Zack Introduction-Forex Journey

[Zack Zarr 5]

My Forex Trading Journey

 

 

The world of foreign exchange trading or forex trading is not much different from other types of trading such as the stock market, the housing market or any asset or equity trading. I was introduced to this world a while back in mid-2009 when the whole world of finance seemed to be falling apart.

 

I was a science student in a PhD program between 2008 and 2012, like many PhD students, I was always curious about how things work. It had become a habit for me not to be afraid of any new concept, either a pure scientific problem or a real-life ordinary event. The path I have chosen for my life and career has made curiosity and learning a normal item of my daily routine. The financial markets and stock market came up on my radar multiple times during routine conversations with friends, and so, as with any other topic, I started searching online about it, reading blogs and “free” documents (I was a student, remember?) and watching YouTube videos. After a few months of studying, I decided I was ready to go my bank and open an investment account. I quickly got into my demo account and started replicating in my trading all the trading strategies I’d learned about. It was mostly swing trading at that time. Indicators, and in particular those with the most complex mathematical formula and their cross correlations with each other, were fascinating to me. Once I became confident in myself, I put in $500 that I saved from an on-campus part-time job. Getting into real trading quickly, rather than spending months and years on demo account, was one of the best things I have done, even considering the eventual results. Unfortunately, and probably predictably, my account kept going up and down, and it didn’t take long before my commissions caught up with me. I closed that account with only $100 left in it.

 

But I refused to let go, and I started back on the demo. What irritated me the most was how indicators can contradict one another. Whenever a trade did not go my way, I could justify it in terms of another indicator that I discovered later. That might sound familiar to many of you. My problem was that I was not used to this type of illogical methodology and this peculiar approach to decision making. After all, my main daily job was to design systematic methodologies to test a hypothesis, to analyze the data, to correct my method, to develop solid theories and, of course, to publish them in academic journals. That last part, incidentally, is not easy, because these journal articles are evaluated by at least three leading scientists around the world before getting published. I have been doing this for a good part my life, so figuring out why things work the way they do has been part of my way of living. Honestly, I do not know much else because I have not been trained for anything else.

 

I got back on the stock market, trading back and forth, until the day a friend came to me and asked me about forex. I had only heard about it and had no idea how forex trading works. It was a new concept to me, so again I started searching and learning. I remember the first time I opened the metatrader 4 (MT4) platform. I almost fainted. I thought to myself, “Do I have to learn all these crazy indicators and understand all these lines that show up in the default setting of MT4?”

 

This is where my story begins. In the coming forum posts, I will go over the steps I took, from the most basic tasks like opening an account right up to the trading strategies I use these days.

 

Zack