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Making 6.3% on the beach in the South of France

In this video:

00:23 What an amazing achievement!
02:32 Let The Trading Work Around Your Lifestyle
04:10 Great Value For Money

How would you like to make 6.3% gain on your live account in one week while sitting on the beach in the south of France?

Well, that’s what one of my client’s has done just this last week. Let’s share more details about that right now.

What An Amazing Achievement!
Hi Forex traders, it’s Andrew Mitchem here. I’m the Forex Trading coach. Today is Friday, the 2nd of October. A few weeks ago I had an email from a client of mine, called Simon, who lives over in the U.K. He said, “Andrew, I’m off to the south of France for a week’s holiday. I won’t be on your webinar next week, but I’ll be looking forward to watching the recording.” I said, “Great, Simon. Have a nice time. My parents actually live in the south of France.” I said, “Look, the love it down there. Have a great time. Enjoy yourself. I’ll catch up with you when you get back.”

Just last night I had a webinar, my evening time, early morning European time. Simon was on the webinar. He said to me, “Hey, Andrew. I’ve been to the south of France. I loved it. Had a great time on the beach for the week. I made 6.3% gain my account just in one week while enjoying the sun in the south of France.” He’s now back in the shitty U.K., as they’re into Autumn time over there.

It just got me thinking, “Well, look at that. What an amazing achievement.” I’ve got the information here. He emailed me as well, and told me about it, and said, “Look, my account grew 6.3% in the week. What a nice bonus. I’ll see you on the webinar on Thursday.”

Thank you very much, Simon. It just got me thinking about what can be achieved once you understand trading, put some effort in, and still to the rules. That’s exactly what Simon’s done there.

It also got me thinking about … I’ve mentioned so many times, you don’t need to be spending all the time watching charts. Simon’s been over there on the beach and, probably, just traded daily charts, maybe 12-hour charts, and, maybe, on the weekly charts, but hasn’t spent all day and night watching charts. A number of people will say to me, “Hey, Andrew. You talk about trading on the close of a bar, whether it be a one-hour bar or a four-hour bar. Do I have to sit there and watch every one hour or every four hours?” No, you don’t. Absolutely, you don’t. Far from it. You need to trade when it suits you. Pick the times that suit you to trade. If you do like trading one-hour charts, then, yes, look at the end of the one-hour candle or one-hour bar, but only when it suits you. Don’t worry about getting up in the middle of the night doing it. Don’t stress about getting home from work early to do it.

Let The Trading Work Around Your Lifestyle

You have to made the trading work around your lifestyle. Otherwise, it takes over your life. You don’t want that. People that sit there for hours, upon hour ,upon hour ,upon hour, just staring at the charts, moving up and down, every single pip, they do become glued to that screen. That’s what the vast majority of people are trying to avoid. There’s no real fun in watching charts move up and down all day. There really isn’t. The fun is seeing technical setups of your technical trade, like I am, talking about trading. I love talking about trading. Also, the challenge of picking the trades and seeing them come through into profitable trades. That’s the real enjoyment of trading. Of course, all the freedom of time that trading brings. Exactly like Simon said here, “Week in the south of France. 6.3% in a week.” You cannot argue with that.

I’ve also had another client sending through comments. Craig over in Australia, he mentioned on the webinar last night, he made a 4.5 to 1 return trade. Risking half of 1%, he made 2.25% of one trade. It was on the Australian/New Zealand Dollar (AUD/NZD) 4-hour chart. Also in the same pair and same time frame, he took another trade and made a 3 to 1 trade or a 1.5% gain. A whole heap of people here sending through information about trades that they’ve taken and how much they’re enjoying the course and making money.

It also got me thinking, I was thinking about a story the other day that someone told me. I’d like to really share it with you. It’s kind of Forex related, but you’ll see it, what I mean. The story goes along like this.

Great Value For Money

There was a factory owner. The factory had broken down, a machine, or a part of it, had broken down. It was costing the owner $4,000 per hour by not having the machine working. It was a big problem. Anyway, he called in the specialist who came in, and within half an hour, fiddled with some buttons, did whatever he did, and within 30 minutes, he had the machine back and work, and running, and working full steam as it should do.

Anyway, a week later, the owner of the factory gets the bill from the guy who fixed it. It came in a $20,000. The owner goes, “Wow! That’s just obscene! What a ridiculous amount of money! $20,000! He was only here for 30 minutes. How on earth can he justify that?” He didn’t pay the bill. Anyway, the guy, the mechanic guy, called him and said, “What’s the problem? I fixed your problem. I’ve done my job. You haven’t paid.” The owner of the factory went back to the mechanic and said, “I need you to itemize the bill. I need to see exactly how you justify $20,000 for 30 minutes work.” Anyway, the bill comes back a day later, and it said on it, in two lines, top line said, “30 minutes of work – $100. Knowledge of knowing what to fix, what buttons to press, how to fix the machine – $19,900. Total – $20,000.” The owner of the machine saw that, realized exactly the value in having the mechanic fix the problem, and paid the $20,000 straight away.

It’s a great story. I don’t know whether it’s a true story or a made-up story, but the actual story itself, I think, is a fantastic philosophy. It comes back to trading. You think about how it relates to trading. People look at … Let’s say, courses, my course, for example. Some people think it’s this brilliant value for money. Other people go, “Well, this is far too much. I can’t justify paying this guy that amount of money just for a video course.” It’s the same thing. The time to create the video course, the time that I put into my daily trades, etc., and webinars, although it’s a bit more than 30 minutes, it’s quite a bit of time. That has a lot of value to it. It’s the knowledge, the time, the understanding, the skills, all the years of trial and error that go into the knowledge that I share with my clients. That’s where the value is.

I always bring it back to that story about the factory and the mechanic. There’s so many people out there trading, just losing money, losing money, losing money, spending so much time. It’s just not working for them, but as soon as somebody says, “Look. I’ve got something here that could really, really help you”, they get scared off because they can’t see the value in investing in themselves and in their education.

