Hey everyone, I have an exciting money talks coming up. Please use the GoogleForm to share any questions or discussion topics you have for us. https://forms.gle/5kPrK7LqerKxZJC48
I'd like to introduce Carley, her bio below.
Senior Commodity Market Strategist and Broker, STOCKS & COMMODITIES Magazine Columnist, http://TheStreet.com Contributor, and Author
Carley Garner is an experienced futures and options broker with DeCarley Trading, a division of Zaner Financial Services, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Her commodity market analysis is often referenced on Jim Cramer’s Mad Money on CNBC and she is a regular guest on Bloomberg Television’s Options Insight segment with Abigail Doolittle. Garner is a regular contributor to http://TheStreet.com and its Real Money Pro service and is also a regular on the speaking circuit and can be found at TradersEXPOs and MoneyShows throughout the country. Garner is also an award-winning commodity futures and options trading book author. In addition to Trading Commodity Options with Creativity, Garner has authored Higher Probability Commodity Trading; A Trader's First Book on Commodities (three editions); Currency Trading in the Forex and Futures Markets; and Commodity Options. Her e-newsletters, The DeCarley Perspective and The Financial Futures Report, have garnered a loyal following; she is also proactive in providing free trading education at http://DeCarleyTrading.com.
Carley authors a monthly column in Stocks & Commodities magazine and has been featured by several major media outlets.

Upcoming money talks! Hey everyone, I have an exciting money talks coming up. Please use the GoogleForm to share any questions or discussion topics you have for us.
https://forms.gle/5kPrK7LqerKxZJC48
I'd like to introduce Carley, her bio below.
Senior Commodity Market Strategist and Broker, STOCKS & COMMODITIES Magazine Columnist, http://TheStreet.com Contributor, and Author
Carley Garner is an experienced futures and options broker with DeCarley Trading, a division of Zaner Financial Services, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Her commodity market analysis is often referenced on Jim Cramer’s Mad Money on CNBC and she is a regular guest on Bloomberg Television’s Options Insight segment with Abigail Doolittle. Garner is a regular contributor to http://TheStreet.com and its Real Money Pro service and is also a regular on the speaking circuit and can be found at TradersEXPOs and MoneyShows throughout the country. Garner is also an award-winning commodity futures and options trading book author. In addition to Trading Commodity Options with Creativity, Garner has authored Higher Probability Commodity Trading; A Trader's First Book on Commodities (three editions); Currency Trading in the Forex and Futures Markets; and Commodity Options. Her e-newsletters, The DeCarley Perspective and The Financial Futures Report, have garnered a loyal following; she is also proactive in providing free trading education at http://DeCarleyTrading.com.
Carley authors a monthly column in Stocks & Commodities magazine and has been featured by several major media outlets.

Hey everyone, I have an exciting money talks coming up. Please use the Google Form to share any questions or discussion topics you have for us. https://forms.gle/5kPrK7LqerKxZJC48
I'd like to introduce Carley, her bio below.
Senior Commodity Market Strategist and Broker, STOCKS & COMMODITIES Magazine Columnist, http://TheStreet.com Contributor, and Author
Carley Garner is an experienced futures and options broker with DeCarley Trading, a division of Zaner Financial Services, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Her commodity market analysis is often referenced on Jim Cramer’s Mad Money on CNBC and she is a regular guest on Bloomberg Television’s Options Insight segment with Abigail Doolittle. Garner is a regular contributor to http://TheStreet.com and its Real Money Pro service and is also a regular on the speaking circuit and can be found at TradersEXPOs and MoneyShows throughout the country. Garner is also an award-winning commodity futures and options trading book author. In addition to Trading Commodity Options with Creativity, Garner has authored Higher Probability Commodity Trading; A Trader's First Book on Commodities (three editions); Currency Trading in the Forex and Futures Markets; and Commodity Options. Her e-newsletters, The DeCarley Perspective and The Financial Futures Report, have garnered a loyal following; she is also proactive in providing free trading education at http://DeCarleyTrading.com.
Carley authors a monthly column in Stocks & Commodities magazine and has been featured by several major media outlets.
Let me know what you'd all find interesting to ask her.

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.

I'm trading for 11 months with pretty good success.
I never traded metals and forex before, just stocks. Today when gold started to consolidate at the last hour, I decided to scalp short it with a large amount, so I opened 100 lots. I haven't realised, in forex 100 (lots) doesn't mean "100 pcs", because I used to stocks and I went full retard without knowledge.
Seconds later, I realised it means 10 million dollars (1 lot = 100.000, and I had 500x leverage).
It moved up a bit and immediately I was down £4000. I scared as fuck and rather than closing the position quickly I hoped maybe I could close break even.
The market closed, and I waited for the Asian session. The gold popped like never before, and I lost all my life savings (£55000) in less than two hours. (including the 1-hour break between sessions).
If I count that I lost all my earnings as well, I lost around £85000.
Here is the margin call
https://imgur.com/a/XY5m4ZA
https://imgur.com/a/VSgmCSs
https://imgur.com/pRWl5g9
IC Markets closed my position partially in every 1-2 minutes until I shut it myself at £35.
You know the rest of the story. I'm depressed, crying and shouting with myself.
Yes, I know I was stupid, thanks. I just wanted to share this with you.
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Edit: WOW THANK YOU, GUYS! I haven't expected this, but you help me.
Many of you asked the same questions, I answer it here:
- I live in Europe, and we usually trade CFD's, not futures.
- Currency in GBP.
- As you can see, this account made on IC Markets. They not just allowing you a 500x leverage, it's the default.
- You can ask me why I went against the market. Because gold is way oversold? Because I expected institutions would sell their shares before gold is hitting £2000, leaving retails hanging there. Also, as I said, I wanted to scalp, not riding the gold all the way down. If I had a loss of £100, I would close the position immediately. But when I saw the £4000, my heart is stopped, and my brain just freezes.
- I went for a revenge trade with my last £2k, and I don't have to say what happened. I uninstalled the app, and I give up trading for a while.
- Again, in the past months, I was cautious, I lost a significant sum in March, but I managed to recover. Made consistent gains, always with SL. This is just an example of how easy is to fuck up everything you did.
- I didn't come here for some shiny digital medals. I can't tell about my losses to anyone who I know in real life. I would make a fool of myself.
- Anyone who attacking me that it is a scam. Well, think what you want. I feel terrible and the last thing is to answer all the messages saying "You fucking karma whore". I don't give a shit about karma.
​

