From the sound of what Anna Coulling writes on her incredibly informative website about forex trading, she is now trading forex full time and clearly doing well; but she did not start out making money from her first trade. Maybe she did not lose $1000 in her first 4 days of trading, but it is still encouraging to know that a woman who is currently enjoying success as a forex trader started with a similar story of losing money trading forex.
In Anna’s words:

I am now a full time online forex trader working from home, but started investing and trading nearly ten years ago. I began, because at the time I was working for someone in the industry, whose response, when I asked if he could explain something was, ” if I tell you that then you’ll know as much as me”. I took the decision there and then to learn for myself. I made many mistakes along the way, and wasted thousands on training courses run by so called experts. I have also lost money (and thus learnt how to trade safely the hard way)….

You can read the complete details on Anna’s website at making-bread.co.uk Maybe I’ll try to get a hold of Anna and see if she has any advice for women like me just getting started in forex trading.

In my search for a legitimate forex broker I have come to the conclusion that there is probably no such thing, at least not if looking for a forex broker that provides a facility where you can trade without having to experience any of the risk elements that make forex trading what it is; and that is usually what we mean by “legitimate” forex brokers. We read so much about scam brokers that we think there must be legitimate brokers who don’t do any of the things we’re reading about on forex message boards.

I keep hearing words like slippage, stop hunting, spread manipulation being thrown around, with traders who have lost money attributing their losses to forex brokers who committed these abominable crimes. But from what I’ve been able to discern thus far in my preparation to become a live trader, it would seem that no broker can exactly provide the kind of fail-safe trading environment that little traders like us are searching for.
Read more…

Resource: Understanding Candlestick patterns in fx trading

I have been resisting learning how to read forex charts. I have a thing with charts and graphs; but I’ve decided if I am going to go forward with trading forex with real money, I can’t afford to not understand how to read forex charts. Even if I don’t use the charts much, as I understand not every forex trader relies on the charts though many of the experts insist on their importance, I should at least know how to read the charts and understand what the charts are telling me. I believe that it is unwise not to make an extra effort to at least grasp the basics of chart reading, particularly the reading of candlestick charts which I seem to have a bigger problem with than say the normal line graphing formats.

So I’ve done some research to find tutorials for reading Japanese candlestick charts. Some of the sites I’ve found were all snazzy and jazzy and cute and clever but I still didn’t get a handle on candlestick charts after I went through their lesson.

Here are some links to sites with explanations for candlestick chart reading that I personally found easier to understand:

How To Read a Candlestick Chart By Adam Milton, About.com

The Art of Candlestick Charting – Investopedia

Well, I have wrapped up today’s forex trading practice session with another big loss and again for the same reason, taking a chance first of all, and then not cutting my losses soon enough because I figured it would have to turn around. If you’re just learning like me, here’s a tip, it doesn’t have to do anything. It does what it does. You can’t predict it will turn around. You can’t assume it will turn around. You can’t play this like a game of chance. You have to cut your losses when it’s time.

I don’t think the chance I took was a foolish chance. Perhaps it was an uninformed chance which someone with more knowledge of forex trading might have known better not to take. It was a chance taken expecting that the currency value would continue to fluctuate in a certain direction. Things didn’t work out that way; but I had hours of it hovering at a point where it was safe to keep the positions open a little longer to see if it would go in the anticipated direction. Once it dropped out of the safety zone I needed to go ahead and close the positions regardless if just after I closed them it went in a direction that would have meant profit for me had I not closed them. That way instead of losing $1000 I would have lost $400 which is much easier to recover.

Or maybe the fact that it was hovering so long where it did should have told me something. Well, I have about 20 days left to practice and learn. We’ll see what happens tomorrow.

Since I have about 21 more days to practice before I plan to start trading forex with real money I’ve decided to give OANDA FXTrade another try. I briefly looked at it a couple of weeks ago but didn’t really like what I was seeing; but it could have been because I didn’t really understand what I was seeing as I was too new to forex trading. I am still very new to forex trading but I’ve picked up a great deal more up to this point and with apprehension over FXCM and the fxcm scam complaints I’ve  been finding all over the place, it would be great if I could find another platform to use with a company with fewer scam complaints circulating around the Internet.