I’ll leave you with that story. Have a think about it. If there’s anything you want me to discuss on future videos and podcasts exactly like this, email me through andrew@theforextradingcoach.com.

Have a wonderful weekend. I’m going flying again this weekend, so I’m hoping to get a couple of good days of flying weather. I’ll look forward to talk with you this time next week.

Bye, for now.

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How do you trust your Forex trading plan?

In this video:
00:24 An Important Aspect of Trading
02:16 Let the Trade Do Its Thing
04:26 Why Clients Do So Well

You need to be able to learn to trust your trading plan and your trading strategy. Let us talk about that and more right now. Hi Forex traders, Andrew Mitchem here, the Forex Trading Coach and today’s Friday, the 25th of September.

An Important Aspect of Trading

In this video and podcast, I want to talk about really, really important aspect of trading. It is all about once you develop the strategy or plan or system, having the ability to stick to it. If something that affects traders across the broad spectrum from absolute beginners, right through to more experienced traders and everybody in between and something that you really need to learn to overcome in order to take that step from being maybe a breakeven trader or a small profitable trader, it is becoming a really good trader.

Let’s talk about that and exactly what I mean. You see the problem that I see happening and what I experienced from feedback that I get from people, emails, phone calls, whatever it might be, is that so many people out there, I’m talking majority of these people are non-coaching clients of mine because hopefully once they have a coach and a strategy and a mentor, things change around for them. I am talking about people out there in general who don’t have anybody to follow or for guidance. The problem that I see is so many people they develop what they think is a really good strategy and a plan that works for them. That’s prudent, that’s great, but the problem is, they start fiddling with it.

They try to second guess the market and they break the plan and they break the rule so the system. Everybody is going to do that from time to time. No one is perfect. I’m not saying that but the problem is, is that people seem to think that they need sit there watching every pip move up and down because the market might move against them. In reality, the market doesn’t care about you. It doesn’t care about me. It is going to do what it is going to do whether we sit watching those charts or not. What I am trying to say is, once you develop that strategy, try to stick it to it to the very best that you can without fiddling with it. Without intervening with it.

Let the Trade Do Its Thing

I personally find that the vast majority of my trades that I put on in my evening time, when I wake up in the morning, they’ve either hit their profit target or the surplus, for the vast majority. It is so great to see profitable trades when you weren’t there actually at the market intervening. Because if you have a strategy and you stick with it and you have a stop-loss in place for a reason, you have a profit target there for a reason, the majority of the time unless you see any obvious reason for me to edit that trade or to get out of that trade or partially close, again that is determined on your strategy. I’ll let you see that. Let the trade do its thing because you are not going to be able to influence it by sitting there stressing it by that trade, watching every pip of movement up and down and seeing that trade almost a full profit and then just missing and then going a bit closer and then just missing.

It is quite stressful to do that. When trades get into that situation and they are almost at full profit, I just walk away. Just walk away and leave them and then come back 5 or 10 minutes later or half an hour later, an hour later and 9 times out of 10, you will see that the trades hit full profit target in that time while you’ve been away, but you weren’t sitting there stressing watching that last few pips, and so to get your profit target. It is really important to understand that. That’s once you have a strategy. The other side that I see so many people struggle with is that they have a strategy, but then they start fiddling with the strategy itself in terms of adding things to it.

Going on forums, getting other ideas, adding the next greatest indicator or robot to what they have. This is like the phrase don’t reinvent the wheel. Once you’ve got something there, stick to it. If you like it, if it works for you, fantastic and stick to it, but don’t start after 2 or 3 losing trades, adding another indicator or suddenly becoming a news trader or when that doesn’t suit you or adding a moving average or MACD or so whatever it might be, don’t start fiddling with a strategy that has been proven to work.

Why Clients Do So Well

A really interesting aspect that I find with my coaching clients is that they pay for a course and they pay good money for a course. For proven strategy and hopefully what they see as a good proven mentor and educator, but you see, if you pay for something you are more likely to stick at it. You are more likely to go through the course properly. You are more likely to attend live webinars, you are more likely to attend the membership sites and look at daily information and use the software, because it is all there laid out in the step by step process in front of you, but also you then become slightly accountable because you got someone there helping you along the way as a mentor, who is expecting you to be on webinars and is expecting you to log into the membership site daily and to see what he is writing to help you, but also don’t forget that if you paid for that system, you are more likely to stay with it.

If you get a free system or a system for $20, you are so easily going to be distracted and forget about that system even if it happens to be good. The fact is that you paid for something it means that you are going to focus on that, you are going to be on track. You are going to stick with it and make it work. That’s another reason. On top of all the great strategy and the help and support that I offer for my clients, it is another reason why clients do so well.

If you’d like to know more about that or maybe not at a stage where you need that mentor yet or you think you need that mentor, just have a look at what I can help you with in terms of free information on my site in terms of webinars, software, calculators, eBooks, etc., but then if you want to take your trading to next level then yes it will cost you.

It is not different from going from like a cheap holiday to an expensive holiday or cheap car to an expensive car. If you want that next level of performance, then as with most things in life you have to pay for it, but if you pay for it, you look after it, you respect it, and you make it work.

Hope that really works you. If there’s some more information that you’d like me to share on future videos and podcasts, just drop me a line or leave a message on the bottom of this video and I’ll answer those questions for you. Have a great weekend. This is Andrew Mitchem, the Forex Trading Coach.

Bye for now.

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How big a stop loss should you use when you’re trading Forex?

In this video:

00:41 Trading Stop Loss
04:06 Does Stop Loss Matter?

How big a stop loss should you use when you’re trading Forex? Let’s talk about that and a lot more right now.