Factset: How You can Invest in Hedge Funds’ Biggest Investment
Tl;dr FactSet is the most undervalued widespread SaaS/IT solution stock that exists
If any of you have relevant experience or are friends with people in Investment Banking/other high finance, you know that Factset is the lifeblood of their financial analysis toolkit if and when it’s not Bloomberg, which isn’t even publicly traded. Factset has been around since 1978 and it’s considered a staple like Bloomberg in many wealth management firms, and it offers some of the easiest to access and understandable financial data so many newer firms focused less on trading are switching to Factset because it has a lot of the same data Bloomberg offers for half the cost. When it comes to modern financial data, Factset outcompetes Reuters and arguably Bloomberg as well due to their API services which makes Factset much more preferable for quantitative divisions of banks/hedge funds as API integration with Python/R is the most important factor for vast data lakes of financial data, this suggests Factset will be much more prepared for programming making its way into traditional finance fields. According to Factset, their mission for data delivery is to: “Integrate the data you need with your applications, web portals, and statistical packages. Whether you need market, company, or alternative data, FactSet flexible data delivery services give you normalized data through APIs and a direct delivery of local copies of standard data feeds. Our unique symbology links and aggregates a variety of content sources to ensure consistency, transparency, and data integrity across your business. Build financial models and power customized applications with FactSet APIs in our developer portal”. Their technical focus for their data delivery system alone should make it stand out compared to Bloomberg, whose UI is far more outdated and complex on top of not being as technically developed as Factset’s. Factset is the key provider of buy-side portfolio analysis for IBs, Hedge funds, and Private Equity firms, and it’s making its way into non-quantitative hedge funds as well because quantitative portfolio management makes automation of risk management and the application of portfolio theory so much easier, and to top it off, Factset’s scenario analysis and simulation is unique in its class. Factset also is able to automate trades based on individual manager risk tolerance and ML optimization for Forex trading as well. Not only does Factset provide solutions for financial companies, they are branching out to all corporations now and providing quantitative analytics for them in the areas of “corporate development, M&A, strategy, treasury, financial planning and analysis, and investor relations workflows”. Factset will eventually in my opinion reach out to Insurance Risk Management a lot more in the future as that’s a huge industry which has yet to see much automation of risk management yet, and with the field wide open, Factset will be the first to take advantage without a shadow of a doubt. So let’s dig into the company’s financials now:
Their latest 8k filing reported the following:
Revenue increased 2.6%, or $9.6 million, to $374.1 million compared with $364.5 million for the same period in fiscal 2019. The increase is primarily due to higher sales of analytics, content and technology solutions (CTS) and wealth management solutions.
Annual Subscription Value (ASV) plus professional services was $1.52 billion at May 31, 2020, compared with $1.45 billion at May 31, 2019. The organic growth rate, which excludes the effects of acquisitions, dispositions, and foreign currency movements, was 5.0%. The primary contributors to this growth rate were higher sales in FactSet's wealth and research workflow solutions and a price increase in the Company's international region
Adjusted operating margin improved to 35.5% compared with 34.0% in the prior year period primarily as a result of reduced employee-related operating expenses due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Diluted earnings per share (EPS) increased 11.0% to $2.63 compared with $2.37 for the same period in fiscal 2019.
Adjusted diluted EPS rose 9.2% to $2.86 compared with $2.62 in the prior year period primarily driven by an improvement in operating results.
The Company’s effective tax rate for the third quarter decreased to 15.0% compared with 18.6% a year ago, primarily due to an income tax expense in the prior year related to finalizing the Company's tax returns with no similar event for the three months ended May 31, 2020.
FactSet increased its quarterly dividend by $0.05 per share or 7% to $0.77 marking the fifteenth consecutive year the Company has increased dividends, highlighting its continued commitment to returning value to shareholders.
As you can see, there’s not much of a negative sign in sight here.
It makes sense considering how FactSet’s FCF has never slowed down:
https://preview.redd.it/frmtdk8e9hk51.png?width=276&format=png&auto=webp&s=1c0ff12539e0b2f9dbfda13d0565c5ce2b6f8f1a
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https://preview.redd.it/6axdb6lh9hk51.png?width=593&format=png&auto=webp&s=9af1673272a5a2d8df28f60f4707e948a00e5ff1
FactSet’s annual subscriptions and professional services have made its way to foreign and developing markets, and many of them are opting for FactSet’s cheaper services to reduce costs and still get copious amounts of data and models to work with.
Here’s what FactSet had to say regarding its competitive position within the market of providing financial data in its last 10k: “Despite competing products and services, we enjoy high barriers to entry and believe it would be difficult for another vendor to quickly replicate the extensive databases we currently offer. Through our in-depth analytics and client service, we believe we can offer clients a more comprehensive solution with one of the broadest sets of functionalities, through a desktop or mobile user interface or through a standardized or bespoke data feed.” And FactSet is confident that their ML services cannot be replaced by anybody else in the industry either: “In addition, our applications, including our client support and service offerings, are entrenched in the workflow of many financial professionals given the downloading functions and portfolio analysis/screening capabilities offered. We are entrusted with significant amounts of our clients' own proprietary data, including portfolio holdings. As a result, our products have become central to our clients’ investment analysis and decision-making.” (https://last10k.com/sec-filings/fds#link_fullReport), if you read the full report and compare it to the most recent 8K, you’ll find that the real expenses this quarter were far lower than expected by the last 10k as there was a lower than expected tax rate and a 3% increase in expected operating margin from the expected figure as well. The company also reports a 90% customer retention rate over 15 years, so you know that they’re not lying when they say the clients need them for all sorts of financial data whether it’s for M&A or wealth management and Equity analysis:
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/factset.asp
https://preview.redd.it/yo71y6qj9hk51.png?width=355&format=png&auto=webp&s=a9414bdaa03c06114ca052304a26fae2773c3e45
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FactSet also has remarkably good cash conversion considering it’s a subscription based company, a company structure which usually takes on too much leverage. Speaking of leverage, FDS had taken on a lot of leverage in 2015:
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https://preview.redd.it/oxaa1wel9hk51.png?width=443&format=png&auto=webp&s=13d60d2518980360c403364f7150392ab83d07d7
So what’s that about? Why were FactSet’s long term debts at 0 and all of a sudden why’d the spike up? Well usually for a company that’s non-cyclical and has a well-established product (like FactSet) leverage can actually be good at amplifying returns, so FDS used this to their advantage and this was able to help the share’s price during 2015. Also, as you can see debt/ebitda is beginning a rapid decline anyway. This only adds to my theory that FactSet is trying to expand into new playing fields. FactSet obviously didn’t need the leverage to cover their normal costs, because they have always had consistently growing margins and revenue so the debt financing was only for the sake of financing growth. And this debt can be considered covered and paid off, considering the net income growth of 32% between 2018 and 2019 alone and the EPS growth of 33%
https://preview.redd.it/e4trju3p9hk51.png?width=387&format=png&auto=webp&s=6f6bee15f836c47e73121054ec60459f147d353e
​
EBITDA has virtually been exponential for FactSet for a while because of the bang-for-buck for their well-known product, but now as FactSet ventures into algorithmic trading and corporate development the scope for growth is broadly expanded.
https://preview.redd.it/yl7f58tr9hk51.png?width=489&format=png&auto=webp&s=68906b9ecbcf6d886393c4ff40f81bdecab9e9fd
​
P/E has declined in the past 2 years, making it a great time to buy.
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https://preview.redd.it/4mqw3t4t9hk51.png?width=445&format=png&auto=webp&s=e8d719f4913883b044c4150f11b8732e14797b6d
Increasing ROE despite lowering of leverage post 2016
https://preview.redd.it/lt34avzu9hk51.png?width=441&format=png&auto=webp&s=f3742ed87cd1c2ccb7a3d3ee71ae8c7007313b2b
​
Mountains of cash have been piling up in the coffers increasing chances of increased dividends for shareholders (imo dividend is too low right now, but increasing it will tempt more investors into it), and on top of that in the last 10k a large buyback expansion program was implemented for $210m worth of shares, which shows how confident they are in the company itself.
https://preview.redd.it/fliirmpx9hk51.png?width=370&format=png&auto=webp&s=1216eddeadb4f84c8f4f48692a2f962ba2f1e848
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SGA expense/Gross profit has been declining despite expansion of offices
I’m a bit concerned about the skin in the game leadership has in this company, since very few executives/board members have significant holdings in the company, but the CEO himself is a FactSet veteran, and knows his way around the company. On top of that, Bloomberg remains king for trading and the fixed income security market, and Reuters beats out FactSet here as well. If FactSet really wants to increase cash flow sources, the expansion into insurance and corp dev has to be successful.
Summary: FactSet has a lot of growth still left in its industry which is already fast-growing in and of itself, and it only has more potential at its current valuation. Earnings September 24th should be a massive beat due to investment banking demand and growth plus Hedge fund requirements for data and portfolio management hasn’t gone anywhere and has likely increased due to more market opportunities to buy-in.
Calls have shitty greeks, but if you're ballsy October 450s LOL, I'm holding shares
I’d say it’s a great long term investment, and it should at least be on your watchlist.

