c0QPS5 

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