I haven’t really done any research into OANDA yet, so who knows what I might find by way of oanda scam complaints? But I have come across numerous references to them on forex message boards and they appear to get recommended over FXCM. I’ll give their trading platform another try. I need to find a trustworthy forex broker.

I’m no forex trading expert so my opinion should definitely be taken with a grain of salt, but I would think a company with as much money as Citi Financial could have afforded to develop a more state of the art forex trading platform. But like I said, I’m no expert so maybe their platform, CitiFXPro is, in fact, state-of-the-art; but I found it ugly, cumbersome and nearly impossible to figure out. So I’ve uninstalled it. It’s too bad because I would have more readily trusted Citi Financials than Forex Capital Markets (FXCM) given all the fxcm scam and fxcm fraud reports I keep finding all over the Internet.

FXCM’s FXCM Trading Station II is a nice platform, but again my opinion is that of someone new to forex trading and not knowledgeable enough to be regarded a trust-worthy source of information on what makes one trading platform better than another. Appeal-wise the FXCM platform was sleeker and 100% easier to understand. It was also a great learning tool; but the complaints about FXCM remain worrisome. It’s too bad CitiFX Pro wasn’t as nice. I couldn’t figure out how to close an open position. I couldn’t see how my open position was moving. I accidentally created an entry order for the following day while trying to figure out how to close my open position, and then I couldn’t find my open position after that, as if somehow I had closed it but nothing was showing up anywhere. And that’s just the smaller part of the problems I had with the CitiFX Pro demo. It was a complete mess.

I am determined to try my hand at forex trading and so I am making every effort to educate myself. I must say that I’m having doubts whether or not it’s a good idea but I am going to take my own advise about doing what you want to do and accepting the results success or failure. I have spent my entire life being so afraid of consequences that I haven’t tried things I’ve wanted to try. Some of the consequences I’ve feared have been as silly as being afraid of embarrassment. That fear has thwarted so many of my dreams. I am at a point where I’m tired of being too afraid of “what if”. So what if things don’t go the way I want them to? I might not make any money. That is true. I might lose my deposit of $2000 that is true. It’s even a guarantee if you believe what you read. Seems it’s not wise to get into forex trading with less than $50,000 to fund an account; but I don’t have $50,000. I don’t have $10,000. I have an opportunity to get $2000 to fund my account. Should I not open an account just because I’m promised that in all likelihood I will lose my money due to the leverage and margin monsters that devour accounts funded with such little money in one gulp?

I’ve decided since I’m not going to have another opportunity the best thing I can do is learn everything I can about leverage and margin as related to forex trading before I actually start live trading.

Since I am focusing my forex trades on the EURJPY currency pair I figure I need to learn as much as I can about the economy of the countries associated with the two currencies. So my first investigation is looking into the Euro which is used by several countries in Europe. I’ve been trading with the Euro but, up until a moment ago, couldn’t tell you which European countries use the Euro as their currency. That is just not acceptable. So I’ve gone ahead and done some research and I have come up with this list of countries. Now I know which countries I need to research when using fundamental analysis to make trading decisions centered around the Euro:

Countries that use the Euro:

• Austria
• Belgium
• Finland
• France
• Germany
• Greece
• Ireland
• Italy
• Luxembourg
• The Netherlands
• Portugal
• Slovenia
• Spain

Update: These additonal Europearn nations use the Euro:

• Malta
• Monaco
• Vatican City
• Andorra
• Cyprus
• Montenegro
• San Marino

Note: This list is subject to change as other European nations switch to the Euro

I’ve been practice trading with EURJPY currency pair. I don’t really have a reason for choosing to focus on the euro and the yen. I know that’s a good indication that I’m not ready to trade for real yet. If I can’t answer the question of why I’m focussed on one currency pair over another then I still have some learning to do. Last week I was working with the USDCAD currency pair. I chose that pair because of my familiarity with the US dollar; but I decided to try something else and picked EURJPY at random. Here’s a record from yesterday’s performance. As you can see I have less in my account at this point than I started with.