Now that really is gambling. Both the opening and closing times are specified in advance, so you have no predictive power and no leeway as to the timing. Why would you think that you are able to profit from this approach? Presumably you think that price movements from open to close are to some extent predictable. What predictive method do you use?

I dont see any difference in buying stocks via a broker and paying a fee for current price rather than paying a direct low marging fee? For your systen it would remove your initial trade fee really what is 1 pip on a daily setup?

Cfd also offers leverage in which stops become more important, But by the sounds of it you have a large enough account to deal with loss untill it goes in your favour then cash in when it goes your way?

What broker do you use?

At the end of the day i see this as a a potential future job.

To be honest im fed up of working for £ 30k per year and getting told its a good job! When in reality you pay a lot of tax national insurance etc. When you see theese idiots not working having several kids and milking the system walking away paying nothing and living life not far off yourself.

Then at the other end I see on a weekly basis people landing lucky some of which are total cowboys with setting up dummy buisness doing dodgy stuff raking it in!

The good honest guy like myself gets shafted the most in all aspects.

So thats why I have started looking into stocks to make more out of savings rather than the crap offered by your bailout banks!

Sorry for the rant lol

I use Macd/ADX for prediction and also trying stochastics . As i have said before i am now looking for daily trends im fed up of looking at small time charts all the time.

You can register for free for a month trial with no obligation cancel at any time. You can view every trade he runs live. I would do it myslef as the show is really good along with good music. If your happy running in american time zone lol.

No - you misunderstand. I don't have to deal with loss, because I don't have to cash anything in until it returns to profit. There is no leveraging, so I never get into debt situation that I cannot afford.

Johnny - I'm not trying to pour cold water on your aspirations (ooh, matron!) -

I am just trying to explain to you that what you are trying to do has been tried millions of times before, and usually ends up with a loss. If you are gearing up your investment with leveraging then you are much more likely to go broke before the millions pour in. How are you going to go broke with an initial stop-loss in place? Good question. You go broke with an initial stop-loss in place by having it triggered more often than you make your profit. It doesn't have to be more often in the long-term, because it only takes your nett returns to be negative a few times, especially with leveraging, for you to be out of the game.

I'll try to explain this again. CFD is worse than my approach because it fixes the times for the start and finish of the contract. Your profit is [Close Price - Opening Price], which fixes the prices you have to work with. My approach allows me to time my exit, so the main uncertainty for me is not whether I will take a profit, but when. CFD takes that one possibility away, and so turns a strategy into a straight gamble.

There are independent studies into this stuff - no charting strategy has been shown to work better than chance. In fact, even from my own experience, when I try to buy in at the bottom of a trough I usually get it wrong. The price continues to drop further for some time. If I had been CFDing I would have lost a great deal of money.

Not that I want to discourage you - but this will not be as different from a paid salary (of the same net value) as you might imagine.

If you're living on nothing but dividends, then everything above your base allowance is taxable income at either 20 or 40% depending on how much you earn - from memory, first £7450 is tax free, then 20% for the bit up to about £42k, then 40% thereafter until you get to the 50% rate at, um, £150k or so.

You won't pay any NI, but you won't get any 'stamps' on your pension, either, so you may not get sufficient complete years on your NI to get full pension unless you've already got thirty years in. You won't qualify for any benefits, either, though they won't throw you out of hospital.

If you make yourself a limited company, you can pay yourself a salary up to £7450 which is tax free to you and is an expense to the company, so the company saves 20% of that, and then vote yourself the rest in dividends - but those dividends can only come from the profit of the company which is itself taxed at 20%. That's a little better for you, but you aren't likely to have significant expenses. If you expect to see more than about sixty thousand a year - I can't recall the exact number - then you must be VAT registered even if you're not selling anything. You still don't pay VAT.

The point is, on £30k a year income as opposed to £30 as a salary, there's not a huge difference, only a thousand or two, in your take-home.

NOTE I am not an accountant or a lawyer. You should consult one for the best advice.

Welcome to the world of 'Spread Betting' - Everything earned or lost is Tax free?



That was/is on the back of my mind when I started 3 years ago, I've been investing on/off for many years, but it is mainly the last 3 where I have started to take control & move everything I had away from financial advisors!



The losses incurred I see as the same as paying for a course from professional investors?
Anyone (& I mean anyone) who enters the world of trading will lose money?
Granted if I had payed a few £k's for a course it would have been cheaper than teaching myself .. but that would have been no fun!



You are quoting a 1:1 Risk/Ratio? It is not often I enter with this ratio, more often than not I'll be looking for 1:2 or 1:3 so a 20 pip stop for a 60 pip gain?

Redline - Do you CFD or Spread or buy via broker with a fee?

Sb for forex & indicies, then selftrade for etf's & shares with £10 flat fee.

You just aren't getting it! Do you think a 2:1 gain is as likely as a 1:1 gain? It's considerably less than half of that, so if you aim for a 2:1 or 3:1 gain you will get it less than half or a third of the time.

There's no free money. The odds are against you all the way.

