The next lesson on trend lines consolidated what we’d learned the day before. Sid encourages us to look at trends in different time frames so that we can get used to translating a trend in a 12 hour timeframe into what that looks like say in a seven day timeframe to give us a better, more informed, picture as to where the trend might be going – probability not possibility! The bigger picture.  It’s all interesting stuff and I can see how mastering these tools and getting a really good understanding of what they are able to do can only help me reach more informed decisions about a potential trade. But this tool is just one of many more to come so I’m assuming the probability quotient of making safe, profitable trades gets higher with every new tool in our armoury.

And finally we looked at horizontal trend lines and trend lines that create a funnel and looked at what these can show us.  I won’t go into detail but basically, it does make you realise that there is a definite science to all of this and I firmly believe that by mastering this knowledge and applying it sensibly I will be massively increasing my chances of making more positive, profitable trades than bad ones.

I’m gaining in confidence daily and am really enjoying the course.  Already I feel this was well worth the money!

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Anyway, back to the mechanics of the course. As usual, today’s course email dropped into my inbox last night. The first requirement was to download some software which will enable me to take screen shots of my trades further down the line.  This took about 10 minutes while I was watching the TV and that’s all I did last night. So this morning I got up at 6.20am and came down to tackle the rest of Tutorial Eight. This meant reading through some material which took about five minutes and was all about how to determine your PIP values so that you are never risking more than 2% of your capital in any one trade, although Sid makes the point that, as new traders, we should probably not risk more than 1% at any one time.  This is very comforting.  This means that, when I set my PIP values in conjunction with my STOP loss I am totally in control of my exposure. That sounds great to me.  Then Sid encourages you to go to your Market Order on the trading platform and practice putting in various numbers and seeing for yourself how it works.  It’s essential we know what we’re doing here but again, the Oanda platform gives us that ability to double check that the figures we’ve entered are actually what we meant so it should be a piece of cake. It’ll all come down to making sure you USE the safety net measures in place to avoid stupid mistakes.

Now at the risk of being one of those people who always interrupt you when you are relating a story, jumping in with their guesses/suggestions on what happened next and you have to keep on saying ‘No, that’s not what happened’, ‘No, that’s not what she said’, ‘No, she didn’t do that’, until you end up screaming “Will you stop interrupting me and just let me tell you what happened’, I can see where the money management strategy is going.  It will obviously be important for me to determine exactly what I want to achieve, say £2,000 a month within 12 months of becoming a live trader, look at the capital I have available, workout if this timescale is realistic while only risking 1% of my capital on any one trade – maybe I need to allow more time, maybe it’s possible to achieve it in less – and then STICK TO THE PLAN. It’s all about approaching Forex trading like you would a business plan, or any other plan really, where you set goals, work out what activities have to be done daily, what has to be achieved daily and then sticking to that. So, if I work out that I need to make (and these are purely figures put in as an illustration; I have no idea how accurate these are as I haven’t yet decided how much capita I am going to start with – I expect the course to enable me to reach that decision) 15 PIPS a day to reach my ultimate goal, once I have achieved that in any one day, I should be content to STOP THERE and don’t start thinking ‘But if I just carry on for another hour, maybe I can make 15 more PIPS.’ No, no, no, no, no. I will have achieved my daily target so just stop. And if I have a really good trade and manage 75 PIPS all at once, then that’s my weekly target done so I leave it for a week.

I know I can do this. I don’t have a gambler’s mentality. I’m pretty sure that I’m going to find the actual reality of trading quite dull. I’ll do what it takes to make what I need and then happily get out for a day, two days, a week. I’m not in it for the excitement of the trade, I’m in it for the excitement of knowing that by sticking to small daily goals over a period of time, obeying the rules so that I’m a safe trader, in perhaps 12 months’ time (going back to my scenario) I will be financially free and from then on, everything else is jam.

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This morning, I was awake early again.  I tend to wake earlier in the summer as I have light curtains – I really should invest in some blackouts.  Anyway, instead of lying there dozing until the alarm went off I got up and came down to spend 20 minutes watching the video again and read the stuff on mindset with a coffee. I must say, I really like the sound of it. I’d love to be able to spend a couple of relaxing hours, first thing in the morning, making some money and then getting on with the rest of my day knowing that, whatever else I earned in one of my day jobs, it was all extra income. Fabulous! So I’m completely up to date and am now waiting for the recorded calls that I have to listen to before the start of next week. I think I have inadvertently raced ahead a bit so will also be spending time going back over all the material I’ve received so far and just having a thorough play on the demo account to properly familiarise myself with everything.