Hi, Forex traders. Andrew Mitchem here, the Forex Trading Coach, and today is Friday, the 18th of September. I’ve had a question from Yoshino from over in Japan and Yoshino has said to me, “Hey, Andrew can you give me some advice? I’m looking to trade with a 10 pip stop loss on a 20 pip profit target but I’m not making money and can you tell me what the ideal stop loss on that is in pips?”

Trading Stop Loss

I’ve gone back to Yoshino and said, “First of all, what you should do is jump onto one of my webinars because in that you’ll see that personally I don’t even worry about how many pips I’m risking or how many pips I’m making for that matter.” Because to me the way I trade with money management is just not relevant. It’s something that unfortunately so many people get wrong in their trading and it’s because everywhere you go out there on the internet land, it’s just everybody’s telling you, “This is how many pips this system makes or this robot makes or this indicator makes, et cetera.”

They’re all saying, “You want 15-minute time frame chart, use a 20 pip stop loss.” It really is completely wrong because what you need to do is put your stop loss at a level that protects that particular trade. Now, that particular trade you’re going to take for whatever reason, according to your strategy and your criteria for entering a new position, but your stop loss needs to protect the trade. It needs to give the position room to move, room to breathe. You don’t want to put your stop loss so close that it just gets stopped at all the time because spread has to come into account and different currency pairs have different spreads and spreads alter slightly depending on the time of the day and the volatility and the activity in the market.

Different currency pairs also have different movements, so if for instance you had a 20 pip stop loss on the Euro/Pound (EUR/GBP), that could be seen as a relatively big stop loss as opposed to a 20 pip stop loss on something like the British Pound/New Zealand Dollar (GBP/NZD), where that just moves hundreds of pips per day. It’s all relative to what pair you’re trading, what time frame chart you’re trading, also. When I say you need to have a safe level to protect the trade, what I mean by that is that you might want to put your stop loss, let’s say you’re buying, you might want to put your stop loss below recent swing low. You might want to put it below a pivot point. You might want to have it protected by a round number.

Whatever it is that you look for, rather than just saying 20 pips or 50 pips, your blanket standard, look at altering the stop loss to actually protect the trade, but also, the actual trade that you take should determine your stop loss and also, that then leads to having a high reward-to-risk out of the trade. Now that leads in really nicely to an amazing trade that I got shown last night on a webinar that I held for my clients. It was from a client in Australia who made a 7.3 to 1 reward-to-risk on a trade on silver, 7.3. Quick numbers that tells me, what’s that? That’s about a 3.6 return on that account, 3.6% return. If you’re risking half of 1%, those 3.6%, it’s a huge return for one trade, 7.3 to 1, so for every one dollar he risked, he made $7.30 return. You can just see it’s just an incredible trade.

Does Stop Loss Matter?

But the stop loss doesn’t matter. The stop loss was placed for a protective reason. I think it was actually below a round number which happened to be a swing low at the same time. But it just goes to show that if you have your stop loss in there for a reason, then you give yourself such a good likelihood of protecting that trade and allowing the trade to move on in the ideal direction. I hope that helps. It really is a slightly different way to … The majority teach you about stop loss placement and also profit target placement for that matter. It’s really important that you understand that concept. Try to get away from the fact that I’m going to take a 20 pip stop loss because it’s the Euro/Pound or it’s the Euro/US, and it’s a 15 minute jump.

It doesn’t matter. If the Euro/US (EUR/USD) is moving massively, your 15-minute time frame stop loss may need to be 10 pips, 20, 30, 40, 50, 100. Who knows? It depends on what’s happening at the time. It’s really important to understand that concept. If you’d like to know more about that and also the way, Bill, I trade, and how I can help you become a profitable trader, jump on to one of the free webinars that I hold each week.

Two Trading Webinars To Checkout

Two different kinds of webinars, one for new traders and one for people who’ve been trading 6 months or longer, more experienced traders, but also potentially more frustrated traders.

If you’re at that stage where you’re just not getting it and you’re ready to give up, then before you do that, jump onto one of those webinars that I hold and I assure you you’ll find them very, very useful. That’s it for now. If you have any questions regarding trading that I can help you with on future videos and podcasts just like this, just email me – andrew@theforextradingcoach.com and I’ll be glad to help answer those questions for you and help you progress further and further within your Forex trading.

That’s it for now. Have a great weekend. Look forward to catching up with you this time next week.

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Which time frame charts should I look at?

In this video:
00:23 Different Timeframe Chart Issues
01:28 How To Make Technical Trading Easier
03:14 What Works For You

Are you confused about what timeframe Forex charts to be looking at?

If that sounds like you, listen up I’ve got some great news for you.

Hi traders, Andrew Mitchem here, the Forex trading coach and today is Friday the 11th of September.

Different Timeframe Chart Issues

I wanted to talk about that issue about different timeframe charts because hardly a day goes past without I get an email from somebody, somewhere in the world saying, “Andrew, I’m just getting really confused looking at all the different charts on my platform. Not only do I need to figure out what currency pairs to trade, I don’t need to try and figure out what timeframe charts to trade and they’re all telling me different messages, how do I get around it?”

Well, really you need to figure out what type of trader you are and experiment to start with.

You know, figure out whether you like the shorter timeframe charts or the longer timeframe charts or a combination of both and really it’s about finding what works for you. The great thing about the way that I trade and the way that my clients trade is that because we use price action and technical analysis, the actual strategy and the understanding of the market can work on any timeframe. I’ve got traders that trade five minute charts, some even trade one minute charts and 15, 30, right up to people that trade daily charts, weekly charts, monthly charts. It’s finding that combination that works for you.

How To Make Technical Trading Easier

One thing I would say is that to make technical trading easier, I would strongly suggest that what you do is only look for a new chart setup, a new potential trade only on the completion of a candle. If you’re trading a 15 minute chart, the only time you’re looking for potential new trade setup is on the close of a 15 minute candle. If it’s a one hour chart, it’s only on the close of that one hour candle. The great thing about having that methodology behind your trading is it means that you’re not scared to leave your charts. You’re not staring every single price movement and every single pep up and down, worried about when to enter.

