So there seems to be a lot of new people on this sub. And makes sense if you have questions a lot of time you'll turn to reddit for the answers (I know I do). Well here are some tips that I think would benefit new traders.

1. Don't trade ANY Euro pairs. Look I know it's the most traded pair it goes up and down really fast and there's so much potential for you to make money. Turns out there's even more for you to lose money. It's way too volatile specially if you don't know what you're doing. EUUSD is the worst offender.
   
2. Trade the Daily. Might think you're cool looking at charts every x amount of times during the day. You get to tell your friends and family that you trade all day and they might be impressed at what you're doing but unless you have some years under you stick to the daily. There's less noise. You can see clearer trends and when you don't stare at the screen all day you're less emotional therefore a more effective trader. I only look at the chart 15 minutes a day to either enter close or manage my trades. Whatever happens when I'm gone is what happens.
   
3. There is no holy grail indicator Look for it all you want. It doesn't exist. There are good indicators. There are bad indicators. There are some indicators that are so broken if you do the opposite of what they're intended for you'll actually make a profit. But the fact remains that there's no perfect one. Stop looking. What you should be looking for is an indicator that fits with your strategy.
   
4. What currencies to pick. I actually never see this brought up. The notion in forex is that all pairs can be traded equally. To a certain extent that's not false. But until you get the hang of it stick to a strict trading diet. Look for pairs that trend a lot. Duh look for the trend I can hear you say. When I say trend I don't mean a couple of days or weeks. I mean a couple of months. Half a year. Pairs that do that have a higher tendency to stick with one direction for a while. That's where you make your money. An easy way to identify those pairs as well is putting together a volatile currency (USD) with a less volatile one(JPY).
   
5. USE YOUR SL Trust me even if not putting a SL has netted you all kinds of gains eventually the market will turn around and bite you. With no safety net you'll lose most if not all your profit. The best offense is a good defense.
   
6. How to pick your TP and SL level. Most new traders care so much about that. I put it near the bottom because in my opinion you should know everything listed first. This is my opinion and I use it for my strategy I use the ATR(average true range) indicator. It's a really helpful tool that helps you identify the range at which the candles will either rise or fall. Obviously you want to set your TP inside of that range and your SL slightly outside of it.
   
7. Lot sizes. Everyone has a different story about how they pick their lot size. The general consensus is don't risk over 2% of your account. But I'm a simple man and I can't be bothered to figure out what my risk is every single time. So what I do is I put $0.10 for every $100 I have on the account. I then assign $300(minimum) to each pair. That's $0.30 per pair. It's easy to remember. 10 cent for every $100. If you're able to blow $100 with $0.10 then you probably shouldn't trade.
   
8. How to avoid reversals. Tbh you can't. There's no way to predict the future so eventually you'll get hit by one. What you can do however is minimize the blow. How I do it is for every pair I take two trades. If you remember in the previous tip is said I do about$0.30 per pair well I divide it 2:1. I take one trade with a TP(2) and one without (1). If my TP is hit I pocket that amount and if the trend keeps going in my direction I make even more. If the trend decides to end or reverses my losses are minimal because at least I kept half.
   
9. There is NO right way to trade. Stop listening to people telling the best way to trade is fundamentals or naked charts of to use some specific indicator. There are no right way to do this. It's as flexible and unlimited as your imagination. I personally use indicators but if that's not your thing do YOU! Just remember to manage your trades properly and be level headed when trading. Hell if your trading strategy is flipping a coin with proper trade management you'd probably make some money (don't quote me on that).
   
10. Trade money you're willing to lose Don't trade your rent money.
    

That's all I have for now. If anyone sees this and wants to add more feel free. Hope this helps someone.

Real quick before I get into my next steps of my FX Journey, id like to say thank you to all the people who commented on my last post! All of the tips I got were really eye-opening and introduced me to different parts of FX trading that I didn't even know existed. So thank you so much, and I hope to get more interesting feedback from you guys in the future! Also Im going to probably change my writing frequency from daily to biweekly. I think writing about every little trade is not going to be as beneficial to me as writing about my overall progress at certain points throughout the week.
I started this trading day out by learning up on order flow. A whole bunch of you guys suggested really interesting youtubers to watch, and I started with Mr. pip's series on order flow. After I finished up watching a few of his videos, I started to tweak my trading plan so that I could get in some chart time. I changed currency pair from EUUSD to the AUD/USD, the time frame from the 4 hour to the 1 hour, and my indicators from RSI, Stochastic, 2 SMAs and ADX to ATR, RSI, and Ichimoku Kinko Hyo. I also added a little fundamental analysis in my trading plan because I think that I am being far too reliant on my indicators. I planned to check the economic calendar and determine the general trend of the currency pairs that are strongly correlated to the AUD/USD before I began my chart analysis. In addition to all of my analysis, I tried to practice using the techniques I learned in Mr. Pip's videos and analyze the order flow of the chart. Even if my analysis of order flow is wrong, as long as I am getting practice I am learning.
Eventhough I planned to use today to back-test indicators and find a solid new plan, I did not have enough time. I ended up getting on my demo account really late in the day, and started to force myself to enter a trade. Destructive habits like this could lead into some massive issues when I eventually get into live trading. To combat this harmful attitude specifically, I will restrict myself to trading on certain parts of the day (for example session overlaps, news releases, and earlier in the day). Despite this mistake I still continued with my trading strategy. I calculated all the currency correlations for AUS/USD using the past weeks economic data, and set my indicators in place. After checking the overall trend of the most strongly correlated pairs (Positive: EUUSD, GPB/USD, Negative: USD/CAD, USD/JPY) I started to analyze the order flow. All the correlated currencies, except for EUUSD, indicated that the AUD/USD would fall, while my order flow analysis indicated the opposite. Seeing as though I am extremely new to order flow, I dismissed this analysis, and ended up forcing a trade on the AUD/USD going short when my indicators seemed to line up correctly. I learned from last time that I should not alter or close my trade purely based on emotion, and to just wait till the market hits my stop loss or take profit. I included a trailing stop loss of 60 pips this time, but I have no evidence to base that number range on. The trade is currently open and I am down about 30 pips.
Although I am not labeling this trade as a loser yet, I can definitely see a lot of holes in my trading strategy. The most obvious mistake in my eyes right now is my use of indicators. Currently all my trades are purely based on what my indicators say, and since I do not have any back-tested data to support the credibility of my indicators, it feels a lot like strategic gambling. Another issue is that I feel far too reliant on indicators alone. I think that if I can find ways to include various types of analysis efficiently and evenly in my trading plan I will become a much more skillful and well-rounded trader. In order to combat these two issues I will begin forming various types of trading strategies this weekend and back-test them all extensively. I also plan on researching more on price action, order flow, and Naked Forex.
Once again any and all feedback is welcome. I am just beginning Forex, but it had been a huge passion of mine and I don't plan on stopping anytime soon.

The foreign currency market is the largest of all of the trading markets with an almost unbelievable 5 trillion dollars changing hands each day. Until recently Forex trading was consigned to heavy weight traders and brokers who could afford the high minimum trading amounts required.
However, the recent appeal of trading online has prompted a further development in the foreign exchange boom. Increased leverages are now not just available for the big scale traders but also for the starter and lower volume speculators. Whereas minimum deposits were at one time in the thousands of dollars range now they are in the hundreds. Nowadays, a trader can enter the foreign exchange with little more than a credit card, a Forex trading account and a laptop or PC. The boom has led to a number of brokers entering the market to meet the demand in online trading, but getting a suitable broker out of so many options can be difficult.
Deciding on a Forex broker
Take a look at this list of fundamentals to think about when making your selection of a suitable Forex broker:
Foreign currencies
All Forex brokers provide the "majors" as pairs to trade upon. These principal moneys include the US dollar (USD), the Japanese Yen (JPY) and the British pound (GBP). Further brokerages host platforms that have the alternative to exchange lesser known moneys. The more sluggish Forex currencies or"exotics" encounter even more volatility as opposed to the "majors" which can provide intriguing trading options. If you are planning on trading on one of the weaker, "exotic" currencies make sure that it on the list of currencies to invest with on your broker of choice's platform. In short make sure that you work with currencies that you have an interest in.
Trades
A lot of currency brokerages have reduced their minimum deposits to as low as $100. Higher leverage sums which were formerly only made accessible for expert traders are currently on hand for the lower end traders. The good thing about this is that with a 50:1 leverage, on a trading account of $1,000 the user can now sustain a place of $50,000. Be careful to remember, however, that leverage is a sort of financial loan, whilst the strength of your account is markedly increased the potential sum to be lost is also boosted.
Regulation
Each one of the leading Forex firms will have made sure that they are listed by one or more of the main regulatory authorities. For a user to observe that a company is fully regulated shows that the brokerage service is a serious operation devoted to fair market procedures. Signing up for membership with an unregulated broker is not advised, even more so with such a wide choice of regulated brokers out there..
Minimum amounts for deposit
Every broker will designate a minimum deposit amount prior to the start of trading. Smaller deposit amounts can be put down using beginner or low volume trading accounts whereas the high roller accounts require higher minimums to begin. As there are such larger numbers of brokers operating the initial deposit amounts can play a significant role as each company pushes for your custom by trying to out compete rival companies with more tempting welcome offers. You will notice that it can be to your gain if you browse a little.
Commissions and Spreads
Forex brokerages profit though commissions and spreads. The broker's commission can either be set on a per transaction basis or over a set of transactions. The spread refers to the amount between the actual and the bidding prices of a currency or currency pair. Usually the spread is comes in at around 3-5 pips.
Margins
It is not unconventional for a broker to require that you fund your account with an advanced amount of capital to counter balance any potential losses that may be experienced. This advanced amount is known as a margin or margin requirement. Be sure that the conditions of the margin requirement are suited to your degree of trading.
Trading Platforms
The most widespread platform in the online Forex market is the Meta trading platform. It is very reliable and can be accessed both on your computer and your mobile device. Some brokers use their own proprietary trading platform as well so it is advisable to take the time to find out how trusted it is and whether there are any interruptions between messaging between their platform and the actual foreign exchange.
Support
See if you can get as much information as possible about the level of support available with a broker. Good indicators of a broker's level of service can include the trading education materials they have and if there is a live chat option. Together with this, many top companies display documentation, tutorials and eBooks to educate you on how to improve your chances of achieving profitable returns and cutting down minimising the risks.
Forex trading involves risks. You can minimise the risks by researching your broker and testing out your trading strategy thoroughly.

