Hey guys I’ve just ventured into forex trading a few months ago and I’ve been demo trading for the last 4/5 months and I’d like to learn to trade gold I know how volatile the market is and I’d like to learn to scalp so is there any website or books I can go through to know more about XAUUSD and it’s movement

are day trading, swing trading and scalping strategies the same or similar?
I mean like indicators used and patterns. For example an ascending triangle generally indicates an uptrend. Is that the case for short term and long term timeframes?
PS. i am a complete noob and just starting to learn.
Any advice or pointers to good resources to start learning are appreciated.

Can someone help? Is this just me?
Seriously... I can't figure this out...I've learned harmonic trading, fibonacci, oscilators, PAT but nothing works...I've traded live stocks, forex, and futures...I graduated with an engineering degree without issues and with high gpa; so its not the math side....
I just can't figure out how the cycle continues for me:

1. watch a youtube video, or read a stock market psychology book, or WHATEVER and get interested (all over again). Read/watch for months the methodology and live trading...
2. Test with paper trading....
3. Double my paper trading account with confidence and create a live account. 3a) (because it goes by that fast): loose it all or at least 75%
4. Cry; rage quit when i actaully get to zero

​
THE FUCK
Edit: thanks so much for the responses. Am completely shocked. Ill add that the last ten years has been in swing trading but especially scalping.

Hi guys,
I have been researching books focused on price action trading in order for me to improve my ability to scalp the E-mini S&P 500 Futures and possibly other futures later on. It seems like there isn't any good books about futures price action out there. Therefore, I have mainly looked into price action trading in general, as well as forex price action trading.
Have narrowed down my list to following books:
Bob Volman - Forex Price Action Scalping an in-depth look into the field of professional scalping.
Al Brooks - Trading Price Action Trends - Technical Analysis of Price Charts Bar by Bar for the Serious Trader
Bob Volman - Understanding Price Action - Practical Analysis of the 5-minute time frame
I have chosen those 3 because they are supposably going really in-depth on the price action and all link the theory to fairly practical strategies, which reviewers state, can be applied to the market. Any opinions on these books or suggestions for other books? Am not sure if my plan on looking into Forex price action books for futures trading was a good idea at all.
Looking forward to hearing from you :)

The majority of this sub is focused on technical analysis. I regularly ridicule such "tea leaf readers" and advocate for trading based on fundamentals and economic news instead, so I figured I should take the time to write up something on how exactly you can trade economic news releases.
This post is long as balls so I won't be upset if you get bored and go back to your drooping dick patterns or whatever.

How economic news is released

First, it helps to know how economic news is compiled and released. Let's take Initial Jobless Claims, the number of initial claims for unemployment benefits around the United States from Sunday through Saturday. Initial in this context means the first claim for benefits made by an individual during a particular stretch of unemployment. The Initial Jobless Claims figure appears in the Department of Labor's Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report, which compiles information from all of the per-state departments that report to the DOL during the week. A typical number is between 100k and 250k and it can vary quite significantly week-to-week.
The Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report contains data that lags 5 days behind. For example, the Report issued on Thursday March 26th 2020 contained data about the week ending on Saturday March 21st 2020.
In the days leading up to the Report, financial companies will survey economists and run complicated mathematical models to forecast the upcoming Initial Jobless Claims figure. The results of surveyed experts is called the "consensus"; specific companies, experts, and websites will also provide their own forecasts. Different companies will release different consensuses. Usually they are pretty close (within 2-3k), but for last week's record-high Initial Jobless Claims the reported consensuses varied by up to 1M! In other words, there was essentially no consensus.
The Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report is released each Thursday morning at exactly 8:30 AM ET. (On Thanksgiving the Report is released on Wednesday instead.) Media representatives gather at the Frances Perkins Building in Washington DC and are admitted to the "lockup" at 8:00 AM ET. In order to be admitted to the lockup you have to be a credentialed member of a media organization that has signed the DOL lockup agreement. The lockup room is small so there is a limited number of spots.
No phones are allowed. Reporters bring their laptops and connect to a local network; there is a master switch on the wall that prevents/enables Internet connectivity on this network. Once the doors are closed the Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report is distributed, with a heading that announces it is "embargoed" (not to be released) prior to 8:30 AM. Reporters type up their analyses of the report, including extracting key figures like Initial Jobless Claims. They load their write-ups into their companies' software, which prepares to send it out as soon as Internet is enabled. At 8:30 AM the DOL representative in the room flips the wall switch and all of the laptops are connected to the Internet, releasing their write-ups to their companies and on to their companies' partners.
Many of those media companies have externally accessible APIs for distributing news. Media aggregators and squawk services (like RanSquawk and TradeTheNews) subscribe to all of these different APIs and then redistribute the key economic figures from the Report to their own subscribers within one second after Internet is enabled in the DOL lockup.
Some squawk services are text-based while others are audio-based. FinancialJuice.com provides a free audio squawk service; internally they have a paid subscription to a professional squawk service and they simply read out the latest headlines to their own listeners, subsidized by ads on the site. I've been using it for 4 months now and have been pretty happy. It usually lags behind the official release times by 1-2 seconds and occasionally they verbally flub the numbers or stutter and have to repeat, but you can't beat the price!
Important - I’m not affiliated with FinancialJuice and I’m not advocating that you use them over any other squawk. If you use them and they misspeak a number and you lose all your money don’t blame me. If anybody has any other free alternatives please share them!

How the news affects forex markets

Institutional forex traders subscribe to these squawk services and use custom software to consume the emerging data programmatically and then automatically initiate trades based on the perceived change to the fundamentals that the figures represent.
It's important to note that every institution will have "priced in" their own forecasted figures well in advance of an actual news release. Forecasts and consensuses all come out at different times in the days leading up to a news release, so by the time the news drops everybody is really only looking for an unexpected result. You can't really know what any given institution expects the value to be, but unless someone has inside information you can pretty much assume that the market has collectively priced in the experts' consensus. When the news comes out, institutions will trade based on the difference between the actual and their forecast.
Sometimes the news reflects a real change to the fundamentals with an economic effect that will change the demand for a currency, like an interest rate decision. However, in the case of the Initial Jobless Claims figure, which is a backwards-looking metric, trading is really just self-fulfilling speculation that market participants will buy dollars when unemployment is low and sell dollars when unemployment is high. Generally speaking, news that reflects a real economic shift has a bigger effect than news that only matters to speculators.
Massive and extremely fast news-based trades happen within tenths of a second on the ECNs on which institutional traders are participants. Over the next few seconds the resulting price changes trickle down to retail traders. Some economic news, like Non Farm Payroll Employment, has an effect that can last minutes to hours as "slow money" follows behind on the trend created by the "fast money". Other news, like Initial Jobless Claims, has a short impact that trails off within a couple minutes and is subsequently dwarfed by the usual pseudorandom movements in the market.
The bigger the difference between actual and consensus, the bigger the effect on any given currency pair. Since economic news releases generally relate to a single currency, the biggest and most easily predicted effects are seen on pairs where one currency is directly effected and the other is not affected at all. Personally I trade USD/JPY because the time difference between the US and Japan ensures that no news will be coming out of Japan at the same time that economic news is being released in the US.
Before deciding to trade any particular news release you should measure the historical correlation between the release (specifically, the difference between actual and consensus) and the resulting short-term change in the currency pair. Historical data for various news releases (along with historical consensus data) is readily available. You can pay to get it exported into Excel or whatever, or you can scroll through it for free on websites like TradingEconomics.com.
Let's look at two examples: Initial Jobless Claims and Non Farm Payroll Employment (NFP). I collected historical consensuses and actuals for these releases from January 2018 through the present, measured the "surprise" difference for each, and then correlated that to short-term changes in USD/JPY at the time of release using 5 second candles.
I omitted any releases that occurred simultaneously as another major release. For example, occasionally the monthly Initial Jobless Claims comes out at the exact same time as the monthly Balance of Trade figure, which is a more significant economic indicator and can be expected to dwarf the effect of the Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report.
USD/JPY correlation with Initial Jobless Claims (2018 - present)
USD/JPY correlation with Non Farm Payrolls (2018 - present)
The horizontal axes on these charts is the duration (in seconds) after the news release over which correlation was calculated. The vertical axis is the Pearson correlation coefficient: +1 means that the change in USD/JPY over that duration was perfectly linearly correlated to the "surprise" in the releases; -1 means that the change in USD/JPY was perfectly linearly correlated but in the opposite direction, and 0 means that there is no correlation at all.
For Initial Jobless Claims you can see that for the first 30 seconds USD/JPY is strongly negatively correlated with the difference between consensus and actual jobless claims. That is, fewer-than-forecast jobless claims (fewer newly unemployed people than expected) strengthens the dollar and greater-than-forecast jobless claims (more newly unemployed people than expected) weakens the dollar. Correlation then trails off and changes to a moderate/weak positive correlation. I interpret this as algorithms "buying the dip" and vice versa, but I don't know for sure. From this chart it appears that you could profit by opening a trade for 15 seconds (duration with strongest correlation) that is long USD/JPY when Initial Jobless Claims is lower than the consensus and short USD/JPY when Initial Jobless Claims is higher than expected.
The chart for Non Farm Payroll looks very different. Correlation is positive (higher-than-expected payrolls strengthen the dollar and lower-than-expected payrolls weaken the dollar) and peaks at around 45 seconds, then slowly decreases as time goes on. This implies that price changes due to NFP are quite significant relative to background noise and "stick" even as normal fluctuations pick back up.
I wanted to show an example of what the USD/JPY S5 chart looks like when an "uncontested" (no other major simultaneously news release) Initial Jobless Claims and NFP drops, but unfortunately my broker's charts only go back a week. (I can pull historical data going back years through the API but to make it into a pretty chart would be a bit of work.) If anybody can get a 5-second chart of USD/JPY at March 19, 2020, UTC 12:30 and/or at February 7, 2020, UTC 13:30 let me know and I'll add it here.