That is one of the benefits of using candle patterns and candle analysis over multiple indicators or crossing over, which could happen at any time. That’s why I strongly suggest you do that. You look at, if you’re say trading a one hour chart, you only look at the close of every one hour. It means that you know that right now as I’m recording this, it’s five past two in the afternoon here in New Zealand. I’ve just looked at the one hour charts, that’s why I’m recording this now after they’ve gone. I know I’ve got 55 minutes until 3:00 o’clock my local time.

At that time, I can look at the one hour charts and the six hour charts, because the six hour charts close at 9:00, 3:00, 9:00 and 3:00 my local time. That just makes life so much easier. What I also suggest you do is, when you see a chart pattern like a good technical setup on the timeframe chart, let’s say a 15 minute chart, trade off that 15 minute chart. Don’t worry so much about what’s happening on other timeframe charts, otherwise you’ll get yourself completely confused. If the trade setup looks really good on that 15 minute chart, take it and trade and manage that trade off of 15 minute charts.

What Works For You

Really you need to discover what works for you. If you’re a scalper and you like the shorter timeframe charts of say five, 15 minutes, even up to an hour, so if you’re a scalper, someone who likes to trade the one, five and even 15 minute timeframe charts, you have to expect to be spending more time watching the charts because you need to be there when the candles close, actually at your computer. You also need to accept that the spread which is the amount that you pay your brokers into the trade is likely to become a bigger proportion of your overall trade.

Whereas if you trade the longer timeframe charts, say like 12 hour charts or daily or weekly charts, the spread really becomes quite an insignificant amount and the amount of time you need to spend actually at your computer, at your charts becomes significantly less, but it’s finding what combination works for you. Personally, I trade one hour charts, four, six, eight, twelve, daily, weekly, monthly and that will cover 95% of my trading timeframes. It’s what works for me and it allows me to plan my day and plan my life around my trading and it all works in beautifully together. Find what works for you.

If you need help with that, what I suggest you do is, jump on one of the webinars that I hold each week. I hold webinars for new traders, and webinars for more experienced traders or people that are more frustrated and almost at that wanting to give up stage, but know that there’s a way there somewhere. If you have any questions you’d like me to discuss on future videos and podcasts just like this, just email me, andrew@theforextradingcoach.com or fill in the box, I think there’s a box probably below this video here where you can ask me some questions about topics you’d like me to discuss and help you with.

That’s it for now. Have a wonderful weekend. Look forward to talking to you this time next week.

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Do you need to take a bigger risk to trade a higher time frame chart?

In this video:
01:33 Understanding Position Size
03:09 What’s Your Style Of Trading
04:04 Free Lot Size Calculator

Some people think that if they trade a higher time frame chart it means they need to take more risk because their stop loss has to be bigger. It’s just not the case, but I’m going to explain to you why right now.

Hi Forex traders, it’s Andrew Mitchem here, the owner of The Forex Trading Coach, and today is Friday the 4th of September. I’ve had an email here from Rajesh, and it’s quite a common email and quite a common misconception out there in the trading world, mostly from new traders, but also I do get the same comment from some experienced traders as well.

People seem to think that they can’t trade bigger time frame charts because they think they need to take more risk on a trade, and the reason they think they need to take more risk is because their stop loss needs to be bigger in terms of the amount of pips. The email from Rajesh says, “Andrew, if one uses higher time frames, will this not affect the stop loss placement, and therefore be at a higher cost?” It’s just not true at all, and as I’ve mentioned, many people think that it is true, and that’s a misconception. Let’s explain why.

Understanding Position Size

If you have a 10 pip stop loss people think that’s a very small risk, and they think at the same time that if you have a 100 pip stop loss it’s a very big risk in terms of monetary amount. People think that with a small account they can’t trade a longer time frame, let’s say a daily chart that has a 100 pip stop loss, because the stop loss is just too big and I can’t afford that risk, and it’s wrong. All you need to do is have a better understanding of position sizing, and I’ve got a great tool on my website that’s available free of charge. It’s called a lot size calculator. Get your copy, because it will really help you understand position sizing.

Have a think of it this way: If you were to risk 10 pips on a trade and you place one standard lot on that trade, that’s no different than risking 0.1 lots with 100 pips stop loss. It’s exactly the same; if you lose, you lose exactly the same. It doesn’t matter whether it’s 10 pips or 100 pips, it’s the position size that you change that makes the stop loss monetary value the same.

Think of that same example. Let’s say on that 10 pip stop loss trade you have a profit target of, say, 20 pips. It’s no different than a 100 pip stop loss trade having a target of 200 pips. The money that you make is exactly the same if you have your position size correct. It’s still a 2 to 1 reward to risk trade. You’re risking 10 pips to make a potential 20, and on the other scenario, on the longer time frame chart, you’re risking 100 pips to make a potential 200, but because of the way you’ve positioned your placement you’ve got 10 times smaller risk on the 100 pip stop loss trade. The actual amount that you gain if the trade is profitable, or you lose if the trade is a losing trade, is exactly the same regardless of which scenario you go.

What’s Your Style Of Trading

Of course, that depends on your style of trading, whether you like the scalping, shorter time frames, or whether you like the longer time frame trades. You could quite easily argue that if you take lots of trades with, say, 10 pip stop losses, you actually have probably a higher chance of getting stopped out because it only takes a small movement within the price to wipe your 10 pips out. By the time you allow a couple of pips for spread, and then maybe an 8 pip movement, your trade’s stopped out so much more easily than on a longer time frame chart where you have a 100 pip stop loss. Of course you could argue that the 20 pips in the profit is likely to be hit a lot easier on the short time frame than the 200 pips, but really, on the 200 pip trade, if you allow for the bigger stop loss you’re allowing the trade longer time to actually get to its profit target. It’s a really important point.