My mother, being concerned for my future wellbeing, as I’m not a successful person by any means, has introduced me to a friend of hers that apparently is a “currency exchange” trader or something.
I’m generally a sceptical person so I put off the idea of having a zoom meeting with this person for a few weeks. But today I met him, he was a pleasant older man, apparently about 70 years old.
Essentially, he claims that he spent $40,000 ish about 7-8 years ago to be given a proper education in the whole Forex and analysis thing. Makes a decent living himself but as he’s nearing retirement he wants to offer me free tuition to essentially learn the ropes.
I don’t, at least yet, see where I am to lose money, unless it’s a really long game scam.
But in essence he wants me to go through the entire pips school thing, and if I manage to without finding it too difficult, understanding the basics, and showing that I’m actually up for putting the effort in, he will essentially teach me everything he knows etc, set up in modules. This won’t cost me anything other than my time.
Where I get a little confused and, as I’m completely oblivious to all of this, it may just be how these things work.
But he said, he’ll show me how to set up a Demo account and over the months learn how to try to make consistent growth on these demo account (I believe he spoke in the 3%+ per month range)
And here’s where I don’t know if it gets shady or if it’s ok. . . Once I’m relatively experienced in this, showing consistency on this etc, he says he can offer me access to a hedge fund or something? Where apparently I trade some other organisations money and not my own? Something like $100,000 per fund and I’d be expected to make profits, but never more than a 5% loss in a month or a 10% loss in any one day. Other than that, I would apparently receive 10% of profits from that.
Only thing is something to do with a server fee, something like to have access to those funds it’s something like $750 a month that’s deducted from your profit, so I don’t know if it’s a scam or it’s just how the professional world of this works.
Either way I’m keen to learn from the modules he’s sending me and so on, just not sure about any part once actual money, whether that be mine or someone else’s, is involved.
Any advice would be well received thanks