Backtesting

So without too much effort we determined that (1) USD/JPY is strongly negatively correlated with the Initial Jobless Claims figure for the first 15 seconds after the release of the Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report (when no other major news is being released) and also that (2) USD/JPY is strongly positively correlated with the Non Farms Payroll figure for the first 45 seconds after the release of the Employment Situation report.
Before you can assume you can profit off the news you have to backtest and consider three important parameters.
Entry speed: How quickly can you realistically enter the trade? The correlation performed above was measured from the exact moment the news was released, but realistically if you've got your finger on the trigger and your ear to the squawk it will take a few seconds to hit "Buy" or "Sell" and confirm. If 90% of the price move happens in the first second you're SOL. For back-testing purposes I assume a 5 second delay. In practice I use custom software that opens a trade with one click, and I can reliably enter a trade within 2-3 seconds after the news drops, using the FinancialJuice free squawk.
Minimum surprise: Should you trade every release or can you do better by only trading those with a big enough "surprise" factor? Backtesting will tell you whether being more selective is better long-term or not.
Hold time: The optimal time to hold the trade is not necessarily the same as the time of maximum correlation. That's a good starting point but it's not necessarily the best number. Backtesting each possible hold time will let you find the best one.
The spread: When you're only holding a position open for 30 seconds, the spread will kill you. The correlations performed above used the midpoint price, but in reality you have to buy at the ask and sell at the bid. Brokers aren't stupid and the moment volume on the ECN jumps they will widen the spread for their retail customers. The only way to determine if the news-driven price movements reliably overcome the spread is to backtest.
Stops: Personally I don't use stops, neither take-profit nor stop-loss, since I'm automatically closing the trade after a fixed (and very short) amount of time. Additionally, brokers have a minimum stop distance; the profits from scalping the news are so slim that even the nearest stops they allow will generally not get triggered.
I backtested trading these two news releases (since 2018), using a 5 second entry delay, real historical spreads, and no stops, cycling through different "surprise" thresholds and hold times to find the combination that returns the highest net profit. It's important to maximize net profit, not expected value per trade, so you don't over-optimize and reduce the total number of trades taken to one single profitable trade. If you want to get fancy you can set up a custom metric that combines number of trades, expected value, and drawdown into a single score to be maximized.
For the Initial Jobless Claims figure I found that the best combination is to hold trades open for 25 seconds (that is, open at 5 seconds elapsed and hold until 30 seconds elapsed) and only trade when the difference between consensus and actual is 7k or higher. That leads to 30 trades taken since 2018 and an expected return of... drumroll please... -0.0093 yen per unit per trade.
Yep, that's a loss of approx. $8.63 per lot.
Disappointing right? That's the spread and that's why you have to backtest. Even though the release of the Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report has a strong correlation with movement in USD/JPY, it's simply not something that a retail trader can profit from.
Let's turn to the NFP. There I found that the best combination is to hold trades open for 75 seconds (that is, open at 5 seconds elapsed and hold until 80 seconds elapsed) and trade every single NFP (no minimum "surprise" threshold). That leads to 20 trades taken since 2018 and an expected return of... drumroll please... +0.1306 yen per unit per trade.
That's a profit of approx. $121.25 per lot. Not bad for 75 seconds of work! That's a +6% ROI at 50x leverage.

Make it real

If you want to do this for realsies, you need to run these numbers for all of the major economic news releases. Markit Manufacturing PMI, Factory Orders MoM, Trade Balance, PPI MoM, Export and Import Prices, Michigan Consumer Sentiment, Retail Sales MoM, Industrial Production MoM, you get the idea. You keep a list of all of the releases you want to trade, when they are released, and the ideal hold time and "surprise" threshold. A few minutes before the prescribed release time you open up your broker's software, turn on your squawk, maybe jot a few notes about consensuses and model forecasts, and get your finger on the button. At the moment you hear the release you open the trade in the correct direction, hold it (without looking at the chart!) for the required amount of time, then close it and go on with your day.
Some benefits of trading this way: * Most major economic releases come out at either 8:30 AM ET or 10:00 AM ET, and then you're done for the day. * It's easily backtestable. You can look back at the numbers and see exactly what to expect your return to be. * It's fun! Packing your trading into 30 seconds and knowing that institutions are moving billions of dollars around as fast as they can based on the exact same news you just read is thrilling. * You can wow your friends by saying things like "The St. Louis Fed had some interesting remarks on consumer spending in the latest Beige Book." * No crayons involved.
Some downsides: * It's tricky to be fast enough without writing custom software. Some broker software is very slow and requires multiple dialog boxes before a position is opened, which won't cut it. * The profits are very slim, you're not going to impress your instagram followers to join your expensive trade copying service with your 30-second twice-weekly trades. * Any friends you might wow with your boring-ass economic talking points are themselves the most boring people in the world.
I hope you enjoyed this long as fuck post and you give trading economic news a try!

