Hi all,
Been reading a bit here lately and thought I'd throw out a request for advice.
I'm currently on a break from full-time work for next couple of months (but could stretch it out to 6 months). I want to take advantage of the time I have to make some progress with trading so that when I do return to full-time work I'd already have put in some "hard yards" in trading.
First a little background....
I got into buying shares about 7 years ago (buy and hold) and cashed out in 2007 with a handy profit (I now know it was just dumb luck of being in a bull run).
I decided to try trading (ASX shares) a couple of years later with an IB account. Results were meh and I quit and closed the account.
Looking back at my experience now I realise some (most?) of my lack of success was that I was susceptible psychologically (you know the fear that comes with needing to be right). I feel I have a different mindset now (especially after doing some reflecting after reading The Disciplined Trader) and want to give trading another shot.
At first, I wanted to just dive straight in with a small account and trade on support and resistance. But I read some comments here about the importance of backtesting and expectancy and decided to put a bit more thought into it.
So I would like some advice on what I should trade. Here are some of my thoughts:
So based on my criteria do you have any recommendations on what to trade (FX, futures, CFDs, overseas shares etc.) and broker/software to use? AmiBroker is mentioned here a lot but would signing up with certain brokers that give you access to MetaTrader 4 give you pretty much the same thing?
Been reading a bit here lately and thought I'd throw out a request for advice.
I'm currently on a break from full-time work for next couple of months (but could stretch it out to 6 months). I want to take advantage of the time I have to make some progress with trading so that when I do return to full-time work I'd already have put in some "hard yards" in trading.
First a little background....
I got into buying shares about 7 years ago (buy and hold) and cashed out in 2007 with a handy profit (I now know it was just dumb luck of being in a bull run).
I decided to try trading (ASX shares) a couple of years later with an IB account. Results were meh and I quit and closed the account.
Looking back at my experience now I realise some (most?) of my lack of success was that I was susceptible psychologically (you know the fear that comes with needing to be right). I feel I have a different mindset now (especially after doing some reflecting after reading The Disciplined Trader) and want to give trading another shot.
At first, I wanted to just dive straight in with a small account and trade on support and resistance. But I read some comments here about the importance of backtesting and expectancy and decided to put a bit more thought into it.
So I would like some advice on what I should trade. Here are some of my thoughts:
- Want ability to go long or shot
- Thinking FX as I could trade during after-hours after returning to work
- Initially be starting with a very small account $5-10K (to test the waters)
- Don't own any software or have any broker accounts ATM
- Thinking short term trades - intra-day or a few days
- Not sure about tax implications - e.g. does trading US shares or FX complicate things for tax returns?
- Preference would be to trade on breakouts and pullbacks
- I'm not a big Indicators guy, would prefer to trade on price S&R and perhaps trend line on a longer timeframe
- Never done backtesting or system development
- Goal is to learn trading (extra cash would be nice too) with the view to doing it full-time in a couple of years (provided I'm any good/I enjoy it)
So based on my criteria do you have any recommendations on what to trade (FX, futures, CFDs, overseas shares etc.) and broker/software to use? AmiBroker is mentioned here a lot but would signing up with certain brokers that give you access to MetaTrader 4 give you pretty much the same thing?