Disclaimer: None of this is financial advice. I have no idea what I'm doing. Please do your own research or you will certainly lose money. I'm not a statistician, data scientist, well-seasoned trader, or anything else that would qualify me to make statements such as the below with any weight behind them. Take them for the incoherent ramblings that they are.
TL;DR at the bottom for those not interested in the details.
This is a bit of a novel, sorry about that. It was mostly for getting my own thoughts organized, but if even one person reads the whole thing I will feel incredibly accomplished.

Background

For those of you not familiar, please see the various threads on this trading system here. I can't take credit for this system, all glory goes to ParallaxFX!
I wanted to see how effective this system was at H1 for a couple of reasons: 1) My current broker is TD Ameritrade - their Forex minimum is a mini lot, and I don't feel comfortable enough yet with the risk to trade mini lots on the higher timeframes(i.e. wider pip swings) that ParallaxFX's system uses, so I wanted to see if I could scale it down. 2) I'm fairly impatient, so I don't like to wait days and days with my capital tied up just to see if a trade is going to win or lose.
This does mean it requires more active attention since you are checking for setups once an hour instead of once a day or every 4-6 hours, but the upside is that you trade more often this way so you end up winning or losing faster and moving onto the next trade. Spread does eat more of the trade this way, but I'll cover this in my data below - it ends up not being a problem.
I looked at data from 6/11 to 7/3 on all pairs with a reasonable spread(pairs listed at bottom above the TL;DR). So this represents about 3-4 weeks' worth of trading. I used mark(mid) price charts. Spreadsheet link is below for anyone that's interested.

System Details

I'm pretty much using ParallaxFX's system textbook, but since there are a few options in his writeups, I'll include all the discretionary points here:

• I'm using the stop entry version - so I wait for the price to trade beyond the confirmation candle(in the direction of my trade) before entering. I don't have any data to support this decision, but I've always preferred this method over retracement-limit entries. Maybe I just like the feeling of a higher winrate even though there can be greater R:R using a limit entry. Variety is the spice of life.
• I put my stop loss right at the opposite edge of the confirmation candle. NOT at the edge of the 2-candle pattern that makes up the system. I'll get into this more below - not enough trades are saved to justify the wider stops. (Wider stop means less $ per pip won, assuming you still only risk 1%).
• All my profit/loss statistics are based on a 1% risk per trade. Because 1 is real easy to multiply.
• There are definitely some questionable trades in here, but I tried to make it as mechanical as possible for evaluation purposes. They do fit the definitions of the system, which is why I included them. You could probably improve the winrate by being more discretionary about your trades by looking at support/resistance or other techniques.
• I didn't use MBB much for either entering trades, or as support/resistance indicators. Again, trying to be pretty mechanical here just for data collection purposes. Plus, we all make bad trading decisions now and then, so let's call it even.
• As stated in the title, this is for H1 only. These results may very well not play out for other time frames - who knows, it may not even work on H1 starting this Monday. Forex is an unpredictable place.
• I collected data to show efficacy of taking profit at three different levels: -61.8%, -100% and -161.8% fib levels described in the system using the passive trade management method(set it and forget it). I'll have more below about moving up stops and taking off portions of a position.

And now for the fun. Results!

• Total Trades: 241
• Raw Winrates:
  • TP at -61.8%: 177 out of 241: 73.44%
  • TP at -100%: 156 out of 241: 64.73%
  • TP at -161.8%: 121 out of 241: 50.20%
• Adjusted Proft % (takes spread into account):
  • TP at -61.8%: 5.22%
  • TP at -100%: 23.55%
  • TP at -161.8%: 29.14%

As you can see, a higher target ended up with higher profit despite a much lower winrate. This is partially just how things work out with profit targets in general, but there's an additional point to consider in our case: the spread. Since we are trading on a lower timeframe, there is less overall price movement and thus the spread takes up a much larger percentage of the trade than it would if you were trading H4, Daily or Weekly charts. You can see exactly how much it accounts for each trade in my spreadsheet if you're interested. TDA does not have the best spreads, so you could probably improve these results with another broker.
EDIT: I grabbed typical spreads from other brokers, and turns out while TDA is pretty competitive on majors, their minors/crosses are awful! IG beats them by 20-40% and Oanda beats them 30-60%! Using IG spreads for calculations increased profits considerably (another 5% on top) and Oanda spreads increased profits massively (another 15%!). Definitely going to be considering another broker than TDA for this strategy. Plus that'll allow me to trade micro-lots, so I can be more granular(and thus accurate) with my position sizing and compounding.

A Note on Spread

As you can see in the data, there were scenarios where the spread was 80% of the overall size of the trade(the size of the confirmation candle that you draw your fibonacci retracements over), which would obviously cut heavily into your profits.
Removing any trades where the spread is more than 50% of the trade width improved profits slightly without removing many trades, but this is almost certainly just coincidence on a small sample size. Going below 40% and even down to 30% starts to cut out a lot of trades for the less-common pairs, but doesn't actually change overall profits at all(~1% either way).
However, digging all the way down to 25% starts to really make some movement. Profit at the -161.8% TP level jumps up to 37.94% if you filter out anything with a spread that is more than 25% of the trade width! And this even keeps the sample size fairly large at 187 total trades.
You can get your profits all the way up to 48.43% at the -161.8% TP level if you filter all the way down to only trades where spread is less than 15% of the trade width, however your sample size gets much smaller at that point(108 trades) so I'm not sure I would trust that as being accurate in the long term.
Overall based on this data, I'm going to only take trades where the spread is less than 25% of the trade width. This may bias my trades more towards the majors, which would mean a lot more correlated trades as well(more on correlation below), but I think it is a reasonable precaution regardless.

Time of Day

Time of day had an interesting effect on trades. In a totally predictable fashion, a vast majority of setups occurred during the London and New York sessions: 5am-12pm Eastern. However, there was one outlier where there were many setups on the 11PM bar - and the winrate was about the same as the big hours in the London session. No idea why this hour in particular - anyone have any insight? That's smack in the middle of the Tokyo/Sydney overlap, not at the open or close of either.
On many of the hour slices I have a feeling I'm just dealing with small number statistics here since I didn't have a lot of data when breaking it down by individual hours. But here it is anyway - for all TP levels, these three things showed up(all in Eastern time):

• 7pm-4am: Fewer setups, but winrate high.
• 5am-6am: Lots of setups, but but winrate low.
• 12pm-3pm Medium number of setups, but winrate low.

I don't have any reason to think these timeframes would maintain this behavior over the long term. They're almost certainly meaningless. EDIT: When you de-dup highly correlated trades, the number of trades in these timeframes really drops, so from this data there is no reason to think these timeframes would be any different than any others in terms of winrate.
That being said, these time frames work out for me pretty well because I typically sleep 12am-7am Eastern time. So I automatically avoid the 5am-6am timeframe, and I'm awake for the majority of this system's setups.

