The story of my life...
There is so much to say but not enough time to write it all down and share it. I have been to the end of the world and back (at least in terms of efforts to make money and improve my life), yet I haven't left my hometown of Melbourne, Australia.
You can see an outline of my history in my bio - I'll save repeating myself.
Continuing on from my bio: my life in forex since 2008 has been pretty lacklustre. I haven't really knuckled down study the markets or trading techniques or programming - perhaps until now.
I got interested in the markets when I saw the front-page news showing the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), and then my first experience was instant success using Contracts For Difference (CFDs) with CMC Markets: selling the AUDUSD from 92 cents to 89 cents and making $32,000 from $4000 in one week - and losing it on the Friday. The AUDUSD continued on to reach lows in the low 60s, but I was "once bitten-twice shy" after that. Besides, I had used my entire credit card limit!
So I watched the market, without playing it, trying to understand how it worked and trying to get my head around the way it moved. I quickly learned (from the media) that it was interest-rate plays (carry traders / big money) that was the reason for the moves I witnessed: as risk was de-leveraged and money was moved to safer havens away from the AUD - and nowhere is (was) considered safer than the USD. And then to watch the market moving back up as risk-appetite increased again... I missed the entire move, too scared to try my "luck".
And learning more about currency trading, I got involved with the myriad of brokers that are out there: IAMFX, FXDD, FXCM, Tadawulf, YouTradeFX, HotForex, FinFX to name a few. As I lost money, I sought a better broker each time, hoping that I would find a broker that had the best trading conditions to give me the best opportunity to win. At the same time, I searched the web from forum to forum and website to website, looking at automated trading systems that could remove me entirely from having to make the decisions in trading. It was an enigma for me: backtests, risk management, market behaviour, news impacts, etc. etc. Though I am still learning and I am far from a pro, I know more now than I did before. I learnt late how to backtest systems using historical market data, I learnt how to optimise them, and gradually I have been understanding things more. But there is much I still do not know!
The fact is: there are individuals who have gone before me, who have done the "hard-yards", yet I am not reaping their legacies. Sure, many did not wish to share their hard work, especially if they were wildly successful now (eg. Wolf On Wall Street). Why would they want to share for free what they worked so hard to create? But then, there are others that realised the greater picture in life, and the size of the markets, or for whatever reason, these others were willing to share their works and help others become successful in their own lives.
Where I am at now:
I have settled with a good broker, who I find is as legitimate and fair as they come. IC Markets is regulated in Australia, and since I live there perhaps I am biased. But I learnt the hard way that if money is lost overseas, it is outside the jurisdiction of my country, so it is difficult (nigh impossible) to recover the funds (I am referring to Profitable Sunrise and ProForex Union, to which I lost the equivalent of $120,000 of my wages which I sweated to work for). So my money stays in Australia, and they cannot run with it.
I use a good VPS service provider known as BeeksFX, with which there is a sponsorship program with my broker, so I can get my VPS cost discounted (free) depending on my trade volume. In addition, BeeksFX and IC Markets have a special arrangement with their X-Connected servers located in New York City - which (I am told) is basically on-top of the exchange - helping to greatly reduce latency and slippage.
My trading account stands at a grand total of AUD$2000. I had made it up to $25,000 at one stage, but some of the systems I was using were very risky - still are! I have found my favourite kind of EAs (expert advisors) are grid-martingale, set at very low grid settings, and therefore martingale needs to be reduced to lower risk, but it is still very risky. My greatest gains have been from this type of EA, and it is a common technique in trading, used in many EAs (despite its negative implications as extremely risky, it can be a very useful technique to extricate oneself from a losing trade!). Many EA vendors will avoid mentioning or admitting that this function exists in their own EAs, as the majority of traders continue to associate "martingale" or "grid" as negative terms that ought to be avoided.
I have kept track of almost my entire forex trading history on MyFXBook, not only for my own posterity, but also to prove to the world where I have been, so that one day when I am hugely successful in forex no one can say I had it easy - I did not have it easy, no one showed me the way, I had to learn it all myself. We are lucky to have the web with its wealth of information, but perhaps there is just too much information to sort through - information overload. There are also a lot of people out there with the worst intentions of personal greed and gratification, before the charity and basic human respect of others. If you spend enough time on enough sites and forums you will soon see both types of people are everywhere, but especially the negative kind. Where there is money to be made, you can be sure the greedy and selfish will be there - not necessarily the charitable and kind, though they can often be there too, fighting the "good fight". Nowhere can you see this more obvious now than in the wholly unregulated pseudo-market called "Binary Options".
So I continue to search, but my search has been somewhat fruitful: I have my hardware set up (broker and VPS), and my software is up to me to choose - I have a few which are reliable enough to warrant using live. All I need is capital - which I will have to work for since I have no money now...
I'll keep you posted if any major developments occur. I guess this is a good intro to my blog. I hope I can continue this with the tests I have conducted and other useful information which I think would be beneficial to others in forex (especially new traders).