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.

1. Record News Articles. Then you read through the news articles and save the key phrases,

paragraphs, quotes, etc, that give you insight into the markets expectations, sentiment, global
macro, etc, and then input these input your currency specific master file.
​

1. Record Propriety News Impact Releases Method and input into your currency specific file.

​

1. Record impact of any other intraday events which were not on calendar which moved the

market and input into the currency specific file using the news impact release method if possible.
​

1. Record any key phrases and information released on IFR, forexlive, etc that gives you insights

into market expectations, sentiment, global macro, etc, and input into currency specific file. The
daily recap of the news articles will give you a very nice overview of what happened. However, I
usually like to quickly view the IFR and scroll through the news to see if there was anything
important that was said by an important official, etc. Or if the daily news articles do not give me
sufficient meaning as to why price did what it did for the day, then I can go to IFR to read some
of their explanations to see if I agree with their story and scenarios for the market. Again, any
important information I record it into my currency master files.

1. Label the stops and option barrier levels on your chart and set price alerts to the two closest

ones – one to the topside and one for the downside. Then once one of those gets triggered, you
just reset the price alert to the next closest stop/barrier level. Check the stop hunting section to
learn how to locate the stops.

1. Use your currency master file to perform deep scenario analysis.
   
2. Create an order flow generator list and trigger sheet. Bullish and Bearish triggers and
   

generators for each currency / financial instrument. What is the market pricing in. What will
shatter those expectations. I have provided you Order Flow Generators for each currency in
a separate lesson. There can be similarities between the different currencies.

1. Prepare for next days news. Use your currency master file which should contain the history of

news impacts that you have recorded in order to determine which reports are important and
which ones are meaningless and you should not spend your time on. See the news trading
section for explanations on how to know which news releases are important.

1. Prepare a Correlation Analysis / Sensitivity Sheet.
   
2. Learn about one new order flow generator and/or scenario per day either from forex, or
   

bonds, futures, stocks, commodities, etc. Can be super simple or complicated mix of
participants.