Moving stops up to breakeven

This section goes against everything I know and have ever heard about trade management. Please someone find something wrong with my data. I'd love for someone to check my formulas, but I realize that's a pretty insane time commitment to ask of a bunch of strangers.
Anyways. What I found was that for these trades moving stops up...basically at all...actually reduced the overall profitability.
One of the data points I collected while charting was where the price retraced back to after hitting a certain milestone. i.e. once the price hit the -61.8% profit level, how far back did it retrace before hitting the -100% profit level(if at all)? And same goes for the -100% profit level - how far back did it retrace before hitting the -161.8% profit level(if at all)?
Well, some complex excel formulas later and here's what the results appear to be. Emphasis on appears because I honestly don't believe it. I must have done something wrong here, but I've gone over it a hundred times and I can't find anything out of place.

• Moving SL up to 0% when the price hits -61.8%, TP at -100%
  • Winrate: 46.4%
  • Adjusted Proft % (takes spread into account): 5.36%
• Taking half position off at -61.8%, moving SL up to 0%, TP remaining half at -100%
  • Winrate: 65.97%
  • Adjusted Proft % (takes spread into account): -1.01% (yes, a net loss)

Now, you might think exactly what I did when looking at these numbers: oof, the spread killed us there right? Because even when you move your SL to 0%, you still end up paying the spread, so it's not truly "breakeven". And because we are trading on a lower timeframe, the spread can be pretty hefty right?
Well even when I manually modified the data so that the spread wasn't subtracted(i.e. "Breakeven" was truly +/- 0), things don't look a whole lot better, and still way worse than the passive trade management method of leaving your stops in place and letting it run. And that isn't even a realistic scenario because to adjust out the spread you'd have to move your stoploss inside the candle edge by at least the spread amount, meaning it would almost certainly be triggered more often than in the data I collected(which was purely based on the fib levels and mark price). Regardless, here are the numbers for that scenario:

• Moving SL up to 0% when the price hits -61.8%, TP at -100%
  • Winrate(breakeven doesn't count as a win): 46.4%
  • Adjusted Proft % (takes spread into account): 17.97%
• Taking half position off at -61.8%, moving SL up to 0%, TP remaining half at -100%
  • Winrate(breakeven doesn't count as a win): 65.97%
  • Adjusted Proft % (takes spread into account): 11.60%

From a literal standpoint, what I see behind this behavior is that 44 of the 69 breakeven trades(65%!) ended up being profitable to -100% after retracing deeply(but not to the original SL level), which greatly helped offset the purely losing trades better than the partial profit taken at -61.8%. And 36 went all the way back to -161.8% after a deep retracement without hitting the original SL. Anyone have any insight into this? Is this a problem with just not enough data? It seems like enough trades that a pattern should emerge, but again I'm no expert.
I also briefly looked at moving stops to other lower levels (78.6%, 61.8%, 50%, 38.2%, 23.6%), but that didn't improve things any. No hard data to share as I only took a quick look - and I still might have done something wrong overall.
The data is there to infer other strategies if anyone would like to dig in deep(more explanation on the spreadsheet below). I didn't do other combinations because the formulas got pretty complicated and I had already answered all the questions I was looking to answer.

2-Candle vs Confirmation Candle Stops

Another interesting point is that the original system has the SL level(for stop entries) just at the outer edge of the 2-candle pattern that makes up the system. Out of pure laziness, I set up my stops just based on the confirmation candle. And as it turns out, that is much a much better way to go about it.
Of the 60 purely losing trades, only 9 of them(15%) would go on to be winners with stops on the 2-candle formation. Certainly not enough to justify the extra loss and/or reduced profits you are exposing yourself to in every single other trade by setting a wider SL.
Oddly, in every single scenario where the wider stop did save the trade, it ended up going all the way to the -161.8% profit level. Still, not nearly worth it.

Correlated Trades

As I've said many times now, I'm really not qualified to be doing an analysis like this. This section in particular.
Looking at shared currency among the pairs traded, 74 of the trades are correlated. Quite a large group, but it makes sense considering the sort of moves we're looking for with this system.
This means you are opening yourself up to more risk if you were to trade on every signal since you are technically trading with the same underlying sentiment on each different pair. For example, GBP/USD and AUD/USD moving together almost certainly means it's due to USD moving both pairs, rather than GBP and AUD both moving the same size and direction coincidentally at the same time. So if you were to trade both signals, you would very likely win or lose both trades - meaning you are actually risking double what you'd normally risk(unless you halve both positions which can be a good option, and is discussed in ParallaxFX's posts and in various other places that go over pair correlation. I won't go into detail about those strategies here).
Interestingly though, 17 of those apparently correlated trades ended up with different wins/losses.
Also, looking only at trades that were correlated, winrate is 83%/70%/55% (for the three TP levels).
Does this give some indication that the same signal on multiple pairs means the signal is stronger? That there's some strong underlying sentiment driving it? Or is it just a matter of too small a sample size? The winrate isn't really much higher than the overall winrates, so that makes me doubt it is statistically significant.
One more funny tidbit: EUCAD netted the lowest overall winrate: 30% to even the -61.8% TP level on 10 trades. Seems like that is just a coincidence and not enough data, but dang that's a sucky losing streak.
EDIT: WOW I spent some time removing correlated trades manually and it changed the results quite a bit. Some thoughts on this below the results. These numbers also include the other "What I will trade" filters. I added a new worksheet to my data to show what I ended up picking.

• Total Trades: 75
• Raw Winrates:
  • TP at -61.8%: 84.00%
  • TP at -100%: 73.33%
  • TP at -161.8%: 60.00%
  • Moving SL up to 0% when the price hits -61.8%, TP at -100%: 53.33%
  • Taking half position off at -61.8%, moving SL up to 0%, TP remaining half at -100%: 53.33% (yes, oddly the exact same winrate. but different trades/profits)
• Adjusted Proft % (takes spread into account):
  • TP at -61.8%: 18.13%
  • TP at -100%: 26.20%
  • TP at -161.8%: 34.01%
  • Moving SL up to 0% when the price hits -61.8%, TP at -100%: 19.20%
  • Taking half position off at -61.8%, moving SL up to 0%, TP remaining half at -100%: 17.29%

To do this, I removed correlated trades - typically by choosing those whose spread had a lower % of the trade width since that's objective and something I can see ahead of time. Obviously I'd like to only keep the winning trades, but I won't know that during the trade. This did reduce the overall sample size down to a level that I wouldn't otherwise consider to be big enough, but since the results are generally consistent with the overall dataset, I'm not going to worry about it too much.
I may also use more discretionary methods(support/resistance, quality of indecision/confirmation candles, news/sentiment for the pairs involved, etc) to filter out correlated trades in the future. But as I've said before I'm going for a pretty mechanical system.
This brought the 3 TP levels and even the breakeven strategies much closer together in overall profit. It muted the profit from the high R:R strategies and boosted the profit from the low R:R strategies. This tells me pair correlation was skewing my data quite a bit, so I'm glad I dug in a little deeper. Fortunately my original conclusion to use the -161.8 TP level with static stops is still the winner by a good bit, so it doesn't end up changing my actions.
There were a few times where MANY (6-8) correlated pairs all came up at the same time, so it'd be a crapshoot to an extent. And the data showed this - often then won/lost together, but sometimes they did not. As an arbitrary rule, the more correlations, the more trades I did end up taking(and thus risking). For example if there were 3-5 correlations, I might take the 2 "best" trades given my criteria above. 5+ setups and I might take the best 3 trades, even if the pairs are somewhat correlated.
I have no true data to back this up, but to illustrate using one example: if AUD/JPY, AUD/USD, CAD/JPY, USD/CAD all set up at the same time (as they did, along with a few other pairs on 6/19/20 9:00 AM), can you really say that those are all the same underlying movement? There are correlations between the different correlations, and trying to filter for that seems rough. Although maybe this is a known thing, I'm still pretty green to Forex - someone please enlighten me if so! I might have to look into this more statistically, but it would be pretty complex to analyze quantitatively, so for now I'm going with my gut and just taking a few of the "best" trades out of the handful.
Overall, I'm really glad I went further on this. The boosting of the B/E strategies makes me trust my calculations on those more since they aren't so far from the passive management like they were with the raw data, and that really had me wondering what I did wrong.

What I will trade

Putting all this together, I am going to attempt to trade the following(demo for a bit to make sure I have the hang of it, then for keeps):

• "System Details" I described above.
• TP at -161.8%
• Static SL at opposite side of confirmation candle - I won't move stops up to breakeven.
• Trade only 7am-11am and 4pm-11pm signals.
• Nothing where spread is more than 25% of trade width.

Looking at the data for these rules, test results are:

• Winrate: 58.19%
• Adjusted Proft % (takes spread into account): 47.43%

I'll be sure to let everyone know how it goes!

Other Technical Details

• ATR is only slightly elevated in this date range from historical levels, so this should fairly closely represent reality even after the COVID volatility leaves the scalpers sad and alone.
• The sample size is much too small for anything really meaningful when you slice by hour or pair. I wasn't particularly looking to test a specific pair here - just the system overall as if you were going to trade it on all pairs with a reasonable spread.