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Woke up at 6.10am and the FIRST thing on my mind was why I couldn’t move those lines from the graph. So, with an hour and twenty minutes before I had to get my son up I went downstairs to re-visit the previous night’s lesson.  I decided to go back through my settings and found an error.  In User Preferences, Trades, on the training material graphic the third and last box is labelled ‘Confirm One Click Trades’ and this had to be ticked. However, in reality on the Oanda platform, there was a fourth box labelled ‘Show One Click Trade Tooltip’ and this was the last box. In my tired state the night before, I hadn’t really looked properly and all I had done was tick the ‘last’ box on the drop down menu without really looking at the words.  I hadn’t noticed that one version had three boxes and one had four. This meant that the box labelled ‘Confirm One Click Trades’, which I should have ticked, wasn’t. Anyway, not sure if this was the cause of my issues with moving the stops and limits lines or if it was just me but I could now move my stop lines from the graph with no difficulty. But what to do about this fourth box?  Another email sent whizzing off to Kris.  The prompt reply: leave it unticked. So a lesson learned. Make sure to double check everything. Sid has told us that the training graphics don’t always match what is showing on the platform as this is such a dynamic thing that changes from time to time but any queries then just ask.

Then I moved on to the next lesson which is all about how the broker gets paid. Again, this wasn’t hard to understand in principle but did take a little more working out when looking at the graph.  Oanda does make it as easy for you as possible by showing your EXACT position, including the spread, on the graph so you always know where you are.

In summary then, after just two days I feel I’ve learned loads already and am still feeling positive about my decision to take this course.

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So, I got back from the school run and sat down with a coffee, full of anticipation.

The first thing to say is how clearly everything is explained and how thorough Sid is at making sure everyone has got to where they are supposed to be. The only thing I had a slight problem with, pretty early on, was launching the Oanda practice trading platform as I hadn’t downloaded Java properly. I thought I’d done it but I hadn’t but that’s a problem that lies with me, not the course or any explanation. Anyway, once I’d got over that little hiccup I just followed instructions. The instructions and information are easy to follow and, to me, totally logical although reading through the Q&As some people seemed to occasionally have had a little more trouble fully understanding how to interpret the candles. (If you take the course, all will be explained). But it’s not rocket science: as Sid says somewhere, you don’t have to be one to take the course, and if you don’t grasp it straight away then I’m sure it soon becomes second nature. Remember learning how to drive?

I can quite see why Sid says this course is only for beginners. When you get into the practice trading platform there are lots of different options for how you set up your graph and I can see why people with prior knowledge might question why we are told to use some and not others. Not me.  As a complete newbie I’m just doing exactly as I’m told. If I was climbing a mountain for the first time and had never done it before, I wouldn’t be questioning my guide on the best route to successfully get to the top and back in one piece.

Well, I’ve spent around 2 hours today in total to complete the three tutorials, including all the messing about with Java and then experimenting with my graph, and I definitely feel I’ve learnt something. I’ve set up my demo account, I know what pips are and I understand the very basics of what a live trading graph is showing me. All in all I’m feeling pretty pleased with myself and quietly confident. Let’s hope it continues in the same vein; I’m looking forward to it.

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Well, just a bit of background about me. I’m a 50 year old single mother of an eight year old son who is football crazy. My background is in marketing and public relations and I worked in this industry for 20 years, mainly in London. I have a BA in English and Psychology and an MA in Marketing so I’m not totally dense but I’m certainly no genius and only managed a C grade in O’level maths way back in 1978 since when I’ve actively avoided having anything to do with the subject wherever possible. When I became pregnant at 41, and my son’s father took the decision to opt out, I decided to move to Cardiff to be close to my family, all of whom had gravitated here for one reason or another (but that’s another story). 

When I had to return to work after having my son and having taken a few months off, I decided that I didn’t want to go back into the corporate world. I didn’t want the long hours and the stress and having my son in childcare for 10 hours a day while he was very young and then the issue of not being able to get time off for concerts, school trips, sports days etc., the hassle of arranging childcare for him in the holidays once he started school, the panic of what to do if he was sick and only being allowed 20 or, if I was lucky, 23-25 days annual leave. I’d worked my butt off for 20 years, I’d taken the decision to have a child on my own and I wanted to be there for him.