So here it is, three more days and October begins, which marks one year of trading for me. I figured I would contribute to the forum and share some of my experience, a little about me, and what I've learned so far. Whoever wants to listen, that's great. This might get long so buckle up..
Three years ago, I was visiting Toronto. I don't get out much, but my roommate at the time travels there occasionally. He asked everyone at our place if we wanted to come along for a weekend. My roommate has an uncle that lives there and we didn't have to worry about a hotel because his uncle owns a small house that's unlived in which we could stay at. I was the only one to go with. Anyways, we walk around the city, seeing the sights and whatnot.
My friend says to me "where next?"
"I don't know, you're the tour guide"
"We can go check out Bay Street"
"what's 'Bay Street?'"
"It's like the Canadian Wall street! If you haven't seen it you gotta see it!"
Walking along Bay, I admire all the nice buildings and architecture, everything seems larger than life to me. I love things like that. The huge granite facades with intricate designs and towering pillars to make you think, How the fuck did they make that? My attention pivots to a man walking on the sidewalk opposite us. His gait stood out among everyone, he walked with such a purpose.. He laughed into the cell phone to his ear. In the elbow-shoving city environment, he moved with a stride that exuded a power which not only commanded respect, but assumed it. I bet HE can get a text back, hell he's probably got girls waiting on him. This dude was dressed to kill, a navy suit that you could just tell from across the street was way out of my budget, it was a nice fucking suit. I want that. His life, across the street, seemed a world a way from my own. I've worn a suit maybe twice in my life. For my first communion, it was too big for me, I was eleven or whatever so who gives a shit, right? I'm positive I looked ridiculous. The other time? I can't remember.
I want that. I want the suit. I want the wealth, the independence. I want the respect and power, and I don't give a shit what anyone thinks about it.
Cue self doubt.
Well, He's probably some rich banker's son. That's a world you're born into. I don't know shit about it. \sigh* keep walking..*
​
A year later, I'm visiting my parents at their house, they live an hour away from my place. My dad is back from Tennessee, his engineering job was laying people off and he got canned... Or he saw the end was near and just left... I don't know, hard to pay attention to the guy honestly because he kind of just drones on and on. ("Wait, so your mom lives in Michigan, but your dad moved to Tennessee... for a job?" Yea man, I don't fucking know, not going to touch on that one.) The whole project was a shit show that was doomed to never get done, the way he tells it. And he's obviously jaded from multiple similar experiences at other life-sucking engineer jobs. My mom is a retired nurse practitioner who no longer works because of her illness. I ask him what he's doing for work now and he tells me he trades stocks from home. I didn't even know you could do that. I didn't know "trading" was a thing. I thought you just invest and hope for the best.
"Oh that's cool, how much money do you need to do that?"
"Ehh, most say you need at least $25,000 as a minimum"
"Oh... guess I can't do that..."
Six months later, I get a call and it's my dad. We talk a little about whatever. Off topic, he starts asking if I'm happy doing what I'm doing (I was a painter, commercial and residential) I tell him yes but it's kind of a pain in the ass and I don't see it as a long term thing. Then he gets around to asking if I'd like to come work with him. He basically pitches it to me. I'm not one to be sold on something, I'm always skeptical. So I ask all the questions that any rational person would ask and he just swats them away with reassuring phrases. He was real confident about it. But basically he says for this to work, I have to quit my job and move back home so he can teach me how to trade and be by my side so I don't do anything stupid. "My Name , you can make so much money." I say that I can't raise the $25,000 because I'm not far above just living paycheck to paycheck. "I can help you out with that." Wow, okay, well... let me think about it.
My "maybe" very soon turned into a "definitely." So over the next six months, I continue to work my day job painting, and I try to save up what I could for the transition (it wasn't a whole lot, I sucked at saving. I was great at spending though!). My dad gives me a book on day trading (which I will mention later) and I teach myself what I can about the stock market using Investopedia. Also in the meantime, my dad sends me encouraging emails. He tells me to think of an annual income I would like to make as a trader, and used "more than $100,000 but less than a million" as a guideline. He tells me about stocks that he traded that day or just ones that moved and describes the basic price action and the prices to buy and sell at. Basically saying "if you bought X amount of shares here and sold it at X price here, you could make a quick 500 bucks!" I then use a trading sim to trade those symbols and try to emulate what he says. Piece of cake. ;)
Wow, that's way more than what I make in a day.
He tells me not to tell anyone about my trading because most people just think it's gambling. "Don't tell your Mom either." He says most people who try this fail because they don't know how to stop out and take a loss. He talks about how every day he was in a popular chatroom, some noob would say something like, "Hey guys, I bought at X price (high of day or thereabout), my account is down 80% .. uhh I'm waiting for it to come back to my entry price.. what do I do??"
Well shit, I'm not that fucking dumb. If that's all it takes to make it is to buy low, sell high, and always respect a stop then I'll be fantastic.
By the end of September, I was very determined. I had been looking forward everyday to quitting my painting job because while it used to be something I loved, it was just sucking the life out of me at this point. Especially working commercial, you just get worked like a dog. I wasn't living up to my potential with that job and I felt awful for it every minute of every day. I knew that I needed a job where I could use my brain instead of slaving my body to fulfill someone else's dream. "Someone's gotta put gas in the boss's boat" That's a line my buddy once said that he probably doesn't know sticks with me to this day.
It ain't me.
So now it was October 2018, and I'm back living with Mom n' Pops. I was so determined that on my last day of work I gave away all of my painting tools to my buddy like, "here, I don't need this shit." Moving out of my rental was easy because I don't own much, 'can't take it with ya.' Excited for the future I now spend my days bundled up in winter wear in the cold air of our hoarder-like basement with a space heater at my feet. My laptop connected to a TV monitor, I'm looking at stocks next to my dad and his screens in his cluttered corner. Our Trading Dungeon. I don't trade any money, (I wasn't aware of any real-time sim programs) I just watch and learn from my dad. Now you've got to keep in mind, and look at a chart of the S&P, this is right at the beginning of Oct '18, I came in right at the market top. Right at the start of the shit-show. For the next three or four weeks, I watch my dad pretty much scratch on every trade, taking small loss after small loss, and cursing under his breath at the screen.
Click.
"dammit."
Click.
"shit."
Click. Click.
"you fuck."
Click.
This gets really fucking annoying as time goes on, for weeks, and I get this attitude like ugh, just let me do it. I'll make us some fucking money. So I convince him to let me start trading live. I didn't know anything about brokers so I set up an account using his broker, which was Fidelity. It was a pain and I had to jump through a lot of hoops to be able to day trade with this broker. I actually had to make a joint account with my dad as I couldn't get approved for margin because my credit score is shit (never owned a credit card) and my net worth, not much. Anyways, they straight up discourage day trading and I get all kinds of warning messages with big red letters that made me shit myself like oooaaahhh what the fuck did I do now. Did I forget to close a position?? Did I fat finger an order? Am I now in debt for thousands of dollars to Fidelity?? They're going to come after me like they came after Madoff. Even after you are approved for PDT you still get these warning messages in your account. Some would say if I didn't comply with "whatever rule" they'd even suspend my account for 60 days. It was ridiculous, hard to describe because it doesn't make sense, and it took the support guy on the phone a good 20 minutes to explain it to me. Basically I got the answer "yea it's all good, you did nothing wrong. As long as you have the cash in your account to cover whatever the trade balance was" So I just kept getting these warnings that I had to ignore everyday. I hate Fidelity.
My fist day trading, I made a few so-so trades and then I got impatient. I saw YECO breaking out and I chased, soon realized I chased, so I got out. -$500. Shit, I have to make that back, I don't want my dad to see this. Got back in. Shit. -$400. So my first day trading, I lost $900. My dumbass was using market orders so that sure didn't help. I reeled the risk back and traded more proper position size for a while, but the commissions for a round trip are $10, so taking six trades per day, I'm losing $60 at a minimum on top of my losing trades. Quickly I realized I didn't know what the hell I was doing. What about my dad? Does HE know? One day, in the trading dungeon, I was frustrated with the experience I'd been having and just feeling lost overall. I asked him.
"So, are you consistently profitable?"
"mmm... I do alright."
"Yea but like, are you consistently profitable over time?"
.........................
"I do alright."
Silence.
"Do you know any consistently profitable traders?"
"Well the one who wrote that book I gave you, Tina Turner.. umm and there's Ross Cameron"
......................
"So you don't know any consistently profitable traders, personally.. People who are not trying to sell you something?"
"no."
...................
Holy fucking shit, what did this idiot get me into. He can't even say it to my face and admit it.
This entire life decision, quitting my job, leaving my rental, moving from my city to back home, giving shit away, it all relied on that. I was supposed to be an apprentice to a consistently profitable day trader who trades for a living. It was so assumed, that I never even thought to ask! Why would you tell your son to quit his job for something that you yourself cannot do? Is this all a scam? Did my dad get sold a DREAM? Did I buy into some kind of ponzi scheme? How many of those winning trades he showed me did he actually take? Are there ANY consistently profitable DAY TRADERS who TRADE FOR A LIVING? Why do 90% fail? Is it because the other 10% are scamming the rest in some way? Completely lost, I just had no clue what was what. If I was going to succeed at this, if it was even possible to succeed at this, it was entirely up to me. I had to figure it out. I still remember the feeling like an overwhelming, crushing weight on me as it all sunk in. This is going to be a big deal.. I'm not the type to give up though. In that moment, I said to myself,
I'm going to fucking win at this. I don't know if this is possible, but I'm going to find out. I cannot say with certainty that I will succeed, but no matter what, I will not give up. I'm going to give all of myself to this. I will find the truth.
It was a deep moment for me. I don't like getting on my soapbox, but when I said those things, I meant it. I really, really meant it. I still do, and I still will.
Now it might seem like I'm being hard on my dad. He has done a lot for me and I am very grateful for that. We're sarcastic as hell to each other, I love the bastard. Hell, I wouldn't have the opportunity to trade at all if not for him. But maybe you can also understand how overwhelmed I felt at that time. Not on purpose, of course he means well. But I am not a trusting person at all and I was willing to put trust into him after all the convincing and was very disappointed when I witnessed the reality of the situation. I would have structured this transition to trading differently, you don't just quit your job and start trading. Nobody was there to tell me that! I was told quite the opposite. I'm glad it happened anyway, so fuck it. I heard Kevin O'Leary once say,
"If I knew in the beginning how difficult starting a business was, I don't know that I ever would've started."
This applies very much to my experience.
So what did I do? Well like everyone I read and read and Googled and Youtube'd my ass off. I sure as hell didn't pay for a course because I didn't have the money and I'm like 99% sure I would be disappointed by whatever they were teaching as pretty much everything can be found online or in books for cheap or free. Also I discovered Thinkorswim and I used that to sim trade in real-time for three months. This is way the hell different than going on a sim at 5x speed and just clicking a few buy and sell buttons. Lol, useless. When you sim trade in real-time you're forced to have a routine, and you're forced to experience missing trades with no chance to rewind or skip the boring parts. That's a step up because you're "in it". I also traded real money too, made some, lost more than I made. went back to sim. Traded live again, made some but lost more, fell back to PDT. Dad fronted me more cash. This has happened a few times. He's dug me out of some holes because he believes in me. I'm fortunate.
Oh yeah, about that book my dad gave me. It's called A Beginner's Guide to Day Trading Online by Toni Turner. This book... is shit. This was supposed to be my framework for how to trade and I swear it's like literally nothing in this book fucking works lol. I could tell this pretty early on, intuitively, just by looking at charts. It's basically a buy-the-breakout type strategy, if you want to call it a strategy. No real methodology to anything just vague crap and showing you cherry-picked charts with entries that are way too late. With experience in the markets you will eventually come to find that MOST BREAKOUTS FAIL. It talks about support/resistance lines and describes them as, "picture throwing a ball down at the floor, it bounces up and then it bounces down off the ceiling, then back up." So many asinine assumptions. These ideas are a text book way of how to trade like dumb money. Don't get me wrong, these trades can work but you need to be able to identify the setups which are more probable and identify reasons not to take others. So I basically had to un-learn all that shit.
Present day, I have a routine in place. I'm out of the dungeon and trade by myself in my room. I trade with a discount broker that is catered to day traders and doesn't rape me on commissions. My mornings have a framework for analyzing the news and economic events of the particular day, I journal so that I can recognize what I'm doing right and where I need to improve. I record my screens for later review to improve my tape reading skills. I am actually tracking my trades now and doing backtesting in equities as well as forex. I'm not a fast reader but I do read a lot, as much as I can. So far I have read about 17-18 books on trading and psychology. I've definitely got a lot more skilled at trading.
As of yet I am not net profitable. Writing that sounds like selling myself short though, honestly. Because a lot of my trades are very good and are executed well. I have talent. However, lesser quality trades and trades which are inappropriately sized/ attempted too many times bring down that P/L. I'm not the type of trader to ignore a stop, I'm more the trader that just widdles their account down with small losses. I trade live because at this point, sim has lost its value, live trading is the ultimate teacher. So I do trade live but I just don't go big like I did before, I keep it small.
I could show you trades that I did great on and make people think I'm killing it but I really just don't need the validation. I don't care, I'm real about it. I just want to get better. I don't need people to think I'm a genius, I'm just trying to make some money.
Psychologically, to be honest with you, I currently feel beaten down and exhausted. I put a lot of energy into this, and sometimes I work myself physically sick, it's happened multiple times. About once a week, usually Saturday, I get a headache that lasts all day. My body's stress rebound mechanism you might call it. Getting over one of those sick periods now, which is why I barely even traded this week. I know I missed a lot of volatility this week and some A+ setups but I really just don't give a shit lol. I just currently don't have the mental capital, I think anyone who's been day trading every day for a year or more can understand what I mean by that. I'm still being productive though. Again, I'm not here to present an image of some badass trader, just keeping it real. To give something 100% day after day while receiving so much resistance, it takes a toll on you. So a break is necessary to avoid making bad trading decisions. That being said, I'm progressing more and more and eliminating those lesser quality trades and identifying my bad habits. I take steps to control those habits and strengthen my good habits such as having a solid routine, doing review and market research, taking profits at the right times, etc.
So maybe I can give some advice to some that are new to day trading, those who are feeling lost, or just in general thinking "...What the fuck..." I thought that every night for the first 6 months lol.
First of all, manage expectations. If you read my story of how I came to be a trader, you can see I had a false impression of trading in many aspects. Give yourself a realistic time horizon to how progress should be made. Do not set a monetary goal for yourself, or any time-based goal that is measured in your P/L. If you tell yourself, "I want to make X per day, X per week, or X per year" you're setting yourself up to feel like shit every single day when it's clear as the blue sky that you won't reach that goal anytime soon. As a matter of fact, it will appear you are moving further AWAY from that goal if you just focus on your P/L, which brings me to my next point.
You will lose money. In the beginning, most likely, you will lose money. I did it, you'll do it, the greatest Paul Tudor Jones did it. Trading is a skill that needs to be developed, and it is a process. Just look at it as paying your tuition to the market. Sim is fine but don't assume you have acquired this skill until you are adept at trading real money. So when you do make that leap, just trade small.
Just survive. Trade small. get the experience. Protect your capital. To reach break even on your bottom line is a huge accomplishment. In many ways, experience and screen time are the secret sauce.
Have a routine. This is very important. I actually will probably make a more in-depth post in the future about this if people want it. When I first started, I was overwhelmed with the feeling "What the fuck am I supposed to DO?" I felt lost. There's no boss to tell you how to be productive or how to find the right stocks, which is mostly a blessing, but a curse for new traders.
All that shit you see, don't believe all that bullshit. You know what I'm talking about. The bragposting, the clickbait Youtube videos, the ads preying on you. "I made X amount of money in a day and I'm fucking 19 lolz look at my Lamborghini" It's all a gimmick to sell you the dream. It's designed to poke right at your insecurities, that's marketing at it's finest. As for the bragposting on forums honestly, who cares. And I'm not pointing fingers on this forum, just any trading forum in general. They are never adding anything of value to the community in their posts. They never say this is how I did it. No, they just want you to think they're a genius. I can show you my $900 day trading the shit out of TSLA, but that doesn't tell the whole story. Gamblers never show you when they lose, you might never hear from those guys again because behind the scenes, they over-leveraged themselves and blew up. Some may actually be consistently profitable and the trades are 100% legit. That's fantastic. But again, I don't care, and you shouldn't either. You shouldn't compare yourself to others.
"Everyone's a genius in a bull market" Here's the thing.. Markets change. Edges disappear. Trading strategies were made by traders who traded during times when everything they did worked. Buy all the breakouts? Sure! It's the fucking tech bubble! Everything works! I'm sure all those typical setups used to work fantastically at some point in time. But the more people realize them, the less effective they are. SOMEONE has to be losing money on the opposite side of a winning trade, and who's willing to do that when the trade is so obvious? That being said, some things are obvious AND still work. Technical analysis works... sometimes. The caveat to that is, filters. You need to, in some way, filter out certain setups from others. For example, you could say, "I won't take a wedge pattern setup on an intraday chart unless it is in a higher time frame uptrend, without nearby resistance, and trading above average volume with news on that day."
Have a plan. If you can't describe your plan, you don't have one. Think in probabilities. You should think entirely in "if, then" scenarios. If X has happens, then Y will probably happen. "If BABA breaks this premarket support level on the open I will look for a pop up to short into."
Backtest. Most traders lose mainly because they think they have an edge but they don't. You read these books and all this stuff online telling you "this is a high probability setup" but do you know that for a fact? There's different ways to backtest, but I think the best way for a beginner is manual backtesting with a chart and an excel sheet. This builds up that screen time and pattern recognition faster. This video shows how to do that. Once I saw someone do it, it didn't seem so boring and awful as I thought it was.
Intelligence is not enough. You're smarter than most people, that's great, but that alone is not enough to make you money in trading necessarily. Brilliant people try and fail at this all the time, lawyers, doctors, surgeons, engineers.. Why do they fail if they're so smart? It's all a fucking scam. No, a number of reasons, but the biggest is discipline and emotional intelligence.
Journal every day. K no thanks, bro. That's fucking gay. That's how I felt when I heard this advice but really that is pride and laziness talking. This is the process you need to do to learn what works for you and what doesn't. Review the trades you took, what your plan was, what actually happened, how you executed. Identify what you did well and what you can work on. This is how you develop discipline and emotional intelligence, by monitoring yourself. How you feel physically and mentally, and how these states affect your decision-making.
Always be learning. Read as much as you can. Good quality books. Here's the best I've read so far;
Market Wizards -Jack Schwager
One Good Trade -Mike Bellafiore
The Daily Trading Coach -Bret Steenbarger
Psycho-cybernetics -Maxwell Maltz
Why You Win or Lose -Fred Kelly
The Art and Science of Technical Analysis -Adam Grimes
Dark Pools -Scott Patterson
Be nimble. Everyday I do my research on the symbols I'm trading and the fundamental news that's driving them. I might be trading a large cap that's gapping up with a beat on EPS and revenue and positive guidance. But if I see that stock pop up and fail miserably on the open amidst huge selling pressure, and I look and see the broader market tanking, guess what, I'm getting short, and that's just day trading. The movement of the market, on an intraday timeframe, doesn't have to make logical sense.
Adapt. In March I used to be able to buy a breakout on a symbol and swing it for the majority of the day. In the summer I was basically scalping on the open and being done for the day. Volatility changes, and so do my profit targets.
Be accountable. Be humble. Be honest. I take 100% responsibility for every dime I've lost or made in the market. It's not the market makers fault, it wasn't the HFTs, I pressed the button. I know my bad habits and I know my good habits.. my strengths/ my weaknesses.
Protect yourself from toxicity. Stay away from traders and people on forums who just have that negative mindset. That "can't be done" mentality. Day trading is a scam!! It can certainly be done. Prove it, you bastard. I'm posting to this particular forum because I don't see much of that here and apparently the mods to a good job of not tolerating it. As the mod wrote in the rules, they're most likely raging from a loss. Also, the Stocktwits mentality of "AAPL is going to TANK on the open! $180, here we come. $$$" , or the grandiose stories, "I just knew AMZN was going to go up on earnings. I could feel it. I went ALL IN. Options money, baby! ka-ching!$" Lol, that is so toxic to a new trader. Get away from that. How will you be able to remain nimble when this is your thought process?
Be good to yourself. Stop beating yourself up. You're an entrepreneur. You're boldly going where no man has gone before. You've got balls.
Acknowledge your mistakes, don't identify with them. You are not your mistakes and you are not your bad habits. These are only things that you do, and you can take action necessary to do them less.
It doesn't matter what people think. Maybe they think you're a fool, a gambler. You don't need their approval. You don't need to talk to your co-workers and friends about it to satisfy some subconscious plea for guidance; is this a good idea?
You don't need anyone's permission to become the person you want to be.
They don't believe in you? Fuck 'em. I believe in you.