Raw Data

Here's the spreadsheet for anyone that'd like it. (EDIT: Updated some of the setups from the last few days that have fully played out now. I also noticed a few typos, but nothing major that would change the overall outcomes. Regardless, I am currently reviewing every trade to ensure they are accurate.UPDATE: Finally all done. Very few corrections, no change to results.)
I have some explanatory notes below to help everyone else understand the spiraled labyrinth of a mind that put the spreadsheet together.

• I'm on the East Coast in the US, so the timestamps are Eastern time.
• Time stamp is from the confirmation candle, not the indecision candle. So 7am would mean the indecision candle was 6:00-6:59 and the confirmation candle is 7:00-7:59 and you'd put in your order at 8:00.
• I found a couple AM/PM typos as I was reviewing the data, so let me know if a trade doesn't make sense and I'll correct it.

Insanely detailed spreadsheet notes

For you real nerds out there. Here's an explanation of what each column means:

• Pair - duh
• Date/Time - Eastern time, confirmation candle as stated above
• Win to -61.8%? - whether the trade made it to the -61.8% TP level before it hit the original SL.
• Win to -100%? - whether the trade made it to the -100% TP level before it hit the original SL.
• Win to -161.8%? - whether the trade made it to the -161.8% TP level before it hit the original SL.
• Retracement level between -61.8% and -100% - how deep the price retraced after hitting -61.8%, but before hitting -100%. Be careful to look for the negative signs, it's easy to mix them up. Using the fib% levels defined in ParallaxFX's original thread. A plain hyphen "-" means it did not retrace, but rather went straight through -61.8% to -100%. Positive 100 means it hit the original SL.
• Retracement level between -100% and -161.8% - how deep the price retraced after hitting -100%, but before hitting -161.8%. Be careful to look for the negative signs, it's easy to mix them up. Using the fib% levels defined in ParallaxFX's original thread. A plain hyphen "-" means it did not retrace, but rather went straight through -100% to -161.8%. Positive 100 means it hit the original SL.
• Trade Width(Pips) - the size of the confirmation candle, and thus the "width" of your trade on which to determine position size, draw fib levels, etc.
• Loser saved by 2 candle stop? - for all losing trades, whether or not the 2-candle stop loss would have saved the trade and how far it ended up getting if so. "No" means it didn't save it, N/A means it wasn't a losing trade so it's not relevant.
• Spread(ThinkorSwim) - these are typical spreads for these pairs on ToS.
• Spread % of Width - How big is the spread compared to the trade width? Not used in any calculations, but interesting nonetheless.
• True Risk(Trade Width + Spread) - I set my SL at the opposite side of the confirmation candle knowing that I'm actually exposing myself to slightly more risk because of the spread(stop order = market order when submitted, so you pay the spread). So this tells you how many pips you are actually risking despite the Trade Width. I prefer this over setting the stop inside from the edge of the candle because some pairs have a wide spread that would mess with the system overall. But also many, many of these trades retraced very nearly to the edge of the confirmation candle, before ending up nicely profitable. If you keep your risk per trade at 1%, you're talking a true risk of, at most, 1.25% (in worst-case scenarios with the spread being 25% of the trade width as I am going with above).
• Win or Loss in %(1% risk) including spread TP -61.8% - not going to go into huge detail, see the spreadsheet for calculations if you want. But, in a nutshell, if the trade was a win to 61.8%, it returns a positive # based on 61.8% of the trade width, minus the spread. Otherwise, it returns the True Risk as a negative. Both normalized to the 1% risk you started with.
• Win or Loss in %(1% risk) including spread TP -100% - same as the last, but 100% of Trade Width.
• Win or Loss in %(1% risk) including spread TP -161.8% - same as the last, but 161.8% of Trade Width.
• Win or Loss in %(1% risk) including spread TP -100%, and move SL to breakeven at 61.8% - uses the retracement level columns to calculate profit/loss the same as the last few columns, but assuming you moved SL to 0% fib level after price hit -61.8%. Then full TP at 100%.
• Win or Loss in %(1% risk) including spread take off half of position at -61.8%, move SL to breakeven, TP 100% - uses the retracement level columns to calculate profit/loss the same as the last few columns, but assuming you took of half the position and moved SL to 0% fib level after price hit -61.8%. Then TP the remaining half at 100%.
• Overall Growth(-161.8% TP, 1% Risk) - pretty straightforward. Assuming you risked 1% on each trade, what the overall growth level would be chronologically(spreadsheet is sorted by date).

Pairs

1. AUD/CAD
2. AUD/CHF
3. AUD/JPY
4. AUD/NZD
5. AUD/USD
6. CAD/CHF
7. CAD/JPY
8. CHF/JPY
9. EUAUD
10. EUCAD
11. EUCHF
12. EUGBP
13. EUJPY
14. EUNZD
15. EUUSD
16. GBP/AUD
17. GBP/CAD
18. GBP/CHF
19. GBP/JPY
20. GBP/NZD
21. GBP/USD
22. NZD/CAD
23. NZD/CHF
24. NZD/JPY
25. NZD/USD
26. USD/CAD
27. USD/CHF
28. USD/JPY

TL;DR

Based on the reasonable rules I discovered in this backtest:

• Date range: 6/11-7/3
• Winrate: 58.19%
• Adjusted Proft % (takes spread into account): 47.43%

Demo Trading Results

Since this post, I started demo trading this system assuming a 5k capital base and risking ~1% per trade. I've added the details to my spreadsheet for anyone interested. The results are pretty similar to the backtest when you consider real-life conditions/timing are a bit different. I missed some trades due to life(work, out of the house, etc), so that brought my total # of trades and thus overall profit down, but the winrate is nearly identical. I also closed a few trades early due to various reasons(not liking the price action, seeing support/resistance emerge, etc).
A quick note is that TD's paper trade system fills at the mid price for both stop and limit orders, so I had to subtract the spread from the raw trade values to get the true profit/loss amount for each trade.
I'm heading out of town next week, then after that it'll be time to take this sucker live!

• 86 Trades
  • Date range: 7/9-7/30
  • Winrate: 52.32%
  • Adjusted Proft % (takes spread into account): 20.73%
    • Starting Balance: $5,000
    • Ending Balance: $6,036.51

Live Trading Results

I started live-trading this system on 8/10, and almost immediately had a string of losses much longer than either my backtest or demo period. Murphy's law huh? Anyways, that has me spooked so I'm doing a longer backtest before I start risking more real money. It's going to take me a little while due to the volume of trades, but I'll likely make a new post once I feel comfortable with that and start live trading again.

The majority of this sub is focused on technical analysis. I regularly ridicule such "tea leaf readers" and advocate for trading based on fundamentals and economic news instead, so I figured I should take the time to write up something on how exactly you can trade economic news releases.
This post is long as balls so I won't be upset if you get bored and go back to your drooping dick patterns or whatever.

How economic news is released

First, it helps to know how economic news is compiled and released. Let's take Initial Jobless Claims, the number of initial claims for unemployment benefits around the United States from Sunday through Saturday. Initial in this context means the first claim for benefits made by an individual during a particular stretch of unemployment. The Initial Jobless Claims figure appears in the Department of Labor's Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report, which compiles information from all of the per-state departments that report to the DOL during the week. A typical number is between 100k and 250k and it can vary quite significantly week-to-week.
The Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report contains data that lags 5 days behind. For example, the Report issued on Thursday March 26th 2020 contained data about the week ending on Saturday March 21st 2020.
In the days leading up to the Report, financial companies will survey economists and run complicated mathematical models to forecast the upcoming Initial Jobless Claims figure. The results of surveyed experts is called the "consensus"; specific companies, experts, and websites will also provide their own forecasts. Different companies will release different consensuses. Usually they are pretty close (within 2-3k), but for last week's record-high Initial Jobless Claims the reported consensuses varied by up to 1M! In other words, there was essentially no consensus.
The Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report is released each Thursday morning at exactly 8:30 AM ET. (On Thanksgiving the Report is released on Wednesday instead.) Media representatives gather at the Frances Perkins Building in Washington DC and are admitted to the "lockup" at 8:00 AM ET. In order to be admitted to the lockup you have to be a credentialed member of a media organization that has signed the DOL lockup agreement. The lockup room is small so there is a limited number of spots.
No phones are allowed. Reporters bring their laptops and connect to a local network; there is a master switch on the wall that prevents/enables Internet connectivity on this network. Once the doors are closed the Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report is distributed, with a heading that announces it is "embargoed" (not to be released) prior to 8:30 AM. Reporters type up their analyses of the report, including extracting key figures like Initial Jobless Claims. They load their write-ups into their companies' software, which prepares to send it out as soon as Internet is enabled. At 8:30 AM the DOL representative in the room flips the wall switch and all of the laptops are connected to the Internet, releasing their write-ups to their companies and on to their companies' partners.
Many of those media companies have externally accessible APIs for distributing news. Media aggregators and squawk services (like RanSquawk and TradeTheNews) subscribe to all of these different APIs and then redistribute the key economic figures from the Report to their own subscribers within one second after Internet is enabled in the DOL lockup.
Some squawk services are text-based while others are audio-based. FinancialJuice.com provides a free audio squawk service; internally they have a paid subscription to a professional squawk service and they simply read out the latest headlines to their own listeners, subsidized by ads on the site. I've been using it for 4 months now and have been pretty happy. It usually lags behind the official release times by 1-2 seconds and occasionally they verbally flub the numbers or stutter and have to repeat, but you can't beat the price!
Important - I’m not affiliated with FinancialJuice and I’m not advocating that you use them over any other squawk. If you use them and they misspeak a number and you lose all your money don’t blame me. If anybody has any other free alternatives please share them!