Free Lot Size Calculator

As I mentioned, have a look at that lot size calculator. It’s on my website, it’s free of charge, use it. People love it, it’s been downloaded tens of thousands of times from traders all around the world and people just absolutely love it because it helps to change their mind set of position sizes and lot sizing in a way that most other people won’t tell you about. Have a look at that, and don’t forget to jump on one of those free webinars that I hold each week. You can see them on my website, choose the session that best suits you in terms of start time and date time, and also the style of trading in terms of are you brand new or are you more experienced, or frustrated. Whichever side you’re at, make sure you choose the webinar that best suits you and the style that suits you. Jump onto it. There’s so much information that I give away freely each week on those sessions.

Have a wonderful weekend. I look forward to bringing you more information this time next week.

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How To Best Use Limit Orders And Set Up a Live Account in Forex Trading

In this video:
00:57 What I love about the limit order?
02:29 When Not To Take A Limit Order
04:42 What to do between demo and live account?

I’m going to share with you some information about how to best use limit orders and also how to choose a broker and transition from a demo account through to a live account, so let’s get into it.

Hi Forex traders, it’s Andrew Mitchem here the Forex trading coach and today is Friday the 28th of August. I’ve got two questions that have been sent through that I’d like to discuss on this video and podcast. The first one is here from Raphael and Raphael says, “Andrew, I’ve been watching you on YouTube, love your videos, love your work, but I’d like to ask you a question about the best use of limit orders, how to use them.”

I actually use limit orders quite a lot within my trading and it’s generally for the longer timeframe chart, so I use them personally for anything from four hours and above. That can be a six hour charts, 12 hours, daily, weekly, even monthly charts.

What I love about the limit order?

What I love about the limit order, is it actually fills you at a better price than the current market order. Now if you are taking buy trades for example, rather than entering up here at the market order, saying, I’m placing an order below the current price to buy. If the market retraces back to that level, it fills me for a buy trade and then I’m anticipating it’s going to move upwards. Exactly the same, but in reverse for a sell trade. Now the benefits of many, of course you get filled at a better price and if you know what you’re doing and you have your entry at a certain level, then the majority of the time you get the price filled.

What it also does is, it generally increases the return that you make from your traders and it’s in the higher reward to risk, because it means that generally you have maybe a smaller stop loss than if you’d placed your trade at the market and therefore you have potentially, because you’re getting in at a better price, and potentially a far greater gain as a percentage of your stop loss, so a higher return from your trade. It also means, another great thing is, you don’t have to be there right at the time, at the market, at your computer, to place the trade because, let’s say you’re trading let’s say a four hour chart with a limit order as a retracement entry, you don’t have to be there at the close of the four hour chart.

You could come a little bit later and say, well it’s still not moved back to my entry order but I’m now placing that limit order at this lower level looking for, anticipating the market is going to pull back. I actually love taking limit orders.

When not to take a limit order?

The only time I wouldn’t really take a limit order is anything on a shorter timeframe chart of let’s say one hour or shorter, because really, let’s say if you’re trading a 15 minute chart, you’re pretty much most of the time want to be in at the market straight away as a market order because you’re really trying to ride the momentum in the market at that time to best make use of a 15 minute or even a five minute chart. Use limit orders for the longer timeframe charts.

The second question that I’ve got here is from Patrick and Patrick says, “Hey Andrew have you any tips or recommendations in setting up a live account. I’ve been practicing for the last two to three months on a demo, I’m now ready to go live but I’ve just heard a few stories about brokers. How can you help me?”

Patrick, first of all you’ve been trading two to three months on a demo before you go live. That’s really good because use a demo account to iron out all those mistakes, silly mistakes that everybody makes when they start trading. Your position size is way too big, you put an extra zero so you take about five standard lots instead of 0.5 standard lots. All those silly mistakes that people make with any piece of software that’s new to them, or you are getting to understand a strategy, so use a demo for that. Fantastic you’ve done that and now saying you’re ready to go live.

All I can say is do your due diligence. Do your research on the broker that you want to place your money with. I have three on my website that I suggest and those are AxiTrader, Pepperstone, and Go Markets. All three are based in Australia, so they’re not even in the country that I live in, but they are all asset-regulated and I personally have funds with them and I’ve sent a lot of people to them so I actually as Forex brokers go, I think they’re probably as good as any. Of course if you are in the US you cannot use them. The broker that I’ve sent a lot of people to in the US is ATC brokers.

You can’t take my word on that I believe they’re good but don’t take my word on word on them. You yourself, do your own due diligence because ultimately it’s your money that you need to be comfortable with those brokers. Out of four brokers that I personally use and I’ve used many others in the past, those are the four who I suggest to people to use if they ask for my opinion.

What to do between demo and live account?

In terms of what to do between demo and live, really once you’re comfortable and you’re making money on demo account don’t do anything different. Try not to change anything, keep it all exactly the same. If you think you’re going to open up a $5,000 live account make sure that your demo account is around $5,000, don’t have like a half a million dollar account demo and then go to 5,000 live. It’s just not the same, you’ve got to keep everything pretty much uniform so there’s transition.

Although you know deep down and in your head and in your heart that it’s now real money, try not to make it too much of a jump between demo and live because if you keep doing exactly the same, in theory nothing should change. If you’re making money on demo you ought to be making money on live, that’s my point. Be comfortable with the broker you use, try to have a segregated account, be comfortable, do your research, have a look on the sites like Forex Peace Army and review brokers. Everybody is going to have grumbles by even the very best brokers, but overall you’re going to get yourself a fairly good gauge of what is a good safe broker to put your funds with and what’s probably not a good broker to put your funds with.

Check them out, give them a call, see how long it takes them to email if you ask them some questions and just really do your due diligence.