I changed to daily and hourly charts. All I can say is wow so much easier and made good money this week nearly a months pay with the forex XAUD/USD.

Just went short on forex EUR/USD. daily and hourly both looking oversold. Lets see what i can do this week.

Do you mean 'overbought'?

And this one?



Best of luck!

yeah sorry mate I was tired last nite should have said over bought as why go short over sold lol. I have just woke up and to find its moved great. I took the price of 1.32215 its now down to 1.31500 i have locked in a stop of good profit but im going to let it run more.

Putting in a stop once you are in profit is probably a good plan. Out of interest, how do you determine that something is overbought?

I am using trading indicators at the moment across the daily and hourly time frames a combination of Stochastic, MACD with my custom settings and RSI. The stochastic if above 80 is considered oversold and below 20 overbought. RSI is similar but 70-30 . The Macd is the link in between with showing a slowdown of a trend. Combined into this is a bollinger band if the price is against this and all other are showing overbought then its a High probability setup. I was exactly the same tech before with smallwer time frames but it involves hours of watching charts to scalp points at a time. My new system i spotted this last nite and a soon as forex opened i had to give it a go.

So if all or 4 out 5 of these are giving you the green light to go its a higher possibilty than just a gamble.

Glad to hear your new trading strategy is paying off!

I would just edge a word of caution to be careful, I'm guessing that you are still using £10/point, just make sure you have a trading plan & stick to it!!

As it's just as easy to lose a months pay just as quick!

Don't over trade, if you have a good week, have a week off to enjoy your profits ...

I have also now decided to put a % of profit in hold and build, back up.

If it wasnt for this thread i would still be doing the low time frames. So thank you Redline

Redline - Im really starting to like the forex markets vs general stocks.

I know you are not a pro but you have more experiance than me. What are the pro's con's forex vs stocks?

For example do the forex ever gap down/up? as they technically dont close? until the weekend?

Yes the Forex markets can be very profitable, but they are very volatile in comparison, and as you say they move 24/7!
Even though they run 24/7 they will still gap? So be careful with your stops, it's never happened to me yet!

I find them handy as I can still trade them of an evening, but by about 8pm they become stagnant.

Do be careful as trades then run constantly through the night!! I've had a few sleepless nights in the past! But that was in the early days when I was trading too near the bone!

Your indicators are NOT always 100%, divergence can appear, your indicator might have signs of a bear market, but the price will still be bullish!

I seem to have reverted this week & playing the Forex with a 30 Stop/5 Limit, positive results, but hard work ..

I did make one big mistake on the GBP/CZK!
Minimum stop is 150, placed trade & it started around -60 .. I was only trading £1/pip (Should of looked at the min - 10p), but as I thought few minutes later I took the hit at £150 loss .. It could of been worse and Trading £10/pip ...

I didnt do to well this week with holding currency that i knew was going down.

didnt put normal stop in place as using 2 measures bollinger band holding overnight cost £100 fees per night took it off at £40 profit but could have had £600 if i set limit which i never did but it occured 5am our time. sily mistake when its not going to plan (note to self re adjust) limit factor. AUD/USD will look on sunday before next position before open. Whats your oppinion enforcer/redline?

Also enforcer fo you use any tech anlysis in your trading as it sounds as if you only sell/buy when average price is high/low during long period?

Yes your learning? Always have your stops & Limits in place?
It's important to have a trading plan & stick to it? Otherwise you will fall foul to the markets!

What platform are you using which is costing you £100 fees??

At least you have still come out in profit! Which is still good what ever way you look at it

Its my understanding that any forex platform will charge you interest if held after 5pm US time on depending on what currecny pair etc but it can go in your favour also with interest given to. you depending whether you are long or short.

I use intertrader, they offer the best all round package for me at the moment low spreads on everything There basic platform charts are also very good. Not quite as good as the more advanced ie metatrader4 but still very usable with multi setting and measures. They also can give you the metatrader4 if you wanted it.

How are you guys getting on?

I have done various systems with a very profitable £100 per pip move taking 2 pip on the 1 min chart 31 trades in a row profitable!

Then I got done and lost aprox 80% of my profit

Due to being to busy with work not setting a reasnable stop loss

I now have new improved system using 4 hour charts with lower risk/reward ratio running @ £5 per pip with max stop 100 pips, max limit of 50 pips.

It seems to be far less effort as some days i get overloaded with complex work issues.

So I now only trade AUD/USD 4 hour base using MACD di napoli settings, RSI, Willaims R & standard stochastic incorperated into all this i have 2 seperate devations of bollinger bands set up as supp or res.

Firstly im looking for support or resistsance then oversold or overbought on the RSI & stochastic Then the macd confirms the trend change and enter the trade. The only loss so far is holding overnight on a 'short' basis

I added williams R as it seems to indiacte quicker trend change.

Have a look at 4 hour chart against the currnecy pair back test it and you will see it works!

Use 15 min chart as entry point via same technique.

My Tesco holding has gone into profit twice over the past few weeks, but dipped down again. Still waiting for a respectable margin.

and getting my dividend this coming Wednesday!