Trader1

I wouldn't spend a lot of times on it if I where you, the reason is that these candlesticks patterns are not working as good as they used to, this is what I have noticed over the years, and the reason for that probably are the algos, they don't seem to respect these patterns at all, and very often push price beyond them, they do work some times though, but it's nothing you should trade by them self, only use them as confluence and other things in your trading,if you want to learn about them, try to learn from Steve Nison him self, he was the guy bringing this method from Asia. and obviously he has the bests and most accurate knowledge about them, I have seen some free vids on Youtube if Im not misstaken.

8-Platform. Which platform is going to fit in best with my plan? Different platforms are generally employed for different product classes and so finding the one which is most appropriate is important. Also, how much is it going to cost and how stable and efficient is it? Platform is not important at all, what you need is fast execution, you are not trading the platform, you are trading the price. sure, there are some fancy ones out there, coud be nice to have, but they aren't necesary. Computer you can trade on almost anything, it doesn't have to be a fast computer, any laptop newer than 10 years will be just fine for most platforms, Internet connection You also don't need a blazing fast internet connection to trade, I used to think that too, but that has been proven wrong. as long as you are not disconnected from the broker, it will be just fine. I have a cable connection, it's 1 mbit down, and hardly anything up, 200 kbsec or so, but no complaints when it comes to trading, would be nice to have a faster for downloading movies and on the web though, but for my trading it's Ok 9-News source. I think not important, as news mostly are priced in anyway, unless you have a trading strategy that trades news exlusevly so you would like to get the news before anyone else, other than that I wouldn't bother, it's good to know when they are released though, but you can see that for free on any news calendar

To trade Fx or stocks is a matter of trading capital, stocks are not leveraged where's Forex is, so it is much easyer for a trader with a small trading capital to build up their account trading Fx, with stocks or shares you would have to trade a lot of them to make any reasonable return, and that means you need more money to begin with, but if you are a beginner, then I would suggest Fx anyway as you could trade with micro lot sizes, this will allow you to risk the smallest amount of money when you are learning, don't make the misstake trading a large amount of capital in the begining, as you probably most likely will lose it. I personally blew 4-5 accounts before I got the grips of it, and I thought I could trade each time, obviously I didn't know what I was doing Lol:) Trading is much harder than any one think. that is why Forex with a microlot accout will probably be best for you and with a good brooker, very important! make sure they are regulated, or you can risk losing it all to some bucket shop

Hello! I'm afraid there is no such thing, personally I have been trading live for 15+ years now, lost a bunch and won a bunch, and I can say that I'm still learning, and I probably will never stop learning because the markets are so incredibly complex, if you ever meet someone saying he knows it all about trading, he is most definitely lying. but you are in luck. you don't have to know it all to be consistently profitable in the market, you just need to find that specific thing, what ever it will be, and that is the hard and time consuming part. Trading got to be the most complex and hardest profession you could ever learn, I believe there are no shortcuts, the professional traders, banks, hedge funds etc you are trying to extract money from, and "consistently" are people making millions of dollars in a year, I'm sorry but I don't know of any method or course where you can learn to beat those traders. seriously this question is ridiculous when you think about it, ( no offense) I probably asked the same question in a forum somewhere my self when I was starting out, somehow we don't ask our selves these things, it is like the greed are blinding us, if you want to be a trader with the ability to win consistently from the market, there is only hard study that matters, and I don't mean following something somebody else cocked up. that will only brainwash you with probably a messed up base knowledge, and this is bad because as you probably know it's hard to teach an old dog, that is because the unlearning is so hard, avoid other traders ideas, don't even read about it. it will affect your brain subconsciously to mess with your decisions in the future, things you read will probably will be 99% garbage anyway. except this post seriously ha ha , what I mean to say is, do your own thing, bring forth your own ideas, use your brain, test, trade, back it up with statistic and forward testing, this way you will eventually create your own trading strategy that suite you, and it will be something you can trade with confidence, the most hardest thing is to trade some others strategy because you don't have the confidence to trade it, you don't know why it supposedly will work or how, and you have no data to back it up, this will bring you a certain amount of doubt, and then your emotions will kick in and mess things up. on the other hand, if you trade your own stuff, you got the confidence because you know why things will work and you have the data to back it up. my tip is to begin with studying the behaviour of price it self, it is the only indicator you will ever need, price is reflecting all the traders emotions collectively, keep it as simple as you can, the more things and rules you add, the harder it will be to trade, if I would show you my strategy you would not believe me, it's that simple, (not going to though) and then you have your own emotions to deal with, that is a completely different subject but it goes hand in hand with trading. so not only do you need to master trading, you must master your own psychology as well. cheers

Suppose there was no close, then it would be just one bar on every market, just think about it, darkness forever!

