Hello all,
My name is Dimitri and I'm 25 years old.
I currently am holding a Bachelors in Finance. I'm starting a 2nd degree in Computer Science in January.
I live in Montreal, Canada. I work in Capital Markets at an International Bank.
The first thing that got me into trading was the fact that I always wanted to trade. I kept opening Demo accounts to trade stocks but never followed through. I started to study charts for stocks but discovered I had an issue with that since I was in university at the time and couldn't monitor stocks LIVE. So I went on, I think it was FreeStockCharts.com or something like that and pulled up a quote on EUR/USD and then I realized that the market was still open!!!
That's when I knew that FX gave me that flexibility that I was looking for.
When it came to trading, the first mentor and method I would use was ICT.
ICT was my hero, my idol. Every video, every concept I would spend hours studying. I would wake up at 3am EST and stay up until 5am EST to trade London Open every day on a DEMO account. People thought I was mental!
I started to follow ICT in November 2011. I traded January and February on Demo with 24% and 39% return. Then I went live on March 1st 2012. The first month I made 5% return on a 5k account. Then, come April, I got cocky. I placed a short on EUR/USD and made 30 pips but then decided to short GBP/USD as well while tripling the risk (at market). At the exact moment, price pulled back 50 pips which was more than my initial stop loss of 30 (however since I went at market, I couldn't place my stop right away). Here I was down $500 with no SL... I prayed and trembled, eventually I was down $1250... on my $5250 account. Then price started to return, eventually I took a $600 loss...
I was now in the red and that's when stupidity took over. I neglected everything I had learned and (while not increasing risk) started to lose consecutively for 12 trades (2% losses each) - this was using my own "principles".
Then I stopped and decided I needed to do something else. I started to look for a new system. I discovered VSA - Volume Spread Analysis and programmed my own indicator. I performed a backtest and it was very profitable. I started trading it and brought my account up to $4500 using LC techniques. I was starting to see the light...
I decided to apply the tactics to LO and got hammered, I was risking 5%/trade (instead of 2%) and brought my account to $2000. That's when I discovered Tom DeMark's indicators. I used them and brought the account to $3200 but once again got mental and lost 5-6 trades consequtively - brought my account to $2300.
Then I came up with the following strategy: buy low, buy lower, sell high, sell higher.
Every day I would buy or sell (once a day) in the direction of the opposite move of the previous day. I split my account into pieces, I started with 0.03 lots or $0.30/pip and put no stop loss but took profits at 50+ pips (I won't get into the TP part).
Eventually I had accumulated a huge amount of open orders but I know FX ranges so I wanted to just wait out the reversal, well I ran out of liquidity and got margin stopped.
My account is now worth $500. I decided to go back to my roots, back into the only strategy that ever really brought me money. I looked to see if ICT was still around and he was.
I joined the forum, subscibed to his Youtube and Twitter.
I have never been really involved in any forums, I was more a lurker.
This time I will post ideas/charts and hopefully develop as a trader. I dunno at this point about what I will do with those final $500. I'm currently uncomfortable and reluctant to put in more money until I see some kind of consistent understanding and progress.
Thanks for having me.
My name is Dimitri and I'm 25 years old.
I currently am holding a Bachelors in Finance. I'm starting a 2nd degree in Computer Science in January.
I live in Montreal, Canada. I work in Capital Markets at an International Bank.
The first thing that got me into trading was the fact that I always wanted to trade. I kept opening Demo accounts to trade stocks but never followed through. I started to study charts for stocks but discovered I had an issue with that since I was in university at the time and couldn't monitor stocks LIVE. So I went on, I think it was FreeStockCharts.com or something like that and pulled up a quote on EUR/USD and then I realized that the market was still open!!!
That's when I knew that FX gave me that flexibility that I was looking for.
When it came to trading, the first mentor and method I would use was ICT.
ICT was my hero, my idol. Every video, every concept I would spend hours studying. I would wake up at 3am EST and stay up until 5am EST to trade London Open every day on a DEMO account. People thought I was mental!
I started to follow ICT in November 2011. I traded January and February on Demo with 24% and 39% return. Then I went live on March 1st 2012. The first month I made 5% return on a 5k account. Then, come April, I got cocky. I placed a short on EUR/USD and made 30 pips but then decided to short GBP/USD as well while tripling the risk (at market). At the exact moment, price pulled back 50 pips which was more than my initial stop loss of 30 (however since I went at market, I couldn't place my stop right away). Here I was down $500 with no SL... I prayed and trembled, eventually I was down $1250... on my $5250 account. Then price started to return, eventually I took a $600 loss...
I was now in the red and that's when stupidity took over. I neglected everything I had learned and (while not increasing risk) started to lose consecutively for 12 trades (2% losses each) - this was using my own "principles".
Then I stopped and decided I needed to do something else. I started to look for a new system. I discovered VSA - Volume Spread Analysis and programmed my own indicator. I performed a backtest and it was very profitable. I started trading it and brought my account up to $4500 using LC techniques. I was starting to see the light...
I decided to apply the tactics to LO and got hammered, I was risking 5%/trade (instead of 2%) and brought my account to $2000. That's when I discovered Tom DeMark's indicators. I used them and brought the account to $3200 but once again got mental and lost 5-6 trades consequtively - brought my account to $2300.
Then I came up with the following strategy: buy low, buy lower, sell high, sell higher.
Every day I would buy or sell (once a day) in the direction of the opposite move of the previous day. I split my account into pieces, I started with 0.03 lots or $0.30/pip and put no stop loss but took profits at 50+ pips (I won't get into the TP part).
Eventually I had accumulated a huge amount of open orders but I know FX ranges so I wanted to just wait out the reversal, well I ran out of liquidity and got margin stopped.
My account is now worth $500. I decided to go back to my roots, back into the only strategy that ever really brought me money. I looked to see if ICT was still around and he was.
I joined the forum, subscibed to his Youtube and Twitter.
I have never been really involved in any forums, I was more a lurker.
This time I will post ideas/charts and hopefully develop as a trader. I dunno at this point about what I will do with those final $500. I'm currently uncomfortable and reluctant to put in more money until I see some kind of consistent understanding and progress.
Thanks for having me.
Welcome!