Someone posted on here a few days ago asking about forex and forex trading in Kenya, I have gone through the responses and clearly, most people don’t have an idea. It is 3am in the morning and am in a good mood so let me make this post. This will be a comprehensive and lengthy post so grab a pen and paper and sit down. We’ll be here a while.
FIRST OF ALL, who am I..?
I am a forex trader, in Nairobi, Kenya..i have been actively involved in forex since I found out about it in Feb 2016 when I somehow ended up in a wealth creation seminar (lol) in pride inn Westlands, the one close to Mpaka Rd. Luckily for me, it was not one of those AIM global meetings or I’d be on Facebook selling God knows what those guys sell. I did not take it seriously till August of the same year and I have been active ever since.
I don’t teach, mentor or sell a course or signals, I trade my own money. I am also posting from a throwaway account because I don’t want KRA on my ass.
What the fuck is forex and forex trading.
In simple plain English, forex is like the stock market but for currencies. Stock Market = Shares, forex = currencies. If you want more in-depth explanation, google is your friend.
These currencies are pegged on specific countries, united states- dollar, UK- pound, euro zone- euro, Switzerland- Swiss franc, Kenya- Kenya shilling.. you get the point. Now, there are specific events and happenings between these economies that affect the movement and values of the currencies, driving their value (purchasing power up and down). Forex trading exploits these movements to make money. When the value is going up, we buy and vice versa (down –sell)
Is forex trading illegal in Kenya? Is it a scam?
Illegal, no. scam, no. All the banks in the world do it (KCB made about 4 billion from trading forex in 2019)
Have there been scams involving forex in Kenya?
Yes. Here is one that happened recently. This one is the most infamous one yet. Best believe that this is not the end of these type of scams because the stupidity, greed and gullibility of human beings is unfathomable.
However, by the end of this post, I hope you won’t fall for such silliness.
What next how do I make it work..?
Am glad you asked. Generally, there are two ways to go about it. One, you teach yourself. This is the equivalent of stealing our dad’s car and hoping that the pedal you hit is the brake and not the accelerator. It is the route I took, it is the most rewarding and a huge ego boost when you finally make it on your own. Typically, this involves scouring the internet for hours upon hours going down rabbit holes, thinking you have made it telling all your friends how you will be a millionaire then losing all your money. Some people do not have the stomach for that.
The second route is more practical, structured and smarter.
First Learn the basics. There is a free online forex course at www.babypips.com/learn/forex this is merely an introductory course. Basically it is learning the parts of a car before they let you inside the car.
Second, start building your strategy. By the time you are done with the babypips, you will have a feel of what the forex market is, what interests you, etc. Tip..Babypips has a lot of garbage. It is good for introductory purposes but not good for much else, pick whatever stick to you or jumps at you the first time. Nonsense like indicators should be ignored.
The next step is now the most important. Developing the skill and building your strategy. As a beginner, you want to exhaust your naivety before jumping into the more advanced stuff. Eg can you identify a trend, what is a pair, what is position sizing, what is metatrader 4 and how to operate it, what news is good for a currency, when can I trade, what are the different trading sessions, what is technical analysis, what is market sentiment, what are bullish conditions what is emotion management, how does my psychology affect my trading (more on this later) an I a swing, scalper or day trader etc
Mentors and forex courses.. you have probably seen people advertising how they can teach and mentor you on how to trade forex and charging so much money for it. Somehow it seems that these people are focused on the teaching than the trading. Weird, right..? Truth is trading is hard, teaching not quite. A common saying in the industry is “Those who can’t trade, teach” you want to avoid all these gurus on Facebook and Instagram, some are legit but most are not. Sifting the wheat from the chaff is hard but I did that for you. The info is available online on YouTube, telegram channels etc. am not saying not to spend money on a course, if you find a mentor whose style resonates with you and the course is reasonably priced, please, go ahead and buy..it will cut your learning curve in half. People are different. What worked for me might not work for you.
Here are some nice YouTube channels to watch. These guys are legit..

1. Sam sieden
   
2. Cuebanks
   
3. TheCoinFx
   
4. The trading channel
   
5. Astro
   
6. Forex family
   
7. Wicksdontlie
   

Advanced stuff

1. ICT

After a short period of time, you will be able to sniff out bs teachers with relative ease. You will also discover some of your own and expand the list. Two tips, start with the oldest videos first and whichever of these resonates with you, stick with till the wheels fall off.
How long will it take until things start making sense
Give yourself time to grow and learn. This is all new to you and you are allowed to make mistakes, to fail and discover yourself. Realistically, depending on the effort you put in, you will not start seeing results until after 6 months. Could take longeshorter so there is no guarantee.
Social media, Mentality, Psychology and Books
Online, forex trading might not have the best reputation online because it takes hard work and scammers and gurus give it a bad name. However, try to not get sucked into the Instagram trader lifestyle as it is nowhere close to what the reality is. You will not make millions tomorrow or the day after, you might never even make it in this market. But that is the reality of life. Nothing is promised, nothing is guaranteed.
Your mentality, beliefs and ego will be challenged in this market. You will learn things that will make you blood boil, you will ask yourself daily, how is this possible, why don’t they teach this in school..bla bla bla..it will be hard but growth is painful, if it wasn’t we’d all be billionaires. Take a break, take a walk, drink a glass of whatever you like or roll one..detox. Chill with your girl (or man) Gradually you will develop mental toughness that will set you up for life. Personally, I sorta ditched religion and picked up stoicism. Whatever works for you.
Psychology, this is unfortunately one of the most neglected aspects of your personal development in this journey. Do you believe in yourself? Can you stand by your convictions when everyone is against you? Can you get up every day uncertain of the future? There will be moments where you will question yourself, am I even doing the right thing? the right way? It is normal and essential for your growth. People who played competitive sports have a natural advantage here. Remember the game is first won in your head then on the pitch.
Books: ironically, books that helped me the most were the mindset books, Think and grow rich, trading for a living, 4 hour work week, the monk who sold his Ferrari..just google mindset and psychology books, most trading books are garbage. Watch and listen to people who have made it in the investing business. Ray Dalio, warren, Bill Ackman and Carl Icahn.
This is turning out to be lengthier than I anticipated so I’ll try to be brief for the remaining parts.
Brokers
You will need to open up an account with a broker. Get a broker who is regulated. Australian ones (IC Market and Pepperstone) are both legit, reliable and regulated. Do your research. I’d avoid local ones because I’ve heard stories of wide spreads and liquidity problems. International brokers have never failed me. There are plenty brokers, there is no one size fits all recommendation. If it ain’t broke..don’t fix it.
Money transfer.
All brokers accept wire transfers, you might need to call your bank to authorize that, avoid Equity bank. Stanchart and Stanbic are alright. Large withdrawals $10k+ you will have to call them prior. Get Skrill and Neteller if you don’t like banks like me, set up a Bitcoin wallet for faster withdrawals, (Payoneer and Paypal are accepted by some brokers, just check with them.)
How much money can I make..?
I hate this question because people have perceived ceilings of income in their minds, eg 1 million ksh is too much to make per month or 10,000ksh is too little. Instead, work backwards. What % return did I make this month/ on this trade. Safaricom made 19.5% last year, if you make 20% you have outperformed them. If you reach of consistency where you can make x% per month on whatever money you have, then there are no limits to how much you can make.
How much money do I need to start with..?
Zero. You have all the resources above, go forth. There are brokers who provide free bonuses and withdraw-able profits. However, to make a fulltime income you will need some serious cash. Generally, 50,000 kes. You can start lower or higher but if you need say 20k to live comfortably and that is a 10% return per month, then you can do the math on how big your account should be. Of course things like compound interest come into play but that is dependent on your skill level. I have seen people do spectacular things with very little funds.
Taxes..?
Talk to a lawyer or an accountant. I am neither.
Family? Friends?
Unfortunately, people will not understand why you spend hundreds of hours watching strangers on the internet so it is best to keep it from them. Eventually you will make it work and they will come to your corner talking about how they always knew you’d make it.
The journey will be lonely, make some trading buddies along the way. You’d be surprised at how easy it is when people are united by their circumstances (and stupidity) I have guys who are my bros from South Africa and Lebanon who I have never met but we came up together and are now homies. Join forums, ask questions and grow. That is the only way to learn. Ideally, a group of 5-10 friends committed to learning and growth is the best model. Pushing each other to grow and discovering together.
Forex is real and you can do amazing things with it. It is not a get rich quick scheme. If you want a quick guaranteed income, get a job.
And now it is 5am, fuck.
This is oversimplified and leaves out many many aspects.
Happy to answer any questions.