Hope that helps. Any questions that you have like these that you’d like me to answer for you in the future, just drop me an email andrew@theforextradingcoach.com. Have a wonderful weekend and I look forward to talking to you this time next week.

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Forex Trading Should Never Be A Race

In this video:
01:40 A Common Issue With Forex Trading
04:08 Take IT Slow!
04:58 What I Highly Recommend

I want to explain to you why becoming a good Forex trader should never ever be a race. So let’s get into that and more right now.

Hi Forex traders, it’s Andrew Mitchem here the Forex Trading Coach. Today is Friday the 21st of August. As I mentioned, in today’s video and podcast I want to help you by explaining to you why becoming a good and profitable Forex trader for you should never ever be a race like it should never be rushed.

I also want to give you details about a client of mine who has started really slowly and now developed into a really good trader and he has made a 27.8% in just the last 11 weeks. So let’s get into it.

So let’s think of cheese or whisky or a good port whatever it is that you like that way that starts slowly and develops and matures into something outstanding and your trading should be no difference. So whether you’re thinking of cheeses or whiskies or port or being a Forex trader, think of it as something that starts slow and it matures overtime and gets better and better with age and with time.

That’s really the best thing that I can explain to you of how you should think of your trading. I know that from experience and I know that, because that’s the path that most of my very best clients take. They start slowly and they work into something outstanding, but it does take time. You see, I get lot of people come to me. They say, “Hey, Andrew how long is it going to take me to take your course and to become a really good trader and make lots of money and give up my job that I hate.”

A Common Issue With Forex Trading

They always thinks and that’s the issue. Too many people think that Forex trading is suddenly going to change all their financial problems around. They think they’re going to suddenly be able to give up their job and suddenly become a Forex trader two months later. You can give up your job. You can make outstanding returns in trading but don’t expect it to happen right straight away. You have to expect to give it sometime.

You can’t just jump in to a new business or a new industry and just like a click of a fingers and a few weeks later, you suddenly going to have everything mastered. You just cannot expect that to happen. I’d like to continue with that theme. I’ll mention an email here that’s come through from John. Now, I’ve just looked up on my records and John joined me on the 16th of December, 2014. That was about, eight months ago. He said here, “Hey, Andrew just thought I’d drop your line and give you an update on my trading.” He said, “I’ve started with your course, but I can’t drop when I started. I finally got a handle on your strategy. It’s been eleven weeks now that I’ve had great success gaining 27.8% over this period. I follow your daily recommendations and I analyze them and they helped me to trade the one hour charts, the four hour charts and the twelve hour charts. Mainly the twelve hour charts were great success. I also find that I’m now placing less trades per week as well.”

You can’t argue with profitable traders. 27.8% over the last 11 weeks, so roughly that’s almost three months, yet for the first five months of that John was going sideways or losing money or maybe making a bit but then losing again. He stuck at it for five months through that transitional period of sort of working out how to adapt a strategy, how to look at the charts, analyze things, come back to me with some help, watching webinars, etc., going through a course, studying. Sure, some people pick it up way, way quicker but I’d much rather have an email like this from a client who’s now made 27.8% over the last 11 weeks.

It’s not been easy over the last 11 weeks either. You think of June, July, August or especially July and August, traditionally quite difficult months to trade Forex because of the northern hemisphere holiday season, but 27.8%, it’s there, it’s in writing from John.

Take IT Slow!

I’m so thrilled. I’d much rather have clients who start very, very slowly, probably lose a bit to start with when they’re sort of getting to know a strategy and a system and then develop over time to become outstanding traders. That is over the six years or more that I’ve been teaching people.

That is the path that I see the best traders take. They don’t rush into it straight away expecting to double their account after a week. They take their time, they work at it, they stick at it and yet they come out with great trades results like that. That’s absolutely outstanding, John, thank you for sharing that information and for everybody else out there who is struggling, stick at one thing, get some help, stick at it, work at it and it will become profitable, exactly like John’s has done there.

What I Highly Recommend

If you do need help with that, if you’ve been trading for a while, what I highly recommend you do is jump onto my webinar for frustrated Forex traders for experienced and frustrated traders that I hold twice a week. If you’re brand new or you’re thinking about getting into trading, then I also hold a webinar for new traders as well.

That’s it for now. Hope that’s helped you just take away that thought process of starting slowly, building up step by step by step and eventually things will go outstandingly well for you.

This is Andrew Mitchem from the Forex Trading Coach.

Have a great weekend. I’m going flying this weekend, cannot wait. Look forward to talking to you this time next week. Bye for now.

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Do win rates really matter? 

In this video:

00:31   Two Sides To The Story
02:31   Going Back To The Basics
04:10   Two Webinars for New and Experienced Traders

Does your win rate really matter? Let’s talk about that and more right now.

Hi there, Forex traders. It’s Andrew Mitchem here, the Forex trading coach. Today is Friday, the 14th of August. In today’s video and podcast, I want to talk about a subject that eventually had 2 emails about just this week. It’s about your win rate. How many trades out of 10, let’s say, for example, are you profitable on, and does that really matter?

Two Sides To The Story

Like most things, there’s 2 sides to the story here, and I’d like to read out just some extracts from two of those emails. The first one is from Hadish, and he says, “Look, Andrew, I’m looking for some form of trading system or trading signals that are going to make me money on 7 or 8 out of 10 trades.” Just park that for one moment, and then I’ll read you an extract and the second email was from Robert, and Robert said to me, “Andrew, I’m able to make money from my trades, but then I’m finding that they’re turning against me. The problem is that my losing trades end up staying in the market for too long and being big losing trades, and then I end up cutting short my winning and my profitable trades.”

Robert is saying he’s ending up with around a 7 or 8 out of 10 winning trades, but the problem is, like he says here, is that his losing trades run into the thousands of dollars, yet his profitable winning trades are only running into the hundreds of dollars, and so there’s an obvious problem.