LOL don't know how I would take that, should I laugh or cry? anyway, Im agreeing with you, normally we all would see the same data with some exeptions, and that is if the broker is up to some fishy buisiness. btw, the close is very important, aswell as the open and the highs and lows, on a minute chart they might not be of so great importance but on higher timeframes it is, if you guys are talking about pure price then you should also get the same data as everyone else that is trading at the exchange, but it also depends what you are trading, if you thrade the forex you would probably not see the same price as everyone else because in forex there are no exchange, all the different brokers will have different prices depending on their buisiness model.

Yes you se the same data, if you are on the same timeframe that is, all timeframes have different sizes and lengths of the candles sure, but if you are on the same timeframe as anyone else you would se the same thing.

Here is a little picture I made to illustrate how the close of a bar can be important, this have to do with resistance ,once broken it will become support and vice versa, when a bar or candle closes above a resistance area, the next bar will open above support, and that is an advantage, because then the former resistance is support. in fact, it is impossible former resistance could become support if a bar didn't close above it. why? because price wouldn't be above it.

Stoplosses is the only control you have to limit your risk in the market, they are mandatory!

a big trader like that or a bank will chop it up into small pieces and then they drive the market in the oposit direction, if they want to buy the market they will start by selling it with small probe orders, these orders are small for them but huge for us, they have enough size to force the market down temporary, this will tempt the public and small traders to join in on the move in the wrong direction, when the big elephant think it's enough and he got the right price, he will dump larger orders into the market in the oposit direction trapping most of the small traders, their stops will be executed and bring even more power to this move, because if you buy you would have a stop loss to sell, so now everyone suddenly is selling, the big elephant now gets back all the small probes many times over. and our money goes into his pocket

YES! Definitely! I understand your thinking and where you are getting at, and I can agree about the wierdness about the whole thing and it seems a little strange indeed, the fact is that it wouldn't matter on which timeframe you are looking at, you have swing highs and lows on all the different timeframes don't you? with your reasoning the highs and lows wouldn't matter either, but they do because they indicate a turn in the market even if it's just a small one, a candle or a bar is based on time, why they have a very important factor is this, the highs and lows of a candle or bar creates support and resistance aswell as swing highs and lows even if that is psychological, and where a candle or bar closes the next one will open, it is a great advantage if a candle would open above support or below resistance in the direction you would like to trade in, for that to happend, a candle must first close above or below support or resistance which is the highs and lows of the candles, this is a very important fact in price action, there are many traders only trading this. so the high low and close is very important and it does matter. Yes I have backtested it and this is mostly how I trade daily and Im profitable doing so.a breach of a high is very bullish and a breach of a low is very bearish but only if price can get the advantage to close the candle above or below a support resistance because then the next candle will open in your favor and price will have support in that direction, you also wouldn't have a clue what might happend if you don't wait for the close first. reading price action is an artform, practice practice:) yes you would take profit if a candle is closing above and below a high or low counter to your direction, so you would have to wait, because then price would have support buying counter move and you wouldn't want to be in on the trade anymore. this is all strange and it is not easy to understand, that is because this is all psychological. the market is all about psychology, a support and resistance line shouldn't to your theory have any significant meaning either, price go up up up and then suddenly stops and hangs around and going sideways, everyone knows there is no invissible line there stopping price, it's all psychological, the big bank traders are protecting this level because it is in their intrest doing so. yes they are definitely looking at highs and lows and closes.

fair enough, I guess it depends on what your goal is and how you look at trading, personally I tend to look at my trading as a buisiness, not as gambling, ofcourse anyone could make any investment form into gambling by not using prooper risk and money managent, don't get me wrong, you are ofcourse interely free to risk 100% of your acount if you wanted to, thats no problem if you have a lot of money and can refill your acount after you busted, then I guess it could be a very exiting gambling form:)

Definitely! I made a lot of backtest experimenting with how much I could risk and get away with it, 4% was the highest I could go, anything higher would blow the acount, it's hard to say how much you can risk for any given method, I believe it is a very individual number and how good your system is and how good you are as a trader, with some trading methods you could possible risk more or less depending on profitability, win ratio, risk to reward etc, there is so many factors playing,

Thats about right, the only such software I would recommend is the one Steve Nison made him self, he says the same, don't trust any other softwares than his:2c: he is the one who first brought Candlesticks to the western world so if any software could get the candles right, it would be his, I think he only made it for Ninja trader and Tradestation. and it cost loads of money. check out nisoncandlescanner.com

Sounds interesting thanks:)