How the news affects forex markets

Institutional forex traders subscribe to these squawk services and use custom software to consume the emerging data programmatically and then automatically initiate trades based on the perceived change to the fundamentals that the figures represent.
It's important to note that every institution will have "priced in" their own forecasted figures well in advance of an actual news release. Forecasts and consensuses all come out at different times in the days leading up to a news release, so by the time the news drops everybody is really only looking for an unexpected result. You can't really know what any given institution expects the value to be, but unless someone has inside information you can pretty much assume that the market has collectively priced in the experts' consensus. When the news comes out, institutions will trade based on the difference between the actual and their forecast.
Sometimes the news reflects a real change to the fundamentals with an economic effect that will change the demand for a currency, like an interest rate decision. However, in the case of the Initial Jobless Claims figure, which is a backwards-looking metric, trading is really just self-fulfilling speculation that market participants will buy dollars when unemployment is low and sell dollars when unemployment is high. Generally speaking, news that reflects a real economic shift has a bigger effect than news that only matters to speculators.
Massive and extremely fast news-based trades happen within tenths of a second on the ECNs on which institutional traders are participants. Over the next few seconds the resulting price changes trickle down to retail traders. Some economic news, like Non Farm Payroll Employment, has an effect that can last minutes to hours as "slow money" follows behind on the trend created by the "fast money". Other news, like Initial Jobless Claims, has a short impact that trails off within a couple minutes and is subsequently dwarfed by the usual pseudorandom movements in the market.
The bigger the difference between actual and consensus, the bigger the effect on any given currency pair. Since economic news releases generally relate to a single currency, the biggest and most easily predicted effects are seen on pairs where one currency is directly effected and the other is not affected at all. Personally I trade USD/JPY because the time difference between the US and Japan ensures that no news will be coming out of Japan at the same time that economic news is being released in the US.
Before deciding to trade any particular news release you should measure the historical correlation between the release (specifically, the difference between actual and consensus) and the resulting short-term change in the currency pair. Historical data for various news releases (along with historical consensus data) is readily available. You can pay to get it exported into Excel or whatever, or you can scroll through it for free on websites like TradingEconomics.com.
Let's look at two examples: Initial Jobless Claims and Non Farm Payroll Employment (NFP). I collected historical consensuses and actuals for these releases from January 2018 through the present, measured the "surprise" difference for each, and then correlated that to short-term changes in USD/JPY at the time of release using 5 second candles.
I omitted any releases that occurred simultaneously as another major release. For example, occasionally the monthly Initial Jobless Claims comes out at the exact same time as the monthly Balance of Trade figure, which is a more significant economic indicator and can be expected to dwarf the effect of the Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report.
USD/JPY correlation with Initial Jobless Claims (2018 - present)
USD/JPY correlation with Non Farm Payrolls (2018 - present)
The horizontal axes on these charts is the duration (in seconds) after the news release over which correlation was calculated. The vertical axis is the Pearson correlation coefficient: +1 means that the change in USD/JPY over that duration was perfectly linearly correlated to the "surprise" in the releases; -1 means that the change in USD/JPY was perfectly linearly correlated but in the opposite direction, and 0 means that there is no correlation at all.
For Initial Jobless Claims you can see that for the first 30 seconds USD/JPY is strongly negatively correlated with the difference between consensus and actual jobless claims. That is, fewer-than-forecast jobless claims (fewer newly unemployed people than expected) strengthens the dollar and greater-than-forecast jobless claims (more newly unemployed people than expected) weakens the dollar. Correlation then trails off and changes to a moderate/weak positive correlation. I interpret this as algorithms "buying the dip" and vice versa, but I don't know for sure. From this chart it appears that you could profit by opening a trade for 15 seconds (duration with strongest correlation) that is long USD/JPY when Initial Jobless Claims is lower than the consensus and short USD/JPY when Initial Jobless Claims is higher than expected.
The chart for Non Farm Payroll looks very different. Correlation is positive (higher-than-expected payrolls strengthen the dollar and lower-than-expected payrolls weaken the dollar) and peaks at around 45 seconds, then slowly decreases as time goes on. This implies that price changes due to NFP are quite significant relative to background noise and "stick" even as normal fluctuations pick back up.
I wanted to show an example of what the USD/JPY S5 chart looks like when an "uncontested" (no other major simultaneously news release) Initial Jobless Claims and NFP drops, but unfortunately my broker's charts only go back a week. (I can pull historical data going back years through the API but to make it into a pretty chart would be a bit of work.) If anybody can get a 5-second chart of USD/JPY at March 19, 2020, UTC 12:30 and/or at February 7, 2020, UTC 13:30 let me know and I'll add it here.

Backtesting

So without too much effort we determined that (1) USD/JPY is strongly negatively correlated with the Initial Jobless Claims figure for the first 15 seconds after the release of the Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report (when no other major news is being released) and also that (2) USD/JPY is strongly positively correlated with the Non Farms Payroll figure for the first 45 seconds after the release of the Employment Situation report.
Before you can assume you can profit off the news you have to backtest and consider three important parameters.
Entry speed: How quickly can you realistically enter the trade? The correlation performed above was measured from the exact moment the news was released, but realistically if you've got your finger on the trigger and your ear to the squawk it will take a few seconds to hit "Buy" or "Sell" and confirm. If 90% of the price move happens in the first second you're SOL. For back-testing purposes I assume a 5 second delay. In practice I use custom software that opens a trade with one click, and I can reliably enter a trade within 2-3 seconds after the news drops, using the FinancialJuice free squawk.
Minimum surprise: Should you trade every release or can you do better by only trading those with a big enough "surprise" factor? Backtesting will tell you whether being more selective is better long-term or not.
Hold time: The optimal time to hold the trade is not necessarily the same as the time of maximum correlation. That's a good starting point but it's not necessarily the best number. Backtesting each possible hold time will let you find the best one.
The spread: When you're only holding a position open for 30 seconds, the spread will kill you. The correlations performed above used the midpoint price, but in reality you have to buy at the ask and sell at the bid. Brokers aren't stupid and the moment volume on the ECN jumps they will widen the spread for their retail customers. The only way to determine if the news-driven price movements reliably overcome the spread is to backtest.
Stops: Personally I don't use stops, neither take-profit nor stop-loss, since I'm automatically closing the trade after a fixed (and very short) amount of time. Additionally, brokers have a minimum stop distance; the profits from scalping the news are so slim that even the nearest stops they allow will generally not get triggered.
I backtested trading these two news releases (since 2018), using a 5 second entry delay, real historical spreads, and no stops, cycling through different "surprise" thresholds and hold times to find the combination that returns the highest net profit. It's important to maximize net profit, not expected value per trade, so you don't over-optimize and reduce the total number of trades taken to one single profitable trade. If you want to get fancy you can set up a custom metric that combines number of trades, expected value, and drawdown into a single score to be maximized.
For the Initial Jobless Claims figure I found that the best combination is to hold trades open for 25 seconds (that is, open at 5 seconds elapsed and hold until 30 seconds elapsed) and only trade when the difference between consensus and actual is 7k or higher. That leads to 30 trades taken since 2018 and an expected return of... drumroll please... -0.0093 yen per unit per trade.
Yep, that's a loss of approx. $8.63 per lot.
Disappointing right? That's the spread and that's why you have to backtest. Even though the release of the Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report has a strong correlation with movement in USD/JPY, it's simply not something that a retail trader can profit from.
Let's turn to the NFP. There I found that the best combination is to hold trades open for 75 seconds (that is, open at 5 seconds elapsed and hold until 80 seconds elapsed) and trade every single NFP (no minimum "surprise" threshold). That leads to 20 trades taken since 2018 and an expected return of... drumroll please... +0.1306 yen per unit per trade.
That's a profit of approx. $121.25 per lot. Not bad for 75 seconds of work! That's a +6% ROI at 50x leverage.

