wrbtrader

https://www.google.ca/#q=How+to+draw+trendlines Next, to get specific help...you need to post lots of charts here of whatever price action you're learning/trading with trendlines that represent what you learned from the above link. You can then ask further questions about what you've learn after you've posted charts of the price action you've been learning/trading. Hopefully, someone can then respond and answer your question after you've done some self study from your Google research.

In trading terms, you can't back test for psychological problems that impacts trading results. Yet, you can keep a daily log and maintain statistics of those things you've mentioned. Also, I would assume that if someone gets professional help via a "psychologist" to improve their ability to manage stressful situations in life...it should be able to be transferable into trading or into any other job. By the way, there are psychologist out there that specifically help those that work in the financial markets. Think about this very carefully, more people today in life (I'm not talking about trading) are under extreme stress in their personal life, relationships, jobs, school and such. Worst, more folks today are not able to properly manage such psychologically. In fact, more jobs today than ever will pay for psychologist, pay leave of absence due to burn-out and some even have a staff psychologist on site at the work place. Further, more jobs today are using employment psychological testing to determine if someone is suitable for the job. I can't remember the occupational agency but its estimated that companies that use psychological testing save millions in comparison to those that don't. How many traders keep daily statistics of their psychological performance while trading ? Its a lot less (I'm guessing < 1%) than those that keep daily statistics of their wins/losses.

Some do that and others do not.

Profitable trading is not all about trade signals. Unfortunately, too many traders misuse back testing beyond what its primary purpose...to only help design a trade method. Simply, traders forget that a trade method is just one chapter in the book called "trading plan". That's why its so common to see so many trade journals by traders that say they are confused or lost for words because they had positive trade results in back testing but can not understand why they are losing money in real money trading. Why ? Traders can not incorporate things like discipline problems, changes in trading schedule, unexpected changes in market conditions and other things into back testing. In fact, a trader can only discover "some" trading problems when one moves into simulation trading. It's those "some" trading problems that will prompt naive traders into returning back to the back testing phase to tweak (fix) their trade method when the problem has nothing to do with their trade method that originally had positive trading results. The problem is the trader in situations as described above and that's why trade methods is just one chapter in the book called trading plan. Therefore, back testing is useful for the sole purpose designing a trade method and shouldn't be used to compensate beyond that because everything else (e.g. discipline) involved in profitable trading can not be incorporated into back testing.

More trader forums 100% dedicated to forex have sprung up in the past 5 years. Also, forex is heavily discussed on other social media (e.g. twitter, stocktwits). In fact, a few of the forex traders I knew here at Traderslaboratory that are no longer active members here, they're very active on twitter and stocktwits. Simply, I'm sure most folks have navigated to other social media sources that's more dedicated to forex in comparison to traditional forums that tries to cover all markets at one location (stocks, forex, futures, options).

First of all, the markets will be here tomorrow, next week, next month and next year. Simply, do not rush into any decisions just because the markets open soon and you're confused about what to do. In fact, the best decision you will make is to "stay on the sidelines" and do nothing when you don't know what to do. You give no indication about what you're interested in and that may because you really don't know anything. Therefore, maybe you should just talk about the markets you're interested in trading or investing and maybe someone will post some links to something that may be useful for whatever it is you're interested in doing. For example, if you're looking for investment advice or long term trading advice... Barron's Top Financial Advisors - 2012 Ranking of Best Financial Advisors - Barrons.com Another example, if you're looking for trading advice... Collective2 - Find the best trading strategy There are many other sources like the above if you know how to use Google and the above are just quick suggestions off the top of my head. Thus, I don't know if they are the best sources for looking for sources where someone tells you when to specifically buy and sell something.

I'm primarily a full-time futures day trader that works from 9am to 5pm est. I do not stare at the charts all day because charts are just part of my trading plan. I spend a lot of time reading, listening to key market events from around the world via the help of social media to get my "market context" so that I can better understand the price action on my charts. In my typical 8 hour work day, I'm probably trading (entering/exiting trades) about 1 1/2 hours per trading day, 1 hour analyzing charts while not in a trade, 3 1/2 hours gathering market context and about 2 hours doing personal stuff not related to trading (e.g. exercise, eating lunch, resting). Don't misunderstand the above, that's me today. In comparison, 20 years ago, I didn't care about market context although I was aware that it was a big deal for a relative that was a floor trader at that time. Also, I didn't take time-outs from trading, had very little social life and devoted myself to studying charts as a newbie trader. Then again, when you're young...it didn't seem like a big deal to be staring at charts all day looking for trades or investments with a tunnel vision. For me, social media makes trading a lot easier and its basically free.