This has been a great decision for my son and our relationship but financial suicide!  My income as a freelance copywriter and marketer has been very up and down, not helped by a two year period when I felt totally depressed. I embarked on a course of CBT to try and snap myself out it but nothing seemed to work. I worked very little during this time as I always felt exhausted and totally lacked motivation. I was lucky in that I still owned a property in London so re-mortgaged this on a couple of occasions to top up my income. Then I was finally diagnosed with a severely under-active thyroid. Hooray, there was something actually wrong with me! Getting me on to the correct dosage took another 12 months during which time I gradually started feeling better. However, during this time, I had put on a lot of weight, and no, once I got onto the medication, it didn’t just start dropping off.  I had lost a lot of confidence in myself and the thought of going out and selling myself to business clients filled me with dread. Also, in marketing, the importance of social media had exploded in that time and, to be perfectly honest, although I appreciate this makes me a total dinosaur, I’m just not interested in it and don’t want to learn about it. I don’t use it in my personal life and find most of it a total bore.

At this point, a woman, a retired wills and probate solicitor, whom I’d met on the business networking scene, asked me for some help to market a new business she was launching, helping people plan for their own deaths and providing practical support for families coping with bereavement.  As it happened, this was a subject very close to my heart as, at the time, I was witnessing my father slowly succumbing to Alzheimer’s. I got involved, becoming a director, and I guess this business is my passion, but we are ahead of the curve in terms of our business concept. We get work but not enough to pay the bills.

Searching for yet more ways to increase my income I have become involved in a network marketing company, which I remain committed to for the longer term but, just now, the income it’s generating just isn’t growing fast enough. I am also close to completing a training course to become an NVQ assessor which I expect to become my bread and butter income in the short-term along with my copywriting work.

I can’t even remember now how I found out about Forex trading. I just remember thinking it sounded like the answer to my prayers, discounting a lottery win! I found a free, half-day introduction seminar being advertised locally so decided to go along and find out more. It sounded great but involved spending days on end at the company’s own trading floor in London, sitting alongside their own professional traders – a total non-starter for me – and there was the heavy sales pitch – value of course £6,000 but £2,000 if you sign up today blah, blah, blah. Fortunately, I was not in a position to cough up £20 that day, let alone £2,000, so walked away. When I got home, I figured there must be other courses so started my search. Gotta love the internet! I came across Forex Training Works pretty much straight away. I read the site, downloaded the free e-book and really liked what I saw. I then started receiving Sid’s introductory audio messages. I checked out various review sites and 95% of what I read was positively glowing. I guess it’s fair to say that, since then, which was back in mid December, I have viewed Forex and Forex Training Works as an integral part of my road to financial security; I just didn’t have the ready cash to pay for the course and get started. But now I do.

My aim over the next couple of years is to get to the point where I am paying myself £2,000 a month, as in the illustration in the e-book, which will provide cash for all the extras.  My son only has three years left of primary school and, should I feel the need, by 2015 I would like to be able to afford private school fees for him, and don’t even get me started on the potential financial landmine that is university fees. Finally, I have 10-15 years to set myself up for my retirement as my pension provision is diabolical and I refuse to be a little old lady who’s terrified to turn on her heating in the winter.

So, that’s me and that’s why I’m doing Forex. I don’t expect to get rich quick, I’m not expecting a millionaire lifestyle, but I would LOVE to be able to stop worrying about money, get to a point where I feel financially comfortable and to never again have to say to my son ‘I can’t afford it.’

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During all this craziness in my life, forex moved on without me.  I sat down to my computer to “re-familiarize” myself and what do ya know?  New stuff galore…I was blown away!  Sid has revamped the entire course and changed strategies in order for us to keep up with the many changes that are taking place in the financial markets.  The instability of the euro meant changes were needed to help us all remain safe, profitable traders.

At first I was a bit disturbed because I was all set to get on with what I already knew; however, after going over all the new stuff and listening to a few calls, I realized how much better the new ways really are.  It amazes me how often we fight change, but more often than not, it can produce some amazing opportunities, and I firmly believe that is what has happened in this instance.

What really impresses me about all of this is that Sid didn’t just rest on his laurels and let us take our chances.  He is really committed to us BBC members and has been really proactive in keeping up with the changes necessary for us to be successful and incredibly enough, he has proven that forex really is quite a “fool-proof” way to earn some money. Whether for a full-time income, or for part-time one, forex does seem to stand the test of time (and change!).

I’m glad I didn’t despair, but rather embraced the change, because the new system offers greater earning potential, and in my humble opinion, a much easier and safer way of trading.

Thank you Sid for your continued dedication and hard work at keeping all of us BBC members alive and trading.

And, here’s to hoping I can stay focused without major interruption again any time soon.  Happy Trading All 

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