Make it real

If you want to do this for realsies, you need to run these numbers for all of the major economic news releases. Markit Manufacturing PMI, Factory Orders MoM, Trade Balance, PPI MoM, Export and Import Prices, Michigan Consumer Sentiment, Retail Sales MoM, Industrial Production MoM, you get the idea. You keep a list of all of the releases you want to trade, when they are released, and the ideal hold time and "surprise" threshold. A few minutes before the prescribed release time you open up your broker's software, turn on your squawk, maybe jot a few notes about consensuses and model forecasts, and get your finger on the button. At the moment you hear the release you open the trade in the correct direction, hold it (without looking at the chart!) for the required amount of time, then close it and go on with your day.
Some benefits of trading this way: * Most major economic releases come out at either 8:30 AM ET or 10:00 AM ET, and then you're done for the day. * It's easily backtestable. You can look back at the numbers and see exactly what to expect your return to be. * It's fun! Packing your trading into 30 seconds and knowing that institutions are moving billions of dollars around as fast as they can based on the exact same news you just read is thrilling. * You can wow your friends by saying things like "The St. Louis Fed had some interesting remarks on consumer spending in the latest Beige Book." * No crayons involved.
Some downsides: * It's tricky to be fast enough without writing custom software. Some broker software is very slow and requires multiple dialog boxes before a position is opened, which won't cut it. * The profits are very slim, you're not going to impress your instagram followers to join your expensive trade copying service with your 30-second twice-weekly trades. * Any friends you might wow with your boring-ass economic talking points are themselves the most boring people in the world.
I hope you enjoyed this long as fuck post and you give trading economic news a try!

Forex markets can be volatile and uncertain at the best of times, and inexperienced traders can easily end up chasing their losses. Yet it is precisely this volatility that gives you the potential for major profits. These 10 rules of forex trading may give you the best chance of landing on the winning side. Please remember, however, that trading carries a high level of risk to your capital, and profit is not guaranteed. Over 95% of all new individuals lose all their capital in the first month of trading forex

1. Avoid forex trading software that claims to guarantee returns

While you’re on the hunt for forex trading software, be sure that you’re not taken in by promises of guaranteed returns. There is no forex trading software that can assure you of winning trades. If there was, why would anyone sell it?

2. Always use a demo trading account

We’ve all heard that practice makes perfect, and it’s true. A demo trading account can help you improve your trading skills with virtual trades in real markets. Once you’re skilled at demo trading, you can switch over to real-money forex trading. And even once you’re using a live account, you may still want to use your demo account to try out new forex trading strategies. Of course, you should always remember that your performance on a demo account may not be replicated in a live trading account.

3. Forex trading can be highly stressful – avoid emotional trading

Whenever real money is changing hands, the risk of loss is ever-present. Therefore you should base your trades on considered tactics and strategies. To avoid being led by your emotions stay focused on technical and fundamental factors and market news at all times.

4. Invest in a solid forex education

Knowledge is power – we all know that. Ensure that your forex provider gives you access to tutorials, webinars, expert financial analysis and commentary, an economic calendar, graphs and charts, and even forex trading signals. All of these tools will work to improve your trading performance. The ultimate goal is to generate greater profits than losses over time, even if you have less winning trades than losing trades.

5. You can learn to trade forex successfully

No forex trading system guarantees success (see rule 1) but some may be used as reliable guides. If you learn from the experience of successful forex strategists, your likelihood of success is far greater. But remember, when judging the results of any system or any expert, that past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results.

6. Manage your forex capital wisely

The forex markets can change on a dime, as currency markets are often characterized by high volatility. If you have generated winning trades, be sure to manage your profits. Use stop-loss and limit orders, closeout positions, and hedge your exposure to the best of your ability. Be sure that you are in control of your capital at all times.

7. Manage your investment-per-trade wisely

This is one of the most crucial aspects of forex trading. Many traders fail to heed this important advice: Don't trade more than one currency at a time. Doing so puts you at a significant risk of loss. If you spread your investments over a wide number of trades, you limit your overall losses by not putting all your proverbial eggs into one basket!

8. Use common sense

If you know you’re trading a strong currency against a weak currency, chances are the strong currency will dominate. We are going through a period now where USD is a strong global currency. With a Fed rate hike looming, you may want to back USD against emerging-market currencies. Use your common sense when judging the effect of current and upcoming events.

9. Ensure you use risk protection strategies at all times

Risk protection varies from one trader to the next. However, you can limit your risk by managing your capital wisely, limiting the amount you trade per position, using forex trading signals, trading with greater knowledge, hedging your trades, and using specific technical strategies. Your key risk protection tool is always your stop-loss order. Remember, however, that stop-losses are not guaranteed and you can lose more than your initial deposit.

10. Be especially cautious about overextending yourself with leverage

Leverage allows you to increase the size of trade you can control with your investment capital. It magnifies your profits but it can also magnify your losses. Be sure to limit the leverage you use so you don’t get into serious financial trouble.

The bottom line

By following these 10 golden rules to forex trading, you should find yourself in a much better position over the long term. Your focus should always be on trading currency pairs that you understand, in a way that does not expose you to too much risk. Read up about market conditions likely to impact upon the currencies you’re trading, limit your leverage to an affordable amount, and use a demo trading account to understand the market dynamics.

Rules for Trading Forex

Forex markets can be volatile and uncertain at the best of times, and inexperienced traders can easily end up chasing their losses. Yet it is precisely this volatility that gives you the potential for major profits. These 10 rules of forex trading may give you the best chance of landing on the winning side. Please remember, however, that trading carries a high level of risk to your capital, and profit is not guaranteed. Over 95% of all new individuals lose all their capital in the first month of trading forex

1. Avoid forex trading software that claims to guarantee returns

While you’re on the hunt for forex trading software, be sure that you’re not taken in by promises of guaranteed returns. There is no forex trading software that can assure you of winning trades. If there was, why would anyone sell it?

1. Always use a demo trading account

We’ve all heard that practice makes perfect, and it’s true. A demo trading account can help you improve your trading skills with virtual trades in real markets. Once you’re skilled at demo trading, you can switch over to real-money forex trading. And even once you’re using a live account, you may still want to use your demo account to try out new forex trading strategies. Of course, you should always remember that your performance on a demo account may not be replicated in a live trading account.

1. Forex trading can be highly stressful – avoid emotional trading

Whenever real money is changing hands, the risk of loss is ever-present. Therefore you should base your trades on considered tactics and strategies. To avoid being led by your emotions stay focused on technical and fundamental factors and market news at all times.

1. Invest in a solid forex education

Knowledge is power – we all know that. Ensure that your forex provider gives you access to tutorials, webinars, expert financial analysis and commentary, an economic calendar, graphs and charts, and even forex trading signals. All of these tools will work to improve your trading performance. The ultimate goal is to generate greater profits than losses over time, even if you have less winning trades than losing trades.

1. You can learn to trade forex successfully

No forex trading system guarantees success (see rule 1) but some may be used as reliable guides. If you learn from the experience of successful forex strategists, your likelihood of success is far greater. But remember, when judging the results of any system or any expert, that past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results.

1. Manage your forex capital wisely

The forex markets can change on a dime, as currency markets are often characterized by high volatility. If you have generated winning trades, be sure to manage your profits. Use stop-loss and limit orders, closeout positions, and hedge your exposure to the best of your ability. Be sure that you are in control of your capital at all times.

1. Manage your investment-per-trade wisely

This is one of the most crucial aspects of forex trading. Many traders fail to heed this important advice: Don't trade more than one currency at a time. Doing so puts you at a significant risk of loss. If you spread your investments over a wide number of trades, you limit your overall losses by not putting all your proverbial eggs into one basket!

1. Use common sense

If you know you’re trading a strong currency against a weak currency, chances are the strong currency will dominate. We are going through a period now where USD is a strong global currency. With a Fed rate hike looming, you may want to back USD against emerging-market currencies. Use your common sense when judging the effect of current and upcoming events.

1. Ensure you use risk protection strategies at all times

Risk protection varies from one trader to the next. However, you can limit your risk by managing your capital wisely, limiting the amount you trade per position, using forex trading signals, trading with greater knowledge, hedging your trades, and using specific technical strategies. Your key risk protection tool is always your stop-loss order. Remember, however, that stop-losses are not guaranteed and you can lose more than your initial deposit.

1. Be especially cautious about overextending yourself with leverage

Leverage allows you to increase the size of trade you can control with your investment capital. It magnifies your profits but it can also magnify your losses. Be sure to limit the leverage you use so you don’t get into serious financial trouble.
The bottom line
By following these 10 golden rules to forex trading, you should find yourself in a much better position over the long term. Your focus should always be on trading currency pairs that you understand, in a way that does not expose you to too much risk. Read up about market conditions likely to impact upon the currencies you’re trading, limit your leverage to an affordable amount, and use a demo trading account to understand the market dynamics.