I always dreamt of becoming a multi millionaire in 5 to 10 years but this guy has brought an interesting point to the table:

Day Trading Market Ceiling There also a Day Trading Market Ceiling. A successful day trader (not an investor, though) will eventually get capped out, as the market simply can’t accommodate an infinitely increasing position size for a particular strategy. To make more the trader either needs to alter the strategy, or also trade something else…and this may or may not work. Change one thing and you can’t assume all else will stay the same. To attain the returns discussed in the “How Much Day Traders Make,” multiple trades are made each day. Trades are likely only lasting a couple minutes. While multiple-millions of dollars worth of stocks, futures or currencies may change hands over the course of couple hours, day traders have precise entry points. Therefore, position size is limited to the amount of liquidity (volume) available at the exact moment a trader needs to get into and out of trades. Investors, hedge funds and mutual funds can accumulate or dispose of positions over weeks, taking advantage of days or even weeks worth liquidity. Day traders don’t have that luxury. It doesn’t matter if a stock trades millions of shares a day; if there is only 100 shares available when they need to take the trade (based on the strategy) that’s all they get. That’s an extreme example, but at any given moment there isn’t infinite liquidity available–there is what there is, and that means there is a limit to how big of a position you can accumulate and dispose of when your strategy calls for it. Based on personal experience, in day trading forex I wouldn’t be comfortable taking more than 5 standard lots on a day trade. Some may take more, most traders would take way less. Taking a larger amount would mean significantly increased risk of slippage or partial fills (you end up with the whole position on losing trades, but only partial positions on some winning trades). Possible gains attained by taking a larger position are offset by these negative factors. At 10:1 or 15:1 leverage a forex day trader–using a day trading forex strategy similar to mine— may cap out at around a $50,000 to $75,000 account (including leverage, that means trading close to $1million). Beyond that, they may find little additional gains, unless they alter their strategy, take longer term trades or stagger their entries and exits at various prices. Changing a strategy to accommodate a larger position isn’t a bad thing, but it takes additional research/practice time…and is it worth it? Only each individual can answer that for them self. In the ES futures market I cap out at about 10 contracts, and that only requires a $40,000 to $75,000 account (maybe even less depending on how much you risk per trade). There is no reason to trade more in my opinion. Could you day trade more contracts? Sure, you could probably get away with 100 contracts some days/some trades…but why? It would take a long time to work up to carrying those sorts of positions, and even trading a few contracts can produce a good living. The same goes for the stock market. Even in a very liquid stock or ETF like the SPDR S&P 500 (SPY) you will hit a limit on how much you can effectively trade on a short time frame. It may be a big limit, but you do hit it. To see the minimum amount of capital you need to day trade, see How Much Do I Need to Become a Day Trader. The bottom line is that you hit a limit on the amount of capital you can utilize effectively, and beyond that your percentage returns will likely decrease. For example, it’s much easier to make 10% a month on a $20,000 account than it is to make 10% a month on $20,000,000. That means day trader tend to withdraw all proceeds over and above their “efficient capital limit.” So a $50,000 day trading forex accounts stays a $50,000 account and monthly profits are withdrawn and spent (like any other job) or allocated to something else. In other words the account doesn’t keep compounding indefinitely, the trader nor the market can withstand doing that…there are ceilings…psychological, natural (life) and structural (market).

Source: https://vantagepointtrading.com/why-day-traders-can-make-big-returns-but-arent-millionaires/
​
The entire article is a good read. Go read it. But in a way this shattered my dream. So tell me is this guy telling the hard truth or just bull shitting?
He also says that he has met a lot of day traders and most make between 50,000 to 200,000 per year. So aiming for that is a more "realistic goal" then making close to a million dollar per year.

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.