Back to the trenches I guess. Some of you might remember my last post over proffesional approaches to the markets. If not I suggest you take a look on it before reading this.
https://www.reddit.com/Forex/comments/cxymyf/a_peek_into_how_financial_institutions_play_this/
I promised to discuss some stuff about macroeconomic approaches to forex, and well, with some delay here I am. Again, here I introduce the very same disclaimer. This is a professional approach, not coming from retail. Take everything with a grain of salt, and exercise proper due diligence with your approach. Sincerely hope you get something out of this post.
An inconvenient, forex truth
You've been there, struggling and suffering for a while. You have experienced the pain that the markets can unleash on you. You have left positions on the red for longer than your sanity could possible hold. You have opened positions that moved to the green, but you did not take any profits and you let that position slowly die and possibly causing huge loses. Now here you are , in October 2019, possibly as a breakeven trader, still suffering and trying. You have researched hundreds of indicators, if not thousands. You thought you have all sorted out with your RSI , stochastics and TDI. Yet you have switched between strategies more than you have changed your underpants in your whole life. Spent too many hours looking at the screen, wondering what the hell you are still missing.
And the incovenient truth is that you want the glitz and the glamour, and the caviar, but you are not willing to eat the shit. And this is the shit: How are you expecting to make any good money on a field where you dont know virtually anything about it. Nor the substance that you are trading, nor what moves it. How are you actually expecting to beat guys that breath and eat economics?. You know literally nothing about volatility and liquidity, about interbanking flows , about puts and calls, market microestructure and price delivery mechanisms both on OTC markets and CME , what is GDP , how is calculated and why is critical. CPI, NMI, GDP to debt ratios, UST, repo markets, shadow banking, carry diferentials, how and why commodities alter certain currencies. EM vs G10 currencies, pegged vs unpegged. Balances of Payments.... When you hear "greeks" you are thinking about the Iliad or Athens. You know nothing about business and credit cycles. Valuation anchors, return to the mean, standard deviations, fair values. I could go on and on and on. Does this make you uncomfortable? It should.
You have dozens of the best students that the world can produce, coming out of the London School of Economics, or from IT degrees in Harvard and MIT, all moving into freaking huge financial institutions, building complex system, doing incredible research . Funded to an extreme you can not imagine. Working in partnership with the IMF and Central Banks all aroundthe world. PhD's dedicating their lifes to such complex systems and situations....... and yet here you are, insolent and ignorant piece of s***, you that have been trying to make your "RSI" or "stochastic" work for 2 months, trying to beat this multi billion-trillionaire infrastrucure. Do you start to realize where the f*** do you stand? Do you really believe even for a freaking second that you can beat them on their game? Using RSI or Ichimoku? EAT.THIS.SHIT.
And its not that technicals are not necesary. They are. But believe me, I (and most pro's that I've ever engaged with) spent less than 1/5 of the time actually managing trades and looking at price charts. If I'm not scalping , my day starts with me reading around 12 to 15 research papers coming from the main financial institutions, glued to my Reuters terminal reading more reports, looking at polls, updating my macroeconomic models with the latest data, performing calculations related to options...... only then, with a fundamental trading idea, I will move to evaluate technicals to see if the timing is good.
I want to learn, how shall I procede?
You want to build a lasting and enjoyable relationship with the market? EAT THE SHIT, and do all that is under your control to actually be able to open The Financial Times and understand what they are talking about. It will take you years, and for the education, hundreds of dollars. But this is how it goes if you want to get real. This is career, not a hobby. This is simply the way to be consistent. EAT THE SHIT.
I compiled some resources to get you started:
ACATIS Konferenz 2016, Mr. Koo, Surviving in the Intellectually Bankrupt Monetary Policy Environment - A great video coming from Nomura, to understand the actual shitty situation in the Eurozone.
Online Courses - Look for IMF on EDX. Also, a fenomenal course on Banking and Money in Coursera.
Books -
Macroeconomics, Gregory Mankiw - Start here to graps the basic concepts
Financial Times Guide to the Financial Markets
Financial Times Guide to Banking
Applied Financial Macroeconomics and Investment Strategy: A Practitioner’s Guide to Tactical Asset Allocation
The Holy Grail of Macroeconomics: Lessons from Japan's Great Recession
The Escape from Balance Sheet Recession and the QE Trap: A Hazardous Road for the World Economy
The Other Half of Macroeconomics and the Fate of Globalization (English Edition)
The new lombard street - how the fed became the dealer of last resort
Foreign Exchange , Amy Middleton
The Role of Currency in Institutional Portfolios, Momtchil Pojarliev and Richard M. Levich
Currency Overlay: A Practical Guide, Second Edition, Hai Xin
The Handbook of Corporate Financial Risk (2nd edition)
Trade Stocks and Commodities with the Insiders: Secrets of the COT Report (Wiley Trading)
How I Made One Million Dollars Last Year Trading Commodities
Market Liquidity: Theory, Evidence, and Policy (English Edition)
Trading And Exchanges: Market Microstructure For Practitioners
The Microstructure Approach to Exchange Rates
The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve
Big Debt Crises
Payments Systems in the U.S. - Third Edition: A Guide for the Payments Professional
The Volatility Machine: Emerging Economics and the Threat of Financial Collapse (English Edition)
Stabilizing an Unstable Economy

Hello, so I did a bit of a research and I'm really curious how do I become better in trading? I'm ambitious young guy who suffers with Obsesive-Compulsive disorder and forex trading is driving me insane.. I want to know it all man and I don't care how much time will it take! I'm following RSI and moving averages indicators on tradingview.com and buying/selling depends if it's way above average or way below average. I mostly do scalping techniques - I was trading on demo account for like a year and right now I'm trading with my real money (invested 100 EUR and now I'm 120 EUR after 4 months of trading).. I still feel like a newbie with this dumb technique which is probably most of the people doing, so my question is: how do I become better and understand the market from technical side/statistics side etc? Are there any useful videos/books (rather books) which are really useful for understanding? I don't mind learning the hardest things which take time.. but right now I really don't feel I'm progressing any further. Thank you for any links, comments etc.

Hey how are you guys doing. So I come primarily from the forex side of things. Also wanted to mess around with scalping/day trading options on a paper trading account. Still very confused on how to position size and the profit/loss potential when scalping options. Does anyone know of anything about this or know of any books/websites that can help me out?(there doesnt seem to be much information on the internet about options scalping)