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Global indices Track major indices of the world stock market in real-time: ■ North and South America: Dow Jones, S&P 500, NYSE, NASDAQ Composite, SmallCap 2000, NASDAQ 100, Merval, Bovespa, RUSSELL 2000, IPC, IPSA; ■ Europe: CAC 40, FTSE MIB, IBEX 35, ATX, BEL 20, DAX, BSE Sofia, PX, РТС, ММВБ (MOEX); ■ Asian-Pacific Ocean Regions: NIKKEI 225, SENSEX, NIFTY, SHANGHAI COMPOSITE, S&P/ASX 200, HANG SENG, KOSPI, KLCI, NZSE 50; ■ Africa: Kenya NSE 20, Semdex, Moroccan All Shares, South Africa 40; and ■ Middle East: EGX 30, Amman SE General, Kuwait Main, TA 25.
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Mod Features: Additional indicators available in pro version of this app

I’ve been reading these posts on an off for quite some time now and it saddened me to see someone had recently posted their “I quit the game” statement. We all walk through fire to stand in the green valley...and the journey has to be made on foot. And alone. And it’s tough.
In response, I wanted to add a list of pointers for people starting out in this insane game and to address what I’ve learned from over a decade of trading Forex. It’s long-ish but it’s based on reality and not a bunch of meaningless retail junk systems and “insider knowledge” by nitwits on YouTube or some 19-year old “whiz kid” who apparently makes ten billion dollars a week with a mystical set-up that’ll only cost you $1,999 to buy!
I became a profitable trader by keeping everything simple. I lost thousands when I started out, but I look back now and realise how easily I could’ve avoided those losses.
Keep Everything Simple.
For the sake of disclosure, I worked for Morgan Stanley for over a decade in fixed income but learned almost everything I know from the forex guys whom I got to know as good friends. They make markets but there’s still a lot to learn from them as a small fry trader. I got into all this as a hobby after annoying the traders with questions, and all these years later it still pays me. There are still occasional nightmare accidents but they’re far rarer to the point where they don’t affect my ROI.
Possibly the most clear statement I could make about Forex trading in the large institutional setting is actually a pretty profound one: Forex traders are not what you think they are: every single forex trader I ever worked with (and who lasted the test of time) had the exact same set of personality traits: 1. NOT ONE of them was a gung-ho high-five loudmouth, 2. Every single one of them analysed their mistakes to the point of obsession, 3. They were bookish and not jocks, 4. They had the humility to admit that many early errors were the result of piss-poor planning. The loudmouths last a year and are gone.
Guys who last 5, 10, 20 years in a major finance house on the trading floor are nothing like the absurd 1980s Hollywood images you see on your tv; they’re the perfect opposite of that stereotype. The absolute best I ever met was a studious Irish-Catholic guy from Boston who was conscientious, helpful, calm, and utterly committed to one thing: learning from every single error of judgement. To quote him: “Losing teaches you far more than winning”.
Enough of that. These points are deliberately broad. Here goes:

1. Know The Pairs. It amazes me to see countless small account traders speak as though “systems” work across all pairs. They don’t. Trading GBP/CHF is an entirely different beast to trading CHF/JPY. If you don’t know the innate properties of the CHF market or the JPY or the interplay between the AUD and NZD etc then leave them alone until you do. —There’s no rush— Don’t trade pairs until you are clear on what drives ‘commodity currencies’, or what goes on behind currencies which are easily manipulated, or currencies which simply tend to range for months on end instead of having clear trends. Every pair has its own benefits and drawbacks. Google “Tips on trading the JPY” etc etc etc and get to know the personality of these currencies. They’re just products like any other....Would you buy a Honda without knowing a single thing about the brand or its engine or its durability? So why trade a currency you know nothing about?
   
2. Indicators are only telling you what you should be able to see in front of you: PRICE AND MARKET STRUCTURE. Take everything off your charts and simply ask one question: What do I see happening right here and right now? What time frame do I see it on? If you can’t spot a simple consolidation, an uptrend, or a downtrend on a quick high-versus-low time frame scan then no indicator on the planet will help you.
   
3. Do you know why momentum indicators work on clear trends but are often a complete disaster on ranges? If not, why not? Do you know why such indicators are losing you tons of trades on low TFs? Do you actually understand the simple mathematics of any indicator? If the answer to these questions is “no” then why are you using these things and piling on indicator after indicator after indicator until you have some psychedelic disco on your screen that looks like an intergalactic dogfight in Star Wars? Keep it simple. Know thy indicator.
   
4. Risk:Reward Addiction. The greatest profit killer. So you set up your stops and limits at 1:1.5 or whatever and say “That’s me done” only to come back and see that your limit was missed by a soul-crushing 5 pips before reversing trend to cost you $100, $200, $1000. So you say “Ah but the system is fine”. Guys...this isn’t poker; it doesn’t have to be a zero sum game. Get over your 1:1.5 addiction —The Market Does Not Owe You 50 Pips— Which leads to the next point which, frankly, is what has allowed me to make money consistently for my entire trading life...
   
5. YOU WILL NEVER GO BROKE TAKING A PROFIT. So you want to take that 50-pip profit in two hours because some analyst says it’ll happen or because your trend lines say it has to happen. You set your 1:1.5 order. “I’ll check where I’m at in an hour” you say. An hour later you see you’re up 18 pips and you feel you’re owed more by now. “If I close this trade now I could be missing out on a stack”. So what?! Here’s an example: I trade in sterling. I was watching GBP climb against it’s post-GDP flop report and once I was up £157 I thought “This is going to start bouncing off resistance all morning and I don’t need the hassle of riding the rollercoaster all day long”. So I closed it, took the £157, went to make breakfast. Came back shortly afterwards and looked at the chart and saw that I could’ve made about £550 if I’d trusted myself. Do I care? Absolutely not...in fact it usually makes me laugh. So I enter another trade, make another quick £40, then another £95. Almost £300 in less than 45 mins and I’m supposed to cry over the £250 I “missed out on”?
   

£300 in less than an hour for doing nothing more than waiting for some volatility then tapping a keyboard. It’s almost a sin to make money that easily and I don’t “deserve” any of it. Shut off the laptop. Go out for the day.
Does the following sound familiar? “Okay I’m almost at my take-profit...almost!.....almost!....okay it’s bouncing away from me but it’ll come back. Come back, damnit!! Jesus come back to my limit! Ah for F**k’s sakes!! This is complete crap; that trade was almost done! This is rigged! This is worse than poker! This is total BS!!”
So when you were 50% or 75% toward your goal and could see the trade slipping away why wasn’t $100 or $200 enough? You need more than that?...really?!
So point 6:

1. Tomorrow Is Another Day. Lordy Lordy, you only made $186 all day. What a disaster! Did you lose anything? Nope. Will the market be open again tomorrow? Yep. Does London open in just four hours? Yep. Is the NOK/SGD/EUR whatever still looking shitty? Yep. So let it go- there are endless THOUSANDS of trades you can make in your lifetime and you need to let a small gain be seen for what it is: ANOTHER BEAUTIFUL PROFIT.

Four or five solid but small profits in a day = One Large Profit. I don’t care how I make it, I don’t care if it’s ten lots of £20, I don’t care if I make the lot in a single trade in 30 seconds either. And once I have a nice sum I switch the computer off and leave it the Fk alone. I don’t care if Brexit is due to detonate the pound or if some Fed guy is going to crap all over the USD in his speech; I’ve made my money and I’m out for the day. There will be other speeches, other detonations.
I could get into the entire process by which I trade but it’s aggravatingly basic trend-following mostly based on fundamentals. Losing in this business really does boil down to the same appalling combination of traits that kill most traders: Greed, Impatience, Addiction. Do I trade every day? Absolutely not; if there’s nothing with higher probability trades then I just leave it alone. When I hit my target I’m out for the day- the market doesn’t give a crap about me and I don’t give a crap about the market, if you see my meaning.
I played poker semi-professionally for two years and it’s absolutely soul-destroying to be “cold decked” for a whole week. But every player has to experience it in order to lose the arrogance and the bravado; losing is fine as long as you learn from it. One day you’ll be in a position to fold pocket Kings because you’ll know you’re dead in the water. The currency markets are exactly the same in that one regard: if you learn from the past you’ll know when it’s time to get out of that stupid trade or that stupid “system” that sounded so great when you had a demo account.
Bank a profit. Keep your charts simple. Know the pairs. Be patient. Touch nothing till you understand it inside out.
And if you’re not enjoying the game....STOP PLAYING.
[if people find this helpful I might post a thread on the best books I’ve studied from and why most forex books are utterly repetitious bullshit].
Peace.