Like Robert says here, “I need to find a way to cut my losses short and end up being profitable,” because, you see, when you think about that, the first email from Hadish wants 7 or 8 out of 10 winning trades. Robert’s got that; yet, he’s losing a lot of money.

Again, it comes back to the question and the topic that I’ve mentioned. Do win rates really matter?

From a psychological point of view, well, obviously, you don’t want to be, let’s say, losing 9 out of 10 trades, even though you could still be profitable. That’s probably not really what people are after, but it also goes to show that when people come to me and they say, “Hey, Andrew, what’s your win rate, or are you winning 80% of the time?” it’s not really quite as important as most people think it is.

Going Back To The Basics

To me, it comes back to the basics that I talk about. The basics are:

1. You have very low risk per trade
2. You have higher reward to risk from your trades

That means that if your trade has been a profitable trade, it’s making … depending on the trade and the time frame of the chart you’re trading, but you need to be making that sort of 2, 3, or 4 times your risk when you have profitable trades.

With the low risk, I mean that you have a set percentage risk on every trade. The problem is that Robert was having his losing trades being massive losing trades. That just shouldn’t happen because you should have a controlled risk on each trade, so it’s X percent of your account. In my case, it’s always half of 1%, so on a $10,000 account, let’s say, the most you can lose on any one trade is $50. If you think about having the high returns on each trade, it means that you’re making $100 or $150 or $200 on a profitable trade, yet you’re only risking $50 on that trade, so you know the very worst you can do.

What I highly recommend, Robert especially, you do is you download my Lot Size calculator. It’s freely available on my site. It’s a fantastic tool, and it helps to keep your risk under control and manageable on every single trade. The other thing I suggest that both do, plus you if you’re watching or listening to this, if you haven’t attended one of my webinars yet, jump onto one of those webinars. They’re free to attend. They’re held each week.

Two Webinars for New and Experienced Traders

I have webinars for people who are new to trading and also webinars for people who are more experienced or frustrated. For example, Robert, you definitely would be into the frustrated and experienced traders category, whereas, Hadish, you may well be in the new traders category. So pick which suits you, now what you place yourself in as a new trader or more experienced trader.

I hope that helps. It’s a problem that a lot of people have. Like I said, these are just 2 emails that have come through just this week. You can see how they … The one person that wants the high win rate and the other person who’s got the high win rate, but still is losing money. You can see how the two overlap and how having a good understanding of money management and reward to risk really is the key, not so much am I having a high win rate or not.

I hope that helps you. If you have any questions, email me andrew@theforextradingcoach.com. Have a fantastic weekend, a great week next week. I look forward to talking to you this time next week.

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How to Manage Open Trading Positions?

In this video:
00:50 Your Different Options
02:58 Low Risk Trading Approach
05:42 Don’t Forget About US Non-Farm Payrolls!

What’s the best way of managing your open trading positions? Let’s talk about that and more right now.

Hi Forex traders, it’s Andrew Mitchem here, the Forex Trading Coach and today is Friday, the 7th of August. In this video and podcast, I wanted to have a chat about a really important subject and it’s one that I discussed just last night with my clients on a live trading room webinar. I generally have a pretty full room of clients from all around the world and we get together every two weeks for around two sometimes two and a half hours of live trading. When I’m trading on my live account on my screen behind me here and my clients get to follow along and we have chats in between taking trades.

Your Different Options

One of those chats was all about how to manage open positions, you know, what to do? Really there are a couple of different options for you.

1. One, the most easiest, is to adopt a complete 100 percent set and forget strategy. That’s something that I like to try and do as much as possible. Now I use the word try because not always do I do that. A set and forget policy means that if you have your stop loss in place for a technical reason and you have your top profit in place for a technical reason, when you take the position itself based on what you see, based on your strategy, you’re happy to take that position.

I like to give the market plenty of time to work and to get towards that profit target. Now of course if the trade goes against me, I’ll get stopped at. I have a known pre-amount of risk on that trade, so for me and my examples, it’s no more than half of one percent. That’s a really good way of trading really. When I say managing your trade, you’re not really managing it, because you placed it down and you leave it.

2. Another way is to monitor each candle, so for example, if I was to take a trade on the one hour charts, I might try to look at the completion of the next one hour buy and then the next one hour buy again and make my decisions on whether I look at closing some of the trade, all of the trade, moving stops, whatever it might be depending on the look of that next bar or next candle and on the close of that.

If I was taking a buy trade on the Euro/US Dollar (EUR/USD), let’s say, one hour chart and the next buy closes really quite strong and bullish, then yeah, I’m happy to stay in the trade.

3. Next one again, really bullish, I might then just leave it through to its full profit target. If all the sudden some indecision shows and it looks like it’s then turning against me, that then could be the time to say “Hey look, it may not get to my profit target, it may now time to start closing out of that trade.”, or whatever it might be, according to your strategy.

That’s a couple of different ways.

Low Risk Trading Approach

Now as I shared with my clients last night on that live trading room webinar, I’ve taken only a handful of trades this week, around nine trades but all up I’ve had actually 18 closes so I’ve actually split some of those trades up into two closes or some even three and some just one. I’ve had 15 out of 18 profitable closes this week personally for a gain of 1.65 percent, which anywhere for me, if I’m looking with my low risk approach, somewhere between one and two percent gain consistently on average, then I’m more than happy with that. I’m on the upper side of that anyway, so far, with still today to go.

Of course, while we’re talking about today being Friday, don’t forget it’s the US non-farm payrolls later today. Always a little bit volatile, spreads wide and etc around the time, so always be really careful with any open trades that you have leading into that news announcement. It’s probably one of the real major news announcements that I sort of really do try to have trades closed at prior to that. If I have a trade open on the weekly charts or the monthly charts and I actually have a monthly chart trade open at this time, I’m just going to leave that through the non-farm payrolls, because any news announcement is very unlikely to affect that monthly chart trade, being such a longer time frame position.