(no promotional content, no affiliate links)
Hi,
exactly four years ago, I started copying eToro investors / traders that I selected using the broker's built-in search engine (profitable in last two years, already being copied by others), followed by manual filtering, to take into account fluctuations in yearly returns, composition of their portfolios etc. With that, I got a list of 10 people whom I started to copy on a demo account:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1u52f0XHfr-LauIscKcFDYF0yGTTUr6VY/view?usp=sharing
In the screenshot you can see that in case of the first two of them the amount invested was $10,000, while for the rest it was just $100. This is because I started copying the first two a couple of weeks earlier; eventually I changed this into $100 the same day I made the screenshot and this is when my calculations start - so this thing is irrelevant, I just cannot travel in time to make another screenshot.
What I did after that?
Well, within the next six weeks my profits oscillated between -$11 and +$9.50 (the biggest profit was on Nov 9, a day after US presidential elections). I found this "boring" and discontinued experimenting with copy trading.
Today I looked back at those ten traders. Here is what I found. Firstly, seven of them are not with eToro anymore; investorNo1, Simple-Stock-Mkt, tradingrelax, 4exPirate, primit, Gallojack, xjurokx. The other three traders are:

• toppertrader: not being copied by anyone and for a good reason: his loss this year alone is 61.16%!
• Jean-marcLenfant: copied by only 67 people; his loss this year is -1.09% but in general he is quite successful, with yearly profits ranging from 3.57% to 7.32%.
• Girem2: he has no copiers, his profit this year is 41.45% but in 2018 he experienced a loss of 83.15%!

My observations and thoughts are as follows:

1. Seven out of ten traders are not with eToro anymore, which makes me wonder why. I have no proof but my guess is they simply performed poorly, lost their copiers and closed their accounts. This is already alarming but what if they opened another account? Or, even worse, multiple accounts? They could be investing small money and try different risky approaches, hoping that at least one account will turn out profitable in the long turn, attracting potential copiers. (I'm not claiming that those 7 particular traders did this, it's just my general suspicion regarding some of eToro traders)
2. I'm unable to calculate what would be my profit if I never stopped copying them, because I cannot check at what day and with what profit those seven traders left eToro. I'm guessing this would be an immense loss. On the other hand, considering the three traders who are still with eToro, I would lose more than a quarter of my assets!

What now?
I must be a quite adventurous person or at least an incorrigible optimist, because a month ago (exactly on Aug 26th) I started copying three traders with real money. Here is who they are.
rubymza (Heloise Greeff)

• invests in stocks, with GOOG, INTC, BLDP, MA, MSFT, AMZN, V, MU, IBM and NXPI making up 50.3% of her portfolio (allocation of each of them is in between 3.02% and 6.85%)
• active since 2016 (only the year 2016 ended with a loss)
• has 3044 copiers and $2M-$5M of copy assets under management
• strategy (her own words): "My investing strategy focusses mostly on US indices, tech and pharma, promising future (5-10years) growth. My trades are based on technical analysis using machine learning to understand patterns and trends in the markets. I prefer to keep a diverse portfolio to spread risk while achieving great returns."
• she gave an interview for Bloomberg a couple of weeks ago
• own experience: I just happened to run across her second worst month ever on eToro; my loss is -6.27% at the time of writing

​
OlivierDanvel (Olivier Jean Andre Danvel)

• he is a Forex trader, making typically 21 trades per week; his favorite currency pairs are EURCHF (12% of trades), CADCHF and GBPUSD; the trades, however, typically make up below 5% of his portfolio (at least whenever I'm checking it), making most of my funds unused
• active since January 2017: surprisingly enough, he has every single month profitable, though monthly profits are in the range of 0.03% to 3.34% only
• has 8977 copiers and more than $5M of copy assets under management
• strategy (his own words): "I monitor currency pairs all day to find the best entry. There is some management/scaling position for perfect entry. The risk control is a big part of my strategy," (quite vague, to be honest)
• own experience: my current profit is 0.26%

​
rayvahey (Raymond Noel Vahey)

• commodities compose 76% of his portfolio and his favorite assets are Gold and Oil (at the moment, Gold makes up half of invested amount)
• active since July 2016, with the following yearly profits, starting from 2016: 6.56%, 10.05%, 13.09%, 32.26% and -2.03% (the current year)
• has 1493 copiers and $1M-$2M of copy assets under management
• strategy (his own words): "My system is based on patterns, and a variety of technical analysis tools and some fundamental analysis. I primarily trade in commodities. " (quite vague as well)
• own experience: my profit with rayvahey is 2.56%

What was my strategy to hand-pick these particular traders? First I did some basic scanning using eToro's built-in search engine. The most important filter was that the trader was profitable within the last two years: unfortunately, eToro does not allow to reach details of earlier performance automatically. To know how the trader performed before 2019, I had to look at stats in the profile of each of them. I was also taking into account how often they trade (to avoid those who do only a couple of trades yearly), whether they were trading recently and whether they write posts regularly in their feed. With this, I got a list of fifteen candidates to copy:

• olivierdanvel
• marianopardo
• rubymza
• rayvahey
• martidg97
• overit
• misterg23
• knw500
• jianswang
• reinhardtcoetzee
• miyoshi
• alderique
• jarodd76
• benson9904
• big-profits

As you already know, I finally chose three of them. Rubymza seemed to be the most trustworthy stock trader, based on profits, posts feed and regular trading, among other things. Regarding OlivierDanvel, his uniqueness is the ability to record continuous profits with the Forex market. Finally, with rayvahey I wanted to increase my exposure to the commodities market.
Wish me good luck!
Michael
​
P.S.
You might find those copy-trading related readings interesting:

