Good advice to all newbie; I mean all of us! =)

One of my colleagues sent me a very interesting email about how he starts his trading session with reading all these tips/advice first. Hope we can LEARN something here. I said "LEARN", not "COPY" am I clear enough? :)

MY DAILY GOALS

1) Try to get at least 100pips and more
2) Take risk 5% each trade
3) Never change Stop Loss that I already setup
4) Break even or lock at +1 when in 20pips profit
5) Always put Trailing Stop after in profit condition

MY VISION

1) Discipline with my rules
2) Positive thinking
3) Positive mindset and attitude
4) Act with my own best interest
5) Responsibility the result taken
6) Learn to accept the risk
7) Mental flexibility (flow with the market and cut my losses)
8) Make myself available to take advantage of opportunity
9) Action on my belief
10) Remove negative charge mental (fear, pain, anger, frustration)
11) Don't afraid and hesitation

MY GUIDELINE IN FOREX

1) I objectively identify my edges
2) I predefine the risk of every trade
3) I completely accept risk or I am willing to let go of the trade
4) I act on my edges without hesitation
5) I pay myself as the market makes money available to me
6) I continually monitor my susceptibility for making errors
7) I understand absolute necessity of these principles of consistent success and therefore I never violate them

MY PROBABILISTIC MINDSET

1) Anything can happen
2) There is random distribution between wins and losses for any given set of variables that define an edge
3) An edge is nothing more than an indication of a higher probability of one thing happening over another
4) Every moment in the market is unique

Broker... Broker... Broker...

Hi everyone!

How's 2010 been so far for you guys? It is my hope that you guys having a consistent profitable trade so far, could be double, triple or more your account than last year. It's been great for me too, life, business and trading. FYI, I've just married last June and now my wife shows a great enthusiasm to be a fulltime trader. Keep on working toward that, honey! ;)

I got many emails, asking me about which FOREX broker that I use and which one I most likely recommended. I try to answer them all here at once. First, I need to emphasize here that Meta4 is the best reference platform so far, so I use Alpari's and ACM's for my graph reference. For trading, I'm using Oanda (www.Oanda.com)platform since last two years and Oanda has been a reliable broker for me, UNTILL I fall in love with a strategy calls 'Hedging'. As a U.S broker, Oanda tied with NFA (National Future Association) new rule, NO HEDGING! You can check that policy here : http://www.nfa.futures.org/news/newsNotice.asp?ArticleID=2273

To execute the position, I highly recommend to use any broker with ECN (Electronic Communication Network) or STP (Straight Through Processing) so it wont be any requote problem. I will discuss this matter in next post. By the way I never use instant execution to open position, I only use instant execution to cut loss.

Yeah, there is a loop hole for NFA rule, to hedge the position by using two different accounts. One account for buy, and another for sell, but that also means I need to split up my capital, and there it goes margin calculation all the way. I found that, using this way makes me not really interested to hedging. One solution now is LOOKING FOR ANOTHER BROKER.

I started to list down main criterias : Islamic account (No Swap), Regulated by government body, PayPal or Credit/Debit card transaction, Outstanding Client Service(Oanda has been so great at this), NDD (Non-Dealing Desk), no restriction to hedging and scalping, low spread and ECN or STP brokers. So far, some brokers caught my attention, they are Alpari, ACM, Instaforex, & Marketiva.

Starting on May 3rd, I give myself three months try out with real account for all four brokers. By the end of this try out, I will pick one broker. For now, Alpari, ACM and Marketiva have been great. But, let's see how thing is going on for another month. :)