Trading since early 80's mainly futures. Full-time since late 80's. Yet, didn't really consider it a job until early 90's after some problems with the IRS.

Forex book authors or forex mentors are not "active traders" via the exact same reason that most traders are not active traders. Simply, most traders "inactivity" has nothing to do if they write books or not (seriously). I remember a long time ago that most book writers were managers at some firm, market analysts on TV, university professor or someone that worked on wall street. Yet, somewhere along the time line during the late 90s (dot com explosion), anybody (secondary professionals) that had a trading account started writing online articles, writing educational forum message posts and then that slowly progressed into some of these secondary professionals getting into the book writing or mentoring. Therefore, the real question is this... Would you trust the advice of anyone beyond you're own advice to yourself about trading ? If your answer is that you wouldn't trust anyone else, I hope you're a profitable trader (seriously). By the way, here's an example of someone that meets your "trading inactivity". I just finish reading a book titled "Lending Stability to Europe's Emerging Market Economies" bu Dr. Holger Schmieding. He's well known in the Forex arena and he analysis are mostly good. Would I trust his trading advice even though he doesn't trade anymore and primarily now only does economic analysis and write books.? Answer: I don't know. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holger_Schmieding Note: He's now the Chief Economist for Berenberg Bank in Italy

Is there a reason why you've only listed about 10% of the most commonly used Japanese Candlestick patterns ?

Top traders don't worry about if they are the best traders and they do not worry about the profit levels of other traders. Also, top traders are not perfect traders. With that said, as someone noted, you can join a trading competition but the results will not tell you if you're the top trader or perfect trader because every trader in the world do not enter the same trading competition...most top traders do not enter competitions. Yet, some competitions (e.g. dukascopy) can get you a job interview at a big trading firm if you consistently perform well in the competitions.

Market context is just part of the equation. You can't trade successfully on market context alone. Thus, you still need "something" to tell you its time to enter the trade and its time to exit the trade...market context does not do that. Therefore, Japanese Candlestick patterns or any other pattern do have value as entry/exit signals. Yet, alone without market context and without a complete trading plan...its not reliable. Also, there are lots of researchers, online articles, several books and several websites WITH statistical results. Thus, to say they NEVER come with statistical results is absolutely not true (an illusion) considering a quick google search brings up the information (e.g. stats by Thomas Bulkowski). Regardless, if anybody is wondering if Japanese Candlestick patterns can be traded alone profitably without market context, without a decent trading plan...the answer has been and will always be a big NO and the statistic results varies from one person to the next person (reliable and not reliable) depending upon each person's personal trading plan. Yet, with discipline, money management, positions size management, proper trade management and other key variables...Japanese Candlestick patterns is a great tool and reliable. My point, there are so many variables that traders have...its the trader responsibility to figure out a good trading plan to put all these pieces together so that they work well together as a team (trading plan) and Japanese Candlestick patterns are just one piece of the puzzle if you choose to use them. With that said, anybody that has a good recognition of these patterns can spot them...that much is true. Yet, it has already been proven here at TL alone by several so called "top programmers", naysayers and even supporters of candlestick patterns can not even properly identify many patterns. Anyways, once someone truly learns how to identify or code these patterns...doesn't imply they know how to properly trade them. Learning how to trade is the trader's responsibility...not the responsibility of the pattern.

Trading via Japanese Candlestick analysis or patterns without market context is poor trading and will result in poor results (not reliable). Simply, you should already understand the price action and understand the direction of the price action prior to the appearance of any candlestick pattern. My point, traders that have good results via Japanese Candlestick patterns, that's a trader that is doing a lot more than just Japanese Candlestick analysis. Thus, Japanese Candlestick analysis is not the only thing that the trader is doing and is trader with a complete trading plan.

Highly recommend you go see a tax accountant and lawyer that deals with small business owners instead of getting advice from anonymous folks about serious issues like this. Also, join your local small business owner association and talk to other members. In addition, go see a "divorce lawyer" if your married that deals with small business owners that get divorce...issues involving assets just in case divorce occurs in the future.

Sharing profitable systems is only a problem if they are automated and trading illiquid markets. These types of systems can possibly loose their edge if "every one" applied it to the same illiquid markets at the exact same time, In contrast, sharing profitable strategies that are not automated as in something that has a discretionary element...it's impossible for every trader on this planet or most traders on this planet to be using the same strategy, same trading instrument, trading at the same time and many other variables that's impossible to occur the same for every trader. These types of strategies will not lose their edge. Some will be profitable and some will not due to every trader. There are just too many variables that impact automated systems and discretionary traders from one trader to the next trader (e.g. trading platforms, internet connections, commissions, liquidity and so on). Simply, we will never be the same in how we apply a system or strategy.