Taking a step closer to being a FX Trader

Continued to trade on my live account using the ABC system and make some but loss more... burst my account and had to top up so many times that I lost count. At the same time, learning from the forum and employing them on my live account as well. Somehow, it seemed that I do have some beginner luck as I always make some good trades with new system but eventually all profit goes back to the market.

I was getting frustrated most of the time and even fear started to creep in when I trade. One day, during our usual chatting session on the forum, this person nicknamed "mac" offered to meet me and share with me on how to trade. I appreciated his offer and arranged for a convenient time to meet up. It was also around the same time that I responded to an advertisement on the recruitment of FX dealer by Six Capital. I attended the briefing session with my childhood friend and was impressed by the content that was briefed. I just had the feeling that this had to be the way to trade for a living. Hence after much consideration, I signed up for their 6 months Trainee Dealer Program (TDP).

I also shared with mac on my decision and intention to attend the TDP. He advised that I should therefore concentrate on the training and hence we eventually did not meet up. I attended the first theory session of the TDP, which generally covers the basic of FX trading, topics such as support & resistance, trendlines and chart pattern as well as the mindsets of a trader.

There are generally three types of basic chart pattern, continuation pattern, reversal pattern and consolidation pattern. Firstly, the Continuation patterns are Flag and Triangle.

Head & Shoulder, Inverted Head & Shoulder, Double/Triple Top or Bottom are Reversal patterns.

Consolidation patterns are Rectangle and Triangle.

The six mindsets of a trader. 1) Don't Lose, 2) Don't Hold, 3) Don't Risk, 4) Trend is you Friend, 5) Manage your Ego and 6) Live to fight another day. I had to internalize the six mindsets and hence I wrote a creed to help myself remember them better.

"A Trader Don't Lose in Trading, so if we dunno or not sure, we don't do. And if we do, we Don't Hold so that we Don't Risk, by not holding we minimize our exposure time (risk).
We always trade with the trend because the Trend is Our Friend. We Manage our Ego so that we are emotionally detach from the market and if we had a bad day, we stop trading so that we Live to Fight Another Day!"

After the theory session are completed, it's purely hand-on trading experience, internalizing the mindsets and mastering the skill. During each trading session, the trainer will analyze the market condition before the trading session start and along the way, explaining how and where a trade can be done or how the price action develop allows one to do certain thing. The trading sessions are indeed useful and help a lot on one learning curve.

However, my conclusion, I realize that learning to trade is really as easy as 123, but to master them and how long you take to master them would depends on the individual. Especially internalizing the 6 mindsets, it's more than just to memorize and remember them.

Exposure to FX Trading

Flashback to the year 2006 (should be correct as far as I can remember), I attended a seminar held by an afflitate and without much hesitation, I signed up on the spot for their FX trading course with FX1 Academy with their tagline, "Trading is as easy as ABC". The course fee of $3,000++ was guaranteed with 10% interest refundable should you be not satisfied with the result at the end of the two weeks course.

Over a weekend on Saturday and Sunday, we went through the basic topics on FX trading and their ABC strategy which were actually available if you had befriended Goggle. However, people of my generation... well, we do use Goggle but not to the extend of making them our way of life, hence it's only very much after that I realized what I learnt was available FREE on the internet. Below is a video found in YouTube on the ABC Trading System.

After attending the weekend theory session, we were to put our knowledge and skills to test on a DEMO account of their appointed broker, which I can’t remember the name, this broker had also eventually been merged with another broker, now known as ibfx. 

We were taught and to employ the strategy or system on USDJPY. Each day, I would just open my DEMO trading account and watch the USDJPY chart to develop the ABC as you had seen the the video above. There were some good trades and some losers. At the end of the trial period of the DEMO account, I had to opened another to continued practicing. Nevertheless, the result wasn’t too convincing as the overall result in losses and not profit. 

We were appointed mentor from FX1 whom will go through your trading chart and coach you accordingly. I religiously sent my trading charts daily to the mentor and mostly the reply were to continue practicing and keep up the good work. 🙄 Losing trades were left unexplained even though the ABC were developed, hence the routine continued... look for ABC development and place your trade... then repeat and again and again...

At the same time after being exposed to the FX trading arena, I also started to participate in trading forum such as Asia trading forum and forexfactory. I was rather active in Asia trading forum and got to know quite a few regulars and formed our private chat room as well. For the latter, I was more on the sideline just reading what others had posted. 

After the FX1 course period which was only two weeks, trading result with the ABC trading system continues to result in losses but I continued using the system since I was clueless of others. While learning from the others through the forum, I also read about reviews on FX1 Academy. Many were like me who had after attending the course, still clueless and not able to make profit with their trading system. There were also posts on getting back their course fee was guaranteed when they signed up. Through some advise, I finally decided to request for the same.

After submitting my request to my mentor, I was told to send my trading charts for review and process of the refund. The reply to my refund request eventually was that I had not traded enough number of trades and that I had changed a few DEMO account hence my refund cannot to acceded. Of course I was pretty upset with the reply but nevertheless I took it as a stepping stone to being expose to FX trading. I also opened and funded my live trading account and started trading live using the one and only trading strategy I know.