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https://preview.redd.it/afpkritv1fk41.png?width=3556&format=png&auto=webp&s=9296f8b63636c34729c10d8575a37dcd65e76a6f
https://medium.com/coss-official/update-coss-exchange-relaunch-roadmap-18a5ff7549a3/
Hello everyone.
COSS exchange is ready to resume operations shortly after almost 8 weeks of downtime.
In this update, we discuss the following:

• The downtime
• New management
• New technology partner
• Roadmap
• Relaunch FAQ

The Downtime

COSS exchange was taken offline on January 7th 2020 with immediate notice to all users. The plan was to begin migration to a white label platform after proceeding with account-level snapshots.
The migration was halted mid-way as COSS entered and finalised acquisition negotiations, followed by audits of the existing technology, user data and wallets.
With the audits completed, the new management decided to do away with the old exchange platform and introduce a much more advanced engine for its users.
This is the platform which goes online this week with many added features including derivatives with up to 100x leverage, as well as an Exchange Swap Engine for instant conversions.

New Management

We apologise for the downtime — unconditionally.

The decision to shut down the exchange was not in our control and we, unfortunately, were handed over a shut exchange. We have done our best to re-enable the exchange for all users quickly and assure you that such missteps will be avoided at all costs in the future.
The new COSS is a group of investors, professional traders, and financial technology specialists. Who strongly believes in the original vision of COSS — a one-stop platform for modern digital assets whose success is dependent on and shared with all its users — a unique approach to decentralised finance.

The idea is in line with the original concept of creating a shared ‘digital economy’ instead of mirroring a system where the traditional institutional lenders and service providers benefit while the people pay fees to use and access their own assets.

The investment group has appointed a board of directors and is currently assessing nominations for the role of CEO.
The board will leave the day-to-day operations to the CEO and their team with a clear mandate — to restore and build COSS the brand for success.
Rune and the previous technology, operations and marketing teams will no longer be involved with COSS. We appreciate their work in the past and wish them all the best for future endeavours.
Satyarth will continue to remain on board with us and support the community management, marketing and PR team.

New Technology Partner

The new management has carefully evaluated several options to ensure COSS has a stable, scalable and continuously improving technology platform.
We have partnered with XHUB — a financial and trading technology company.
The XHUB team has vast experience in working with brokers, hedge funds, and proprietary trading firms.
XHUB maintains one of the largest cryptocurrency liquidity and order routing systems in the industry, and a trading platform which has been exclusively and extensively used in-house by large trading firms.
The XHUB technology team will extend its support to COSS API consumers and encourage them to keep building trading applications for the community. Consumers will have access to extensive historical and real-time market data which will allow them to create advanced strategies supported by back-testing.

Roadmap

A general roadmap of the board’s vision for the immediate future is included below. We remain focused on ensuring that COSS provides a reliable trading platform for retail and professional traders alike.

Q1–2020

Exchange Relaunch

1. COSS will relaunch the exchange platform and enable full trading on supported pairs
2. Current COSS account holders will be sent new login credentials via email and an invitation to begin trading
3. COS holders will be allocated 100% of the fees generated by the exchange until the FSA dashboard is completed and launched
4. Balance transfers from previous exchange platform are initiated by the account login. This begins the final-phase of the account audit.
5. Withdrawal of audited portfolios / balances will be available within 48 hrs of the account portfolio transfer

API Release

1. REST and Websocket access to market data
2. REST access to account and trade endpoints
3. Websocket access to account end points
4. FIX Engine quote and trade functional release

Mobile Trading App (iOS, Android)

1. Beta release of the full-featured mobile app
2. Full public launch of the trading app

Listing Policy Release

1. Compliant with all regulatory requirements

API Community Development

1. GitHub community to showcase public projects
2. Technical support
3. Budget allocated for development competitions

Q2–2020

Mobile Wallet App (v2) (iOS, Android)

1. Release of the full-featured wallet/payment and proximity peer to peer payment app

Metaquotes MT5

1. Release full scale derivative trading platform for Windows, iOS and Android
2. Enabling:

• Cryptocurrency arbitrage between popular exchanges
• Forex, Commodities and Indices with institutional enterprise grade liquidity
• Expert Advisors, MQL5, back testing and bot trading

Regulatory Licensing

1. Leverage trading will be reduced as the final step for licensing

Vendor and Payments API

1. Release of web and mobile payment processing for merchants

Roadmap will be updated in the first and third quarter every year, and will cover plans for that period.
Relaunch FAQ
The exchange will be operational on 4th March, 2020.
To adhere to existing anti-money laundering, counter-terrorism financing and know your customer regulations, existing users will need to complete level-1 KYC. This can be done with a single government-issued photo identity document.
Final phase account audit clearance is subject to KYC approval.
COS token trading will be available on the COS_USD pair. More pairs will be added as trading activity improves.
Maker and taker fees will be set at 0.05% and 0.1% respectively.
Trading fee discount and negative maker fees will be discontinued.
An updated COS holding based fee tier system may be introduced in the future.
The Fee Split Allocation (FSA) dashboard is under development. However, FSA will be tracked and accrue from day one. COS held in private wallets will need to be re-identified and linked to your new user accounts once the dashboard is launched.
We will initiate a delisting procedure for some assets. A complete list of pairs and the withdrawal process for the same will be released at a later date.
Crypto deposits will remain at 0 fees. A fee schedule for crypto withdrawals will be published on the website.
Fiat deposits will be available via Epay and transfers from Epay wallet to COSS will be at 0 fees.
Deposits through credit and debit cards will be introduced at 4% fees.
We will add more fiat options including withdrawals in the coming weeks.
Thank you for all your support and feedback.
We are expecting a rush to access COSS accounts and will complete verification for all applicants as quickly as possible. We apologise for any unforeseen delays during the process. You can reach us on [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) in case you require any further assistance.

Hard.
Following up on my post about trading economic news, here are some hard numbers about news releases. If you can't be bothered to read any further, just know that a high S value means there is money to be made by trading the release of that economic metric.
I collected historical data (consensus and actual) for each of these economic metrics from January 2018 to the present. These are mostly monthly metrics; one is quarterly, one is biweekly, and one is weekly. I did this manually from an economic news aggregation website because I'm too cheap to pay for exported data. I also noted whether each release was the primary (or only) news being released at that precise moment or whether there were other important economic metrics being released at the same time.
Then I wrote software to fetch 2 minutes of USD/JPY price data (in 5 second candles) starting at the time of each release and correlated each candle to the "surprise" in the metric (the difference between the consensus and the actual). That produced data for each metric that looks like this and give you an idea how reliably the news predicts the short-term price move.
Next the software went back through the price history and measured the "coordinated movement" of the currency pair during each candle. By that I mean it measured the size of each candle in pips and then set the sign to be positive if its moving in the same direction as the first candle or negative otherwise, and averaged all those numbers together. These charts look like this and give you an idea how dramatically the price moves in response to the news.
Then, for each candle, the absolute value of the correlation is multiplied against the coordinated movement, creating a "tradeability" score. The idea is that a strong (positive or negative) correlation and a strong coordinated movement yields a high score, and either a weak correlation or a small price movement yields a low score. These charts look like this.
Finally, for each news release I measured the maximum value of the correlation (R) and the maximum value of the tradeability score (S). Since I don't have access to anything with finer granularity than 5 seconds, it's no surprise that candle 0 had the maximum correlation and maximum tradeability for each metric.
I did this process twice for every metric: first over all releases and second over only those releases that were the primary or only release happening at that moment. I kept the results from the one that returned the better net maximum tradeability score. The net maximum tradeability score is just the product of the maximum tradeability score and the number of releases being considered, either all of them or some smaller number. (This helps avoid bias in the results for metrics that are often released at the same time as other metrics.)
In the results linked at the top of this post, the metrics are ordered by decreasing maximum tradeability score (S) with maximum correlation (R) also shown. Remember, R = +1 means perfect positive linear correlation, R = -1 means perfect negative linear correlation, and R = 0 means no correlation. S values less than 3 are essentially untradeable due to the spread.
A couple notes:

• Non Farms Payroll, one of the most closely watched economic indicators, is the most tradeable by far. Although not shown here, the correlation is even higher (0.8xx) if you omit those releases that occur simultaneously as other news, but because of the strong correlation and high pip movement it's better overall to consider all NFP releases.
• Retail Sales is tradeable, but Personal Income and Personal Spending is not. This was a surprise to me, I haven't traded any of these metrics before. I'll have to look into what is exactly in each one to understand why this is.
• With the exception of Michigan Consumer Sentiment, all of these releases are correlated with the price movement, but many of them aren't practical to trade because the movement is too small.
• The negative sign and weak correlation on Inflation Rate MoM is a bug, I think. I got a different (positive) number when I ran it earlier, but then I was on a conference call while reformatting the data and I may have done something dumb. I'll go back and review it.

It takes me about 15 minutes to scrape 2 years of monthly data by hand and type it up, and then the software takes about 10 seconds to run per metric. If there are regular forecasted economic releases that you'd like to see correlated and scored, let me know! I can do other currency pairs and other country's economic news as well, it's just a matter of data collection.