But anything, if you’re down to like a daily chart or below, anything lower than that, then certainly look at getting out before that non-farm payrolls. Back to the topic of closing part positions, to me there’s nothing better than if you do take a partial close on a trade and then let’s say you have the ability to then move your stop loss into profit, there’s nothing better than to know that the very worst you can do out of that trade is to make money. Even if the trade comes back and stops you out, you’re still going to be profitable to some degree on that trade, but of course, you’re still giving that trade the option to going up to its full profit target.

That’s another nice psychological feeling part of trading. Of course if you do start closing part positions too much, then of course it does hit into those profitable trades when they get to the full profit target. It just really depends what suits you which is the best way to go. As I mentioned, I went through those trades with clients yesterday and showed them how I’ve personally managed my positions for this week.

That’s it for today. If you have any topics, anything you’d like me to discuss on future videos and the weekly podcast, send that information through to me. Just email me directly andrew@theforextradingcoach.com.

Don’t Forget About US Non-Farm Payrolls!

Look out for that non-farm payrolls later today. Be careful with your trading around that time.

Have a fantastic weekend. I look forward to getting back into some really good trading with you next week. Bye for now.

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How much does education cost?

In this video:
00:30 The Costs of Providing Learning
02:05 Why People Don’t Invest in Forex Education
03:55 The Amazing Benefits of Trading

How much does it cost to learn a new skill like trading? Let’s talk about that and more right now.

Hi Forex traders it’s Andrew Mitchem here, the Forex Trading Coach, and today is Friday, the 31st of July. In this video and podcast I wanted to have a talk and a bit of a chat about the cost of learning a new skill, and in particular, Forex trading.

The Costs of Providing Learning

What’s it cost you in terms of time and money, and what can you get out of it?

What I’ve done is a bit of research into comparing it with other courses out there. Let’s have a look at in New Zealand here, which is generally quite a cheap place for education. I’ve done a bit of a Google search and I’ve seen that it’s somewhere between about 5 and 10,000 US dollars is what it will cost you for tuition fees if you went to university, plus of course you’ve got your living expenses on top of that.

I then went and had a look at what it would cost you in the UK. It’s somewhere, depending on the cost, between about 20 and 50,000 US dollars per year for a university course, plus at an average of around $18,000 per year for living expenses. I then went and had a look at what it would cost in the US, and it’s somewhere between about 30 and 40,000 US dollars per year for your tuition fees and your living expenses. You can see there’s quite a common theme there.

Now as you know if you’ve been following me recently, over the past year and a half I’ve been learning to fly a helicopter and I passed my private license back in March. That still cost me in learning and tuition fees, etc., around 26,000 US dollars to learn that skill. When you think about all the university skills is when you come out of that … don’t forget that’s per year … when you come out of that you then still have to go and get a job and earn a salary, probably with a huge amount of debt.

Why People Don’t Invest in Forex Education

As I look at that and I think, well, why is it that people don’t invest in their Forex education?

What is the reason?

Do people just think that they can go out there and Google research and find how to trade themselves?

That could be possible, and people can be self-taught. That’s exactly how I learnt to trade myself, but it does take such a long time and a lot of trial and error. For me it took four years, and by that stage most people give up.

When you look at something that’s maybe going to cost you a couple thousand dollars, and it’s going to help you shortcut that, that time and that headache of learning, plus the money that you’re likely to lose while you’re learning, it to me just seems a complete no brainer why people don’t consider that a good investment in themselves in terms of monetary investment and time investment. Also don’t forget that once you can make money through trading, it’s a skill that you have, it’s something that you can pass on to other people. Plus it’s something of course you can use it as a passive income to start with, and eventually some people can go on and earn their entire income from trading.

When you look at the actual investment in that in terms of education, the cost of buying a good course, it’s absolutely such a small amount to pay for what the enormous gains can be. I just wanted to run that by you, when you compare a good Forex course with good university education. Of course the actual ongoing costs of learning to trade in terms of a computer and internet connection are tiny compared with going out to work every day for someone and being forced onto a salary because that’s what they say you should be on. I just wanted to run that by you and just give you that comparison.

The Amazing Benefits of Trading

The other thing I wanted to talk about is I’ve received an email here from my bank telling me that my interest rate on my … this is an online bank account that I … never go to a branch. I don’t have any things like checkbooks even though they’re a thing of the past. I don’t do anything with this account in terms of … very few withdrawals and it’s purely internet-based. My current rate of interest has gone from 3% to 2.75% because of the interest rate drop out of New Zealand last week. 2.75% per year as an interest rate, when compared with most other banks around other countries around the world, that’s probably quite good for some of you. For here in New Zealand, that’s not very good. 2.75% is pretty average. You’re not going to make a lot out of that, are you?

Again, when you think about that, some people can make that through Forex trading on just one trade. If you said you’re looking at making 1 to 2% on average per week, after two weeks of trading with good trading and money management, and understanding of the what you’re doing, you can make more in two weeks as an average than that bank is going to pay me in one year. When you put all these things together and you see that amazing returns can be made from trading, the amazing benefits of trading, working from home, etc., low cost, just goes to show that a little bit of money up front put into your own education can go a long, long way.

If you’d like to know more, don’t forget to jump onto one of my free webinars that I hold each week. One webinar is designed for new traders. The other webinar is designed for more experienced and lightly frustrated traders. Jump onto one of those two if you’ve not been on one of those already in the past.

Have yourself a great week. It’s been a fantastic week for trading. Charts have just been really favorable for trading this past week. Clients are just telling me they’re making some great returns. I had a client just this morning emailed me and say, “Hey Andrew, I made over 5% this week.” That’s excellent news.

Have a great week and look forward to talking to you this time next week. This is Andrew Mitchem, The Forex Trading Coach.