Almost every day people come to this subreddit asking the same basic questions over and over again. I've put this guide together to point you in the right direction and help you get started on your forex journey.
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A quick background on me before you ask: My name is Bob, I'm based out of western Canada. I started my forex journey back in January 2018 and am still learning. However I am trading live, not on demo accounts. I also code my own EA's. I not certified, licensed, insured, or even remotely qualified as a professional in the finance industry. Nothing I say constitutes financial advice. Take what I'm saying with a grain of salt, but everything I've outlined below is a synopsis of some tough lessons I've learned over the last year of being in this business.
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LET'S GET SOME UNPLEASANTNESS OUT OF THE WAY
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I'm going to call you stupid. I'm also going to call you dumb. I'm going to call you many other things. I do this because odds are, you are stupid, foolish,and just asking to have your money taken away. Welcome to the 95% of retail traders. Perhaps uneducated or uninformed are better phrases, but I've never been a big proponent of being politically correct.
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Want to get out of the 95% and join the 5% of us who actually make money doing this? Put your grown up pants on, buck up, and don't give me any of this pc "This is hurting my feelings so I'm not going to listen to you" bullshit that the world has been moving towards.
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Let's rip the bandage off quickly on this point - the world does not give a fuck about you. At one point maybe it did, it was this amazing vision nicknamed the American Dream. It died an agonizing, horrible death at the hand of capitalists and entrepreneurs. The world today revolves around money. Your money, my money, everybody's money. People want to take your money to add it to theirs. They don't give a fuck if it forces you out on the street and your family has to live in cardboard box. The world just stopped caring in general. It sucks, but it's the way the world works now. Welcome to the new world order. It's called Capitalism.
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And here comes the next hard truth that you will need to accept - Forex is a cruel bitch of a mistress. She will hurt you. She will torment you. She will give you nightmares. She will keep you awake at night. And then she will tease you with a glimmer of hope to lure you into a false sense of security before she then guts you like a fish and shows you what your insides look like. This statement applies to all trading markets - they are cruel, ruthless, and not for the weak minded.
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The sooner you accept these truths, the sooner you will become profitable. Don't accept it? That's fine. Don't bother reading any further. If I've offended you I don't give a fuck. You can run back home and hide under your bed. The world doesn't care and neither do I.
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For what it's worth - I am not normally an major condescending asshole like the above paragraphs would suggest. In fact, if you look through my posts on this subreddit you will see I am actually quite helpful most of the time to many people who come here. But I need you to really understand that Forex is not for most people. It will make you cry. And if the markets themselves don't do it, the people in the markets will.
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LESSON 1 - LEARN THE BASICS
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Save yourself and everybody here a bunch of time - learn the basics of forex. You can learn the basics for free - BabyPips has one of the best free courses online which explains what exactly forex is, how it works, different strategies and methods of how to approach trading, and many other amazing topics.
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You can access the BabyPips course by clicking this link: https://www.babypips.com/learn/forex
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Do EVERY course in the School of Pipsology. It's free, it's comprehensive, and it will save you from a lot of trouble. It also has the added benefit of preventing you from looking foolish and uneducated when you come here asking for help if you already know this stuff.
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If you still have questions about how forex works, please see the FREE RESOURCES links on the /Forex FAQ which can be found here: https://www.reddit.com/Forex/wiki/index
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Quiz Time
Answer these questions truthfully to yourself:
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-What is the difference between a market order, a stop order, and a limit order?
-How do you draw a support/resistance line? (Demonstrate it to yourself)
-What is the difference between MACD, RSI, and Stochastic indicators?
-What is fundamental analysis and how does it differ from technical analysis and price action trading?
-True or False: It's better to have a broker who gives you 500:1 margin instead of 50:1 margin. Be able to justify your reasoning.
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If you don't know to answer to any of these questions, then you aren't ready to move on. Go back to the School of Pipsology linked above and do it all again.
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If you can answer these questions without having to refer to any kind of reference then congratulations, you are ready to move past being a forex newbie and are ready to dive into the wonderful world of currency trading! Move onto Lesson 2 below.
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LESSON 2 - RANDOM STRANGERS ARE NOT GOING TO HELP YOU GET RICH IN FOREX
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This may come as a bit of a shock to you, but that random stranger on instagram who is posting about how he is killing it on forex is not trying to insprire you to greatness. He's also not trying to help you. He's also not trying to teach you how to attain financial freedom.
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99.99999% of people posting about wanting to help you become rich in forex are LYING TO YOU.
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Why would such nice, polite people do such a thing? Because THEY ARE TRYING TO PROFIT FROM YOUR STUPIDITY.
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Plain and simple. Here's just a few ways these "experts" and "gurus" profit from you:
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• Referral Links - If they require you to click a specific link to signup for something, it means they are an affiliate. They get a commission from whatever the third party is that they are sending you to. I don't care if it's a brokerage, training program, hell even an Amazon link to a book - if they insist you have to click their super exclusive, can't-get-this-deal-any-other-way-but-clicking-my-link type bullshit, it's an affiliate link. There is nothing inherently wrong with affiliate programs, but you are literally generating money for some stranger because they convinced you to buy something. Some brokers such as ICMarkets have affiliate programs that payout a percentage of the commission you generate - this is a really clever system - whether you profit or blow your entire account, the person who referred you to the broker makes a profit off you. Clever eh?
• Signal Services, Education & Training Programs, Courses - If somebody is telling you they are making a killing with a signal service and are trying to convince you to join it, I guarantee they are getting a piece of your monthly fee. And better still, these signal services often work...for about a week. Just long enough to suck a bunch of poor fools into it. You see people making money, you want in so you agree to pay the $200+/month subscription fee. You follow the signals and it looks like it's making money for a few days or weeks. Then it turns sideways, you start losing money hand over fist. Pretty soon you have lost most of your trading account because you blindly followed a signal service. And better still - when you go screaming at the person running the signal service they will be very quick to point you to their No Refunds policy. To add insult to injury, the buttfucker that referred you to the signal service in the past will likely listen to you getting mad, and then come back with something like "Sorry it didn't work out, but I just joined this other amazing service and it's working great, you should come join it to earn your money back. Here's my link..." You get the point here right?
• Multi-Level Marketing (MLMs) - These people are scum. They are going to offer you training and education, signals, access to forex experts and gurus, and all kinds of other shit with the promise that you will live the dream and become financially free. They are also loading you into a pyrmaid scheme where you will be hounded to recruit other people and make money off them just like you got roped into it. A really prime example here is iMarkets Live (or IML for short). Don't touch this shit with a 10 foot pole. I don't care what they are claiming, you will lose everything using them.
• Fund Managers - These people make my skin crawl. It's a classic scam and it works like this - somebody will post online about how much money they are making trading forex/commodities/stocks/whatever. Most of the time they won't explicitly post they are offering a trading service, rather they just put the message out there and wait for the ignorant masses (that's you) to contact them. They will charm you. They will lie to you. They will promise you the moon if you simply wire them some money or give them API access to your trading account. Care to guess what happens next? If you send a wire transfer (or Western Union...hell any kind of payment to them) they will vanish. Happens usually after they take a bunch of suckers for the ride. You sent them $2,000 and so do 9 other suckers. They just made $20,000 and are gone. With API access to your account, you will find your account gets blown super fast or worse - possibly leaving you open to persecution by the broker you are using.

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These are just a few examples. The reality is that very few people make it big in forex or any kind of trading. If somebody is trying to sell you the dream, they are essentially a magician - making you look the other way while they snatch your wallet and clean you out.
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Additionally, on the topic of fund managers - legitimate fund managers will be certified, licensed, and insured. Ask them for proof of those 3 things. What they typically look like are:

• Certified - This varies from country to country, in the US it's FINRA (http://www.finra.org). They need to have their Series 7 certification minimum. You can make the case that other FINRA certifications are acceptable in lieu of Series 7, but the 7 is the gold standard.
• Licensed - They need to have a valid business license issued by the government. It must clearly state they are an investment company, preferrably a hedge fund because they have some super strict requirements to operate (and often require $25,000+ in fees just to get their business license, so you know they at least have some skin in the game).
• Insured - They need to be backed by an insurance company. I'm not talking general insurance for shit like their office burning down. I'm talking about a government-implemented protection insurance program - in the US I believe that is issued by the Securities Investment Protection Corporation (https://www.sipc.org/).

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If you are talking to a fund manager and they are insisting they have all of these, get a copy of their verification documents and lookup their licenses on the directories of the issuers to verify they are valid. If they are, then at least you are talking to somebody who seems to have their shit together and is doing investment management and trading as a professional and you are at least partially protected when the shit hits the fan.
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LESSON 3 - UNDERSTAND YOUR RISK
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Many people jump into Forex, drop $2000 into a broker account and start trading 1 lot orders because they signed up with a broker thinking they will get rich because they were given 500:1 margin and can risk it all on each trade. Worst-case scenario you lose your account, best case scenario you become a millionaire very quickly. Seems like a pretty good gamble right? You are dead wrong.
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As a new trader, you should never risk more than 1% of your account balance on a trade. If you have some experience and are confident and doing well, then it's perfectly natural to risk 2-3% of your account per trade. Anybody who risks more than 4-5% of their account on a single trade deserves to blow their account. At that point you aren't trading, you are gambling. Don't pretend you are a trader when really you are just putting everything on red and hoping the roulette ball lands in the right spot. It's stupid and reckless and going to screw you very quickly.
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Let's do some math here:
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You put $2,000 into your trading account.
Risking 1% means you are willing to lose $20 per trade. That means you are going to be trading micro lots, or 0.01 lots most likely ($0.10/pip). At that level you can have a trade stop loss at -200 pips and only lose $20. It's the best starting point for anybody. Additionally, if you SL 20 trades in a row you are only down $200 (or 10% of your account) which isn't that difficult to recover from.
Risking 3% means you are willing to lose $60 per trade. You could do mini lots at this point, which is 0.1 lots (or $1/pip). Let's say you SL on 20 trades in a row. You've just lost $1,200 or 60% of your account. Even veteran traders will go through periods of repeat SL'ing, you are not a special snowflake and are not immune to periods of major drawdown.
Risking 5% means you are willing to lose $100 per trade. SL 20 trades in a row, your account is blown. As Red Foreman would call it - Good job dumbass.
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Never risk more than 1% of your account on any trade until you can show that you are either consistently breaking even or making a profit. By consistently, I mean 200 trades minimum. You do 200 trades over a period of time and either break-even or make a profit, then you should be alright to increase your risk.
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Unfortunately, this is where many retail traders get greedy and blow it. They will do 10 trades and hit their profit target on 9 of them. They will start seeing huge piles of money in their future and get greedy. They will start taking more risk on their trades than their account can handle.
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200 trades of break-even or profitable performance risking 1% per trade. Don't even think about increasing your risk tolerance until you do it. When you get to this point, increase you risk to 2%. Do 1,000 trades at this level and show break-even or profit. If you blow your account, go back down to 1% until you can figure out what the hell you did differently or wrong, fix your strategy, and try again.
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Once you clear 1,000 trades at 2%, it's really up to you if you want to increase your risk. I don't recommend it. Even 2% is bordering on gambling to be honest.
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LESSON 4 - THE 500 PIP DRAWDOWN RULE
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This is a rule I created for myself and it's a great way to help protect your account from blowing.
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Sometimes the market goes insane. Like really insane. Insane to the point that your broker can't keep up and they can't hold your orders to the SL and TP levels you specified. They will try, but during a flash crash like we had at the start of January 2019 the rules can sometimes go flying out the window on account of the trading servers being unable to keep up with all the shit that's hitting the fan.
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Because of this I live by a rule I call the 500 Pip Drawdown Rule and it's really quite simple - Have enough funds in your account to cover a 500 pip drawdown on your largest open trade. I don't care if you set a SL of -50 pips. During a flash crash that shit sometimes just breaks.
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So let's use an example - you open a 0.1 lot short order on USDCAD and set the SL to 50 pips (so you'd only lose $50 if you hit stoploss). An hour later Trump makes some absurd announcement which causes a massive fundamental event on the market. A flash crash happens and over the course of the next few minutes USDCAD spikes up 500 pips, your broker is struggling to keep shit under control and your order slips through the cracks. By the time your broker is able to clear the backlog of orders and activity, your order closes out at 500 pips in the red. You just lost $500 when you intended initially to only risk $50.
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It gets kinda scary if you are dealing with whole lot orders. A single order with a 500 pip drawdown is $5,000 gone in an instant. That will decimate many trader accounts.
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Remember my statements above about Forex being a cruel bitch of a mistress? I wasn't kidding.
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Granted - the above scenario is very rare to actually happen. But glitches to happen from time to time. Broker servers go offline. Weird shit happens which sets off a fundamental shift. Lots of stuff can break your account very quickly if you aren't using proper risk management.
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LESSON 5 - UNDERSTAND DIFFERENT TRADING METHODOLOGIES
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Generally speaking, there are 3 trading methodologies that traders employ. It's important to figure out what method you intend to use before asking for help. Each has their pros and cons, and you can combine them in a somewhat hybrid methodology but that introduces challenges as well.
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In a nutshell:

• Price Action Trading (Sometimes called Naked Trading) is very effective at identifying when trends will start and finish. This gives you the advantage of staying ahead of the market and predicting when a change in trend direction will occur. It has the disadvantage of being really easy to screw it up if you don't plot your support and resistance lines properly and interpret the chart wrong. Because you can identify a change in trend direction, you'll generally make more profit on a new trend than a technical strategy will.
• Technical Analytics (or TA) uses math and statistics to try and identify where the market is headed or confirm/reject whether a trend is happening. It has the advantage of being very math and stat driven which is hard to refute the numbers, but it has the disadvantage of being late to the party when it comes to identifying trends (hence why people call TA a lagging strategy). When people fail using TA, it's not because of the math - it's because you misinterpreted what the math is telling you.
• Fundamental Analysis (or FA) uses news and macro scale events to predict what is going on. A really good example right now is Brexit, what a clusterfuck that is. Every time some major brexit news breaks it causes all sorts of choas in almost every currency pair. Fundamental trading has the highest potential profitability per trade but it also has the highest potential drawdown per trade.