• https://www.etoro.com/copytrade
• https://www.investopedia.com/etoro-review-5072808
• https://socialtradingvlog.com/
• https://stockupwithjoe.com/etoro-copy-trade
• https://blockonomi.com/etoro-copy-trading-guide/
• https://www.quora.com/Does-copying-best-traders-concept-of-etoro-really-work
• https://www.quora.com/Is-it-possible-to-get-rich-by-copying-the-trades-of-top-traders-in-eToro-Zulu-trade/answeLutz-Enke

​
Disclosures:

• What you see here is my personal opinion, my own investments and should not be treated as investing advice
• I’m an amateur investor

I was trying to find the lowest cost brokers that aren’t just mobile apps that offer passive investments in the assets I’m looking for on top of the usual equity and bonds I already have.
I’m hoping this will help people in my situation. I looked for a comparison website and found: https://brokerchooser.com/ which helped but I still had to dig around to get the direct comparison I needed all in one easily visible table.
What are your thoughts and experiences on the below brokers like customer service etc with these platforms?
Trading212 looks to be the cheapest and best all round but I’ve read bad experiences.
To diversify my portfolio I’m looking at:

1. Renewables funds,
2. Commodities,
3. Individual shares and Crypto (a very small gamble 1% of total)
4. Property dev/REITs,
5. Venture capital,
6. Higher risk corporate Bonds,

1 - 4 Can be invested in via ETF’s offered by most of the online brokers below.
4 - 5 Can be invested in using the other platforms below: Crowdcube, Seedrs, Syndicate room, Crowdproperty.
1 and 6 I think need higher cost traditional brokers like HL/Black rock etc but I’m not sure.
Here’s my comparison:

	Free trades per month	Products	Fees (deposit etc)	FCA Regulated?	Bank transfer or debit card?
Trading 212	Unlimited	Stocks ETF/ETCs Forex Crypto ISA	Free ISA, no trade fees, CFD account has charges inc: 0.5% currency conversion charge, no forex fees	Yes	Debit card: Yes - Bank transfer: Yes
TD Ameritrade	Unlimited	$0 for US stock $6.95 for non-US	Cannot find on FCA register	Cannot find on FCA register
eToro	Unlimited	Stocks ETF/ETCs Forex Crypto Commodities via CFD’s No ISA	- $5 withdrawal fee - Deposit and withdrawal fee of 0.5% - exchange fee (50 pips) 0.5cent/$1 e.g $7.5 on $500 - If no activity for 12 months charged $10 per month - 0.75% fee to buy bitcoin	Yes	Debit card: Yes - Bank transfer: No
Freetrade	Unlimited	Mobile app only Stocks ETFs ISA	ISA £3/month 0.90% forex fee	Yes	Debit card: No - Bank transfer: Yes
Revolut	3	Mobile app only Stocks Crypto Commodities No ISA	Complex fee structure	Yes	Debit card: Yes - Bank transfer: Yes
Degiro	Unlimited	Stocks ETF Funds Bonds Options Futures Crypto No ISA	High fees (complex structure)	Yes	Debit card: No - Bank transfer: Yes

Other investment platforms:
​

	Investment type	Fees (deposit etc)	FCA Regulated?	Pre-emption rights?
Crowd cube	Venture capital	1.5%	Yes	No
Syndicate Room	Venture capital	High fees 2% set up fee 1.5% – 2.3% annual 20% performance fee Life-time management fees of between 12.5% and 24.3%	Yes	Yes
Seedrs	Venture capital	7.5% of any profit Plus variable sale fees	Yes	Yes
Crowd property	Property	0% fees however returns capped at 8%.	Yes	N/A

​
Have you used any of these before or do you have alternatives?
​

I want to tell you quickly the nightmare I'm going through.
First, the client service is... Non existent. Let me repeat, no one will help you. I sent approximately 10 emails in a week, I had two automatic replies spewing the same nonsensical pre programed gibberish. The chat doesn't work. I waited hours, no one ever responded to my request. They did once when I had an issue with currencies, and they actually made me open a forex position, while there was a conversion tool...
Now with regards to the phone service. You have to wait approximately one hour before someone picks up. They are arrogant, useless and impersonal. Yesterday for example I bounced back and forth between three different people, each having no idea what was my request. The past weeks, after hours and hours on the line, no one could help me or even listen to me without interrupting me.
I have been waiting for ten days now to have the options '' granted ''. This broker feels like they are your university teachers that take your money but won't help you even if their lives depended on it. I still cannot use options, bonds, futures. Just stocks.
Also, very often I don't receive the text or phone call to log in to the platform. I waited 2h the other day before I could log in.
You have to update the page constantly because nothing is loading. Your balance or other information won't appear.
The orders appear and disappear without explanation, sometimes I have to place an order 2 or 3 times before it's there.
The interface looks like a software from the 90's, unusable and frankly it hurts my eyes. It needs a serious update.
In ten days I haven't been able to trade one day. I made a couple thousands with my paper account, and I wish I could have done that with my real money account.
I'm switching to Degiro, waiting for the paperwork to be done.
You can find similar experiences all over the Internet.
Don't give them commissions, I dearly regret using this fraud of a broker.