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Now you may be thinking that you want to be a a price action trader - you should still learn the principles and concepts behind TA and FA. Same if you are planning to be a technical trader - you should learn about price action and fundamental analysis. More knowledge is better, always.
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With regards to technical analysis, you need to really understand what the different indicators are tell you. It's very easy to misinterpret what an indicator is telling you, which causes you to make a bad trade and lose money. It's also important to understand that every indicator can be tuned to your personal preferences.
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You might find, for example, that using Bollinger Bands with the normal 20 period SMA close, 2 standard deviation is not effective for how you look at the chart, but changing that to say a 20 period EMA average price, 1 standard deviation bollinger band indicator could give you significantly more insight.
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LESSON 6 - TIMEFRAMES MATTER
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Understanding the differences in which timeframes you trade on will make or break your chosen strategy. Some strategies work really well on Daily timeframes (i.e. Ichimoku) but they fall flat on their face if you use them on 1H timeframes, for example.
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There is no right or wrong answer on what timeframe is best to trade on. Generally speaking however, there are 2 things to consider:
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• Speed - If you are scalping (trading on the really fast candles like 1M, 5M, 15M, etc) odds are your trades are very short lived. Maybe 10 minutes to an hour tops. For the most part, scalping strategies will produce little profit per trade but make up for it in the sheer volume of trades. Whereas swing trading may only make a few trades but each one could be worth a significant amount of money.
• Spread (the fee you pay to the broker when you trade) - If you are a scalper, the spread is your worst enemy because you have to overcome it very fast to make a profit on your order. Whereas swing trading the spread hardly impacts you at all.

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If you are a total newbie to forex, I suggest you don't trade on anything shorter than the 1H timeframe when you are first learning. Trading on higher timeframes tends to be much more forgiving and profitable per trade. Scalping is a delicate art and requires finesse and can be very challenging when you are first starting out.
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LESSON 7 - AUTOBOTS...ROLL OUT!
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Yeah...I'm a geek and grew up with the Transformers franchise decades before Michael Bay came along. Deal with it.
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Forex bots are called EA's (Expert Advisors). They can be wonderous and devastating at the same time. /Forex is not really the best place to get help with them. That is what /algotrading is useful for. However some of us that lurk on /Forex code EA's and will try to assist when we can.
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Anybody can learn to code an EA. But just like how 95% of retail traders fail, I would estimate the same is true for forex bots. Either the strategy doesn't work, the code is buggy, or many other reasons can cause EA's to fail. Because EA's can often times run up hundreds of orders in a very quick period of time, it's critical that you test them repeatedly before letting them lose on a live trading account so they don't blow your account to pieces. You have been warned.
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If you want to learn how to code an EA, I suggest you start with MQL. It's a programming language which can be directly interpretted by Meta Trader. The Meta Trader terminal client even gives you a built in IDE for coding EA's in MQL. The downside is it can be buggy and glitchy and caused many frustrating hours of work to figure out what is wrong.
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If you don't want to learn MQL, you can code an EA up in just about any programming language. Python is really popular for forex bots for some reason. But that doesn't mean you couldn't do it in something like C++ or Java or hell even something more unusual like JQuery if you really wanted.
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I'm not going to get into the finer details of how to code EA's, there are some amazing guides out there. Just be careful with them. They can be your best friend and at the same time also your worst enemy when it comes to forex.
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One final note on EA's - don't buy them. Ever. Let me put this into perspective - I create an EA which is literally producing money for me automatically 24/5. If it really is a good EA which is profitable, there is no way in hell I'm selling it. I'm keeping it to myself to make a fortune off of. EA's that are for sale will not work, will blow your account, and the developer who coded it will tell you that's too darn bad but no refunds. Don't ever buy an EA from anybody.
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LESSON 8 - BRING ON THE HATERS
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You are going to find that this subreddit is frequented by trolls. Some of them will get really nasty. Some of them will threaten you. Some of them will just make you miserable. It's the price you pay for admission to the /Forex club.
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If you can't handle it, then I suggest you don't post here. Find a more newbie-friendly site. It sucks, but it's reality.
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We often refer to trolls on this subreddit as shitcunts. That's your word of the day. Learn it, love it. Shitcunts.
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YOU MADE IT, WELCOME TO FOREX!
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If you've made it through all of the above and aren't cringing or getting scared, then welcome aboard the forex train! You will fit in nicely here. Ask your questions and the non-shitcunts of our little corner of reddit will try to help you.
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Assuming this post doesn't get nuked and I don't get banned for it, I'll add more lessons to this post over time. Lessons I intend to add in the future:

• Demo Trading
• Why you will blow your first account and what to do when it happens
• Trading Psychology (this will be a beefy one and will take a while to put together)
• Exotics vs Majors and which you should focus on as a newbie (aka how to blow your account in a single trade with exotics)
• Which Broker Should You Use? (This is covered in pretty good detail on the FAQ already - https://www.reddit.com/Forex/wiki/index - so I may not bother)
• Hedging (there isn't really a good guide written on this anywhere)
• Doubling Your Risk to Save Your Ass or Lose a Shit Ton (aka Martingale & Anti-Martingale)
• Risk On/Off
• Forex Calendars
• Currency Strength / Heat Maps
• Swap
• Margin Calls (What are they and why are you getting them?)

If there is something else you feel should be included please drop a comment and I'll add it to the above list of pending topics.
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Cheers,
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Bob
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Hello everyone, lately i have been interested on the forex market a lot; risk and money management, technical analysis and forex news hype me up for some reason.
For about 2-3 months i only read some books about trading, especially J. J. Murphy technical analysis, after finishing reading the book i decided to put some real money on my brokerage account (just 100$) and go with the flow.
There were some days with a lot of profits, and some with a lot of losses but i continued and managed to reach 150 bucks after a month, not a lot but i'm proud with it. But i'm not here to talk about this...
Everytime i come across some traders on some forums, they say that the trading style is important and that you should keep consistent with it. (Talking about day trading, scalping..)
After analysing all my past trades, i noticed that i don't have a consistent trading style; sometimes my trades last 3-4 hours and sometimes i keep my trades open for 1-3 days to maximise the gain. After reading for a bit around the forums i look like an undecided monkey choosing between day trading and swing trading.
I'm a bit confused so bear with me, but i would like to know your opinion on my "undecided" style.

Im sry if u find some grammatical errors, english is not my mother language. Let me know and i will fix it.
First of all, look for at least half an hour without interruptions to read this manual.
This is the system that has created trading professionals. He has done it and today he continues doing it, as it happened with me.
It is not a system written in any forum, in fact I believe that it has been the first to collect all the ideas and create a structure to follow to carry them out, but these same ideas and procedures have been the ones that the winning traders have used during decades and will continue to use, since they are based on completely objective and real foundations.
Let's go to it:
Hi all.
It is known that the observation time makes the patterns elucidate, and after some time in the forum and throughout this trading world I have found many patterns in the responses of the people, I have reasoned about them, and I have realized their failures, why they fail to be profitable.
There are people who have put effort into this. Not all, but there are people who have really read a lot, studied a lot, learned a lot and tried a lot, and even then they are not able to achieve stable profitability.
The question is: Is there enough in that effort? Is there a specific moment in the line of learning where you start to be profitable? The question is, logically.
There are traders that generate constant profitability. Hedge funds, investment firms ... and the difference is in areas where people for some reason do not want to invest time.
Why are there more messages in the strategy forums than in the psychology, journals and fundamental analysis together?
As human beings, our brain is programmed to look for quick positive responses. In nature, the brain does not understand the concept of long-term investment. There is only a short-term investment made from the difference between what we think will cost us something and what we think it will contribute. If we think that it will cost us more than it can give us, we simply do not feel motivated. It is a simple mechanism.
The market plays with these mechanisms. There are more scalpers created from the search for that positive emotion than from the search for a scalping system.
In short, we are not programmed to operate, and there lies the fact that only a huge minority of operators are profitable.
Among others, I have observed several patterns of behavior that make a trader fail, and they are:
- Search for immediate pleasure: The trader wants to feel that he has won on the one hand, and on the other he wants to avoid the feeling of loss. Following this there are many traders who place a very low take profit and a very high stop loss. This is not bad if the probabilities have been reviewed before, the mathematical factor of hope, the relation with the drawdown .. but in the majority of the cases absolutely nothing of statistics is known. There is only that need to win. They win, they win, they win, until one day the odds do their job and the stop loss is touched, returning the account to its origins or leaving it with less money than it started. This does not work.
- Search for immediate wealth: Again it is something immediate. People want good emotions, and we want them already. The vast majority of traders approach this world with fantasies of wealth, women and expensive cars, but do not visualize hard work, the sickly hard work behind all this.
From there underlie behaviors like eternally looking for new robots or expert advisors that promise a lot of money, or new systems. The type of trader that has this integrated pattern is characterized by doing nothing more than that. Spend the day looking for new strategies Of course he never manages to earn constant money.
- Think that trading is easy: Trading is not easy, it is simple. Why? Because when you get the wisdom and experience necessary to find yourself in a state of superior knowledge about the market and effectively make money, it is very simple; you just have to apply the same equation again and again. However, it is not easy to reach this equation. This equation includes variables such as risk understanding, mathematics, certain characteristics in the personality that must be assimilated little by little, intelligence, a lot of experience ..
This is not easy. This is a business, and in fact it is one of the most difficult businesses in the world. It may seem simple to see a series of candles on a screen or perhaps a line, or any type of graphic, but it is not. Behind the screen there are hundreds of thousands of very intelligent professionals, very disciplined, very educated, very ...
This business is the most profitable in the world if you know how to carry, since it is based on the concept of compound interest, but it is also one of the most difficult. And I repeat. It's a business, not a game. I think you'll never hear a lawyer say to his boss: "We're going to focus all our time on finding a strategy that ALWAYS makes us win a trial, ALWAYS." What does it sound ridiculous? It sounds to me just as ridiculous for trading.
But you are not to blame, you have been subconsciously deceived through the advertising brokers and your own internal desires, to think that this is something easy.
- Lack of discipline: Trading is not something you can do 10 minutes on Monday and 6 on Thursday. This is not a game, and until you get a regular schedule you can not start earning money. There are people who open a graph one day for 5 minutes, then return to their normal life and then one week returns to look at it for other minutes.
Trading should not be treated as a hobby. If you want to win "some money" I advise you not even to get in, because you will end up losing something or a lot of money. You have to think if you really want trading to be part of your life. It's like when you meet a girl and you want to get married. Do you really want to get into this with all the consequences? Because otherwise it will not work.
Visualize the hard work behind this. Candle nights, frustrations, several hundred dollars lost (at the beginning) .. enter the world of trading with a really deep reason, if you lose a time and money that no one will return, and both things are finite!
- Know something and pretend to know everything: Making money in the markets is not based on painting the graph as a child a paper with crayon wax and pretend to make money.
It is not based on drawing lines or circles, or squares. It is based on understanding the operation of all these tools, the background of the why of the tools of trading.
A trend line only marks the cycle of a wave within a longer time frame, within a longer time frame, and so on indefinitely. In turn, this wave is divided into waves with a specific behavior, divided into smaller waves and Etcetera, and understanding that dynamic is fundamental to winning.
It is not the fact of drawing a line. That can be done by an 8 year old boy. It is the fact of UNDERSTANDING why.
There are traders who read two technical analysis books and a delta analysis book and believe that they are professionals, but do they really understand the behavior of the market? The answer is in their portfolios.
After this explanation that only 10% will have read, I will try to detail step by step something that is 90% yearning, and that will have quickly turned the scroll of your mouse to find the solution to all your problems while supporting the beer in a book of " become rich ", rotten by lack of use.
These steps must be carried out one by one, starting with the first, fulfilling it, moving on to the second, successively and growing. If steps are taken for granted, or not fully met, it simply will not work.
I know this will happen and the person who did it will think "Bah, this does not work." and you will return to your top strategy search routine.
That said, let start:
1º Create a REAL account with 50 dollars approximately:
_ Forget the demo accounts. They are a utopia, they do not work. There is infinite liquidity, without emotions and without slipagge.
These things will change when we enter the real market, and the most experienced person in the world will notice a sharp drop in their profitability when it happens to real accounts.
And not only using a demo account has disadvantages, but using a real one has advantages.
We will have a real slipagge with real liquidity. Real requotes and more. The most important: We will work our emotions at the same time. Because yes, we will lose or win a couple of cents, but that has a subconscious impact of loss.
This means that we will begin to expand our comfort zone from the start.
Using a demo account is simply a disadvantage.
2º Buy a newspaper in the stationery or in Chinese (optional), or write one online or in Word:
A newspaper will be of GREAT help. You can not imagine, for those of you who do not have one, how a newspaper can exponentiate our learning curve. It is simply absurd not to have a diary. It's like taking a ticket of 5 instead of one of 100.
In this diary we will write down observations that we make about the operations that we will carry out in points that I will explain later of this same manual.
We will divide the newspaper into 2 parts:

• 1 part: The operation itself. We will write the reasons for each operation. The why we have done it.
  
• 2 part: How we feel. We will unburden ourselves without explaining how we feel, what our intuition tells us about that particular operation and so on.
  

How to use:
We will read the newspaper once a week, thinking about the emotions we felt each day and in what situations, and the reasons.
Soon, we will begin to realize that we have certain patterns in the way we feel and operate, and we will have the ability to change them.
We can also learn from mistakes that we make, and keep them always in a diary.
3º Look for a strategy that has the following characteristics:

• Make it SIMPLE. Nothing of 4 or more indicators or the colors of the gay flag drawn on the graph based on 1000 lines. Why? Because there is always an initial enthusiasm and maybe we can follow a complex strategy for a week, but burned that motivation, saturates us and we will leave it aside.

Therefore, the strategy must be simple. If we use metatrader, the default indicators work. No macd's no-lag and similar tools. That does not lead anywhere. And if you do not believe it, I'll tell you that in all areas of life comes marketing. In addition to trading towards MMA and now I do powerlifts, and there are 1000 exercises to do. However, the classics are still working and work very well. It seems that sellers of strange sports equipment do not share the same opinion, that the only thing they want is to sell!
4º Understand the strategy:

• We must gut each process of the strategy and reason about it. What does this indicator do? What does this process? Why this and not another? Why this exit ?. Some strategies will be based on unspecified outputs. This does not suppose any problem because as we get experience in that specific strategy, we will remember situations that have occurred, we will see situations that are repeated (patterns) and we will be able to find better starts and entrances. Everything is in our hands.

5° Collect essential statistical information:

• This part is FUNDAMENTAL, and no operator can have as much security in itself when operating as if it uses a strategy that has at least positive mathematical hope and an acceptable drawdown.
  
• Step 1: To carry out this collection of information you need to test the strategy for at least 100 signals. Yes, 100 signals.
  

Assuming it is an intraday strategy and we do an operation per day, it will take us 100 days (3 months and 10 days approx) to carry out the study. Logically these figures can change depending on the number of operations that we make up to date with the strategy.
I have no doubt that after reading this manual we will go for a quick strategy of scalpers, with 100 signals every 10 minutes where the seller comes out with a big smile in his promotional video.
I personally recommend a system of maximum 2 daily operations to start, but this point is personal.
Is it a long time? Go! It turns out that a college student of average intelligence takes 6 years to finish a career. It takes 6 years just to train, and there are even more races. This does not guarantee any profitability, and in any case most of Sometimes it will get a static return and not based on compound interest. I can never aspire to more.
The market offers compound profitability, there will be no bosses, nor schedules that we do not impose. We will always have work, and we can earn a lot more money than most people with careers or masters. Is it a long time? I do not think so.
As I was saying, we will test the strategy 100 times with our REAL account that we created in step 1. Did you decide to use a demo account? Better look for another manual; This has to be something serious. They are 100 dollars and will be the best investment of all in your career as a trader.

• Step 2: Once with the report of the 100 strategies in hand, we will collect the following information:
  
• How many times have we won and how many lost. Afterwards, we will find the percentage of correct answers.
  
• How much have we won and how much have we lost? Afterwards, we will find the average profit and the average loss.
  
• Step 3: With this information we will complete the mathematical hope formula:
  

(1 + average profit / average loss) * (percentage of correct answers / 100) -1
Example:

• Of the 100 operations there are 50 winners and 50 losers, then the success rate is 50%.
  
• Our average profit is 20 dollars and our average loss is 10 dollars.
  

Filling the formula:
(1 + 20/10) * (50/100) -1
(1 + 2) * (0,5) -1
3 * 0.5 - 1
1,5 - 1 = 0,5
In this example the mathematical expectation is 0.5. It is POSITIVE, because it is greater than 0. From 0, we will know that this strategy will make us earn money over time ALWAYS we respect the strategy.
If after a few days we modify it, then we will have to find this equation again with another 100 different operations. Easy? A result of "0" would mean that this strategy does not win or lose, but in the long run we would LOSE due to the spread and other random factors.
You have to try to find a strategy that, once this study is done, the result of your mathematical hope is greater than 0.2 as MINIMUM.
Finding this formula will also give a curious fact. The greater the take profit in relation to the stop loss, as a general rule more positive will be our mathematical hope. This has given many pages of discursiones about whether to place take profit> stop loss or vice versa.
If our stop was larger than the take profit, then the other ratio (% earned /% lost) should be yes or yes positive.
But this is just curiosities.
let's keep going:

• 6° Expand our comfort zone:

We will not be able to work with operations of 10 million dollars overnight, but we can progressively condition ourselves to that path.
Assuming all of the above, and with a real account, some experience in the 3 months of information gathering and a positive mathematical hope, we are ready to operate in real with some consistency. But how to carry it out?
The comfort zone is the psychological limits we have before feeling fear or emotional tension. When we get into a fight, we have left our comfort zone and we feel tension, unless we have a psychopathic disorder.
Every time we lean out onto a 300-meter balcony from a skyscraper, we move away from the comfort zone. Every time we speak to a depampanante woman, we move away from our comfort zone.
Our brain creates a comfort zone to differentiate what we usually do and is not substantially dangerous, from the unknown and potentially dangerous to our survival or reproduction. And whenever the brain interprets that these two aspects are in danger, we will feel negative emotions like fear, disgust, loneliness, fury, etcetera.
This topic is much more profound and you would have to read several volumes of evolutionism to understand the why of each thing. The only thing that interests us here is the "what", and the one, that is, that there is a certain comfort zone that must be expanded without any problems.
With trading, exactly the same thing happens. The forex market is a virtual environment in which we lose or gain things, but our brain does not differentiate between reality and what is not, it only attends to stimuli of a certain type.
We can lose food in the middle of the forest or also a crude oil operation.
Our goal is to condition our subconscious so that it is progressively accepting lost and small benefits, and as time goes by, bigger.
The exercise to achieve this is the following:

• We will operate on that account of 100 dollars with our mathematically positive strategy for 3 more months.
  
• After these three months, our account should have benefits, because of the mathematically positive strategy.
  
• We will enter 200 dollars more and we will operate a month more raising the lots according to our risk management (I do not advise that the risk is greater than 2%)
  

At this point, I know how hard it is to resign myself to impatience, but follow those times and do not skip it even if you feel safe, but you will fail, it's simple.
Let's keep going:

• After that month, we will raise our capital again with a new income. This time we will enter 1000 dollars (save if you do not have 1000 dollars loose, you will recover later on, do you want to make money, enter 1000 dollars.

We will test the operation one month with this new injection. We probably notice difficulties. More blockages, more euphoria when winning ... how will we know when to move on to the next entry? When we do not feel ANYTHING or at most something very shallow, when win or lose If observing the wall and operating is for you the same from an emotional point of view, it is time to enter more money.

• We will follow this procedure until we have a basic account of 21000 dollars. The amounts to be paid will depend on our ability to not feel emotions, a capacity that will be taking over time.

We will raise capital until we feel that we block too much. In that case we will drawdown to a more acceptable amount, and we will continue at that level until get discipline and lack of reactivity at that level. Later, we will go up.

• If we want to earn more money, we will continue entering and entering. Always following the conditioning scheme of 1 month.

Why a month?
A study conducted in the United States revealed that the subconscious needs an average of 28 days to create new habits or eliminate old habits. Emotional reactions are part of the habits. If we maintain some pressure of any emotion during the opportune time, in this case 28 days, will create tolerance and the subconscious will need a more intense version of the stimulus to activate.
AND THAT'S ALL!
Follow these steps and you will triumph. Here is the golden chalice, the tomb of Jesus or whatever you want to call it. There is no more mystery in the world of trading. This system will accompany you during the next year, year and a half. It's the one I used and it WORKS. Once done, you will have a very profitable system integrated into your being, since not only will it be mathematically viable, but you will also have the necessary experience to make it infinitely more profitable yet.
In addition, you will have psychology fully worked on a professional level to have conditioned your subconscious gradually.
Happy trading to all of u guys.-

Any suggestions?

EDIT: I realize this is long, but I feel it's important to have this info out there. Maybe save it for later when you see this narrative being pushed around so you can come back and get the other side.
EDIT 2: TL:DR - Most negative analysis on this sub lately of Tether are likely from a single biased source that stretches a lot to make his points, and there is simply not enough Tether in the market nor is it concentrated enough to create a catastrophic problem or significant inflation for any USDT currency pair.
Like many of you, I have heard the stories and posts about the fraudulent tether, I trade in this space on many exchanges and the growing concern is worrying, so I did my due diligence, and I would like to share it with the community.
First and most importantly IMO, all this controversy stems from just one account/person. A person on twitter going by the handle @Bitfinexed - https://twitter.com/Bitfinexed
Here you can see this person's writings - https://medium.com/@bitfinexed/latest
Spoofy, Tethers and institutional investors are what they contend to be the lies and fraud, AND that this entire rally in 2017 is based on fraudulent Tethers and spoofing, and that this will implode the markets.
I feel this is also important… Turns out this person sold at $1000, maybe the real reason he is on this mission??… https://twitter.com/whalepool/status/896460700461277185
Now for some troubling info, the majority of this narrative (FUD??) here on Reddit in the last month come from just three accounts.
https://www.reddit.com/useAtlasRand1/submitted/
https://www.reddit.com/usecetusfund/submitted/
https://www.reddit.com/useAnythingForSuccess
As you can see these accounts entire mission is to post constantly about this. They all show up on the other’s post to comment regularly.
Btw, some people on the pro-finex side think this is a smear campaign from other exchanges. I don’t believe this to be the case. This person(s) only talk about TetheFinex, yet Tether is used and traded by the $millions daily on 3 of the top 5 exchanges, Finex, Bittrex, Polo, yet never a word about those other exchanges. (Check the USDT volume on other exchanges) https://coinmarketcap.com/assets/tethe#markets
Therefore, if it is an exchange, it isn’t Trex/Polo because this would affect them as well. If it was an exchange other than Trex/Polo they would have plenty of fire power against 3 of the top 5 exchanges with Tether fraud.
This leads me to believe it is most likely a sad person(s) with an ax to grind. They might have lost their $ on Finex to what they believe are spoofers/fraud and or they were part of the finex hack and sold there BFX too early.
Btw I see contention that Bitfinex did NOT pay back the $ from the hack. They did, but some people are mad because they sold BFX early and didn’t recoup full $ amount from haircuts, but that was their decision.
~ POINTS OF CONTENTION
SPOOFING This is what set my alarm bells off about these articles I read from Bitfinexed. Specifically spoofing… https://hackernoon.com/meet-spoofy-how-a-single-entity-dominates-the-price-of-bitcoin-39c711d28eb4
and this nugget…“And who the hell is going to go margin long so dramatically after a huge crash?” from this article… https://medium.com/@bitfinexed/are-fraudulent-tethers-being-used-for-margin-lending-on-bitfinex-5de9dd80f330
Claiming spoofing shows this person has limited markets/trading knowledge. Clearly they haven’t watched an order book of any exchange in crypto, equities, or Forex.
This is called scalping or scare walls. Again this is done in every market around the globe.
Here is a professional FOREX trader talking about scalping, how it works, who/why they do it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYMIPmgRb_M&list=WL&index=94
TL;DW - they do this to get the price where they want it because they know people are watching the order book (the video is quite enlightening), and the key point that keeps this from being an illegal activity (on regulated exchanges) is THAT THEY DO MAKE TRADES FOR THOSE SIZES eventually. This doesn’t always work and they get stuck in these positions. Risk/reward.
The ironic part about this spoofing idea is Finex is one of the few, if not only exchanges, that offer hidden orders. So people trying to scalp always have to worry if there is a monster hidden order lurking.
Go to the UPDATE: AUGUST 7TH of this story and watch the video he claims proves spoofing and Phil Potter admitting it in the voice over. https://hackernoon.com/meet-spoofy-how-a-single-entity-dominates-the-price-of-bitcoin-39c711d28eb4
I see nothing wrong with what Phil says and no proof of anything in the video. Again this is true on every exchange trading anything of volume in the world. People with large amounts of money move markets, oh the horror. I “technically” do this when I place an order and pull it for whatever reason (scared, mistake, etc.) just not in large sums, but I would if I had large sums.
“And who the hell is going to go margin long so dramatically after a huge crash?” The crash they are referring to is from the early June ATH to the mid-July correction. A 45-day crash? Well, I am one of those people that went margin long. And many many others who read charts, resistance, support, retracement info. Again, this smacks of someone who doesn’t know what they are talking about.
REASON FOR PRICE RISE/BTC GOES UP WHEN TETHERS ARE CREATED
This is absurd. This completely negates everything else, the Japanese currency ruling and them entering the market, Koreans coming into the market in a huge way (they now have the largest exchange by far with close to a Billion traded DAILY, oh and they don’t use Tether at all), the successful hard fork, or the more (positive!) interest from the media and people than ever before in BTC history.
Instead, we are supposed to think that $395 million dollars of tethers are the reason for this rise in a $160+ Billion market cap. 
C’mon people! Look at that volume for the last 30 days. https://imgur.com/a/vKJ5g Also, the overwhelming majority of trade does not exist in Tether but KRW, CNY, USD, JPY.
Tethers are usually created when extra liquidity is needed, be it a crash or a spike. Because more people are trading.
They try to prove Tether boosts the market with this picture in their article. https://imgur.com/a/274SE
The problem is 2 of the last 3 tether dumps coincide with a downturn. In fact, there is nothing in this graph that proves this theory. Also, the last tether dump/price rise coincides perfectly with the news of the majority of miners signaling segwit2x for the first time (search bitcoin or btc around that date).
So do you think the market traded billions of $ at that time because of a $50 million Tether dump or because for the first time in YEARS a solution and path forward became visible??
THEY DON’T HAVE BANKING//NO INSTITUTIONAL INVESTORS/FAKE TETHERS-TERMS OF SERVICE
In regards to banking, clearly they have some kind of banking and a way for large amounts of fiat to get in and out. The banking is not for you and me but for regional bitcoin exchanges and other large customers.
You know how I know this? If they didn’t the internet would be flooded with Finex withdrawal issues, there would be a price premium on Bitfinex compared to other exchanges, just like Mt. Gox had for so long and also Bitfinex earlier in the year when the banking issues started.
This article explains it very clearly (seriously read this article), it has nothing to do with this controversy, just the banking issue in April.
https://medium.com/@Austerity_Sucks/why-bitfinex-went-from-a-premium-in-its-crypto-usd-pairs-to-now-a-significant-discount-e7be193d7cb0
TL;DR - All of the imbalances discussed (Finex premium) have been a result of USD frictions into Bitfinex. It has been a chain reaction resulting from the initial freeze to the various gradual withdrawal options. As soon as Bitfinex conclusively addresses the USD flow issues, the crypto pair prices will normalize (which they did) with other exchanges that don’t have banking frictions and USDT price will return to par (which it did).
The premiums on Finex and Tether are what would prove something is wrong, yet they are not here. Surprisingly Finex has been at a discount to GDAX and GEMINI recently. Meaning people are willing to take a loss on prices to be able to lend on Finex. This too will normalize as people/bots arb.
Aug 9th… From “arguably” bank fraud https://twitter.com/Bitfinexed/status/895339675120013313
Aug 22nd…. To “admitting” bank fraud https://twitter.com/Bitfinexed/status/900230917196836864
Listen to that audio in the second link, listen carefully. His explanation is perfectly reasonable. Banks don’t work well, consistently, or at all with crypto related companies (marijuana companies too for that matter) especially in jurisdictions that are outside US/Europe. Surprise surprise, this is nothing new. When they find out customers, deposits/wire are cryptos related they pull the plug (a reason why Trex/Polo don’t mess with USD).
Also, they gave their customers a haircut, probably a lot of complaints about the hack to Wells Fargo and other banks. These are the correspondent's banks, not Finex’s, they have banking. This is how they can receive large institutional deposits and withdrawals. Which I bet make up the majority of the fiat deposits and withdrawals.
Classic 80/20 business rule, 20% of your clients are providing 80% of the liquidity plus you are having banking issues (which is expected in crypto-land), so you cut this service to the 80% saving time/resources/headaches for the 20% loss in a single service to them (no fiat withdrawal/deposits- but crypto flows in and out with ease).
Again if they weren’t able to get money in and out there would be a premium, there would be a long line of complaints online. I have no reason (or proof) to believe that money is NOT coming into/out of the exchange.
It makes total sense too, they are the best lending platform, have one of the most liquid exchanges, and have by far the most reliable and best software/servers/UI/order options. You cannot deny this fact, they are constantly a top 3 exchange in volume, even after a hack.
I use Finex (as well as others) because of all those things. Also, they have already been hacked, a second hack seems less likely (IMO, they have more to lose with another hack). They have many big events on the horizon (Ethfinex). Would a company be putting resources into these things if this is all fraud or an exit scam? I find that unlikely. Is this 100% full proof? Of course not, nothing is, especially in crypto, just my reasons for trading there.
Institutional Investors - https://medium.com/@bitfinexed/are-legitimate-institutional-investors-really-coming-onto-bitfinex-s-platform-i-don-t-think-so-cb4ed5175092 Here is what this person doesn’t comprehend, what if these institutional investors are… you ready… here it comes… other exchanges that use Tether, as well as other crypto related businesses. It is only $395 million Tethers. These exchanges (Trex, Finex, Polo) are printing money.
This isn’t “someone” with 100’s of millions of dollars as the article suggests, it’s many people with millions/thousands of dollars. Again this all ignores the fact that many more people have entered the ecosystem this year. This is proven by Coinbase growth, transaction growth, and exchange growth (both in volume and # of exchanges), and growth in crypto-related sub-Reddits.
Yet Bitfinexed is shocked that lending hits ATH’s, but it is perfectly explainable and reasonable based on the evidence and data of gthe ecosystem. Let us not forget BTC is a finite amount, more people are going to increase demand/price, if you think this is a bubble... you haven’t seen anything yet.
The TOS are sketchy and a point of concern but there are two things to keep in mind- It was necessary to word it that way, and the market clearly doesn’t care.
If they had worded it that they will redeem no matter what, they would have money launderers flocking to the service (bogging down resources), plus law enforcement knocking.
Tethers weren’t created to get $ in/out of crypto but to provide a safe haven and liquidity on exchanges that don’t use USD. And I would say they are working perfectly. Very few are withdrawing USDT for USD.
I think it is precisely because of what the co-founder of tether refers to here (and below)… “If you want to convert USD₮ into fiat currency (or vice-versa) at tether.to, you must go through the whole “aggressive” KYC/AML process and get verified. I’ve heard from many who tried and were unable to provide sufficient documentation. Tether’s KYC/AML policies were written by experienced compliance officers and it’s critical that it be done properly and with diligence. It really is about “knowing your customer” and making sure that their uses are legitimate.” This is a perfectly reasonable explanation why people are not lining up to cash out of Tether, and also why large/reputable institutions can (exchanges, investors, etc.).
TETHERS REPLY TO ALL THIS, PLUS UPCOMING AUDIT https://tether.to/tether-update/
Now ask yourself this, would a company that is operating fraudulently have a roadmap of all these new features that no one will ever use if they don’t provide these promised audits as they say they will by the end of the year?
So as of now they have enough runway until the end of the year. I say we give TetheFinex the benefit of the doubt.
While Tether could be operating fractionally (so to could any exchange in crypto btw), there is no proof or evidence of it today. It trades at normalized rates. You can’t just create 100’s of million of dollars without the marketing realizing somewhere.
Sure, you can say this is a confidence game, but so is crypto, so is the USD, so is the concept of money. I see no reason to be more concerned with this risk than the already risky environment we trade in with exchanges.
WHAT IF I”M WRONG? CRYPTO WILL IMPLODE!
No it won’t. Sure there will be a dip maybe even a correction, but there are only 395 million Tethers. People will get out of Tether even at massive discounts (until $0) into crypto because they can’t get USD, but not more than the 395 million tethers circulating (at this time).
At a certain discount people will understand what is going on and stop trading for Tether. BTC + ETH is worth over $100 billion, how many time does the entire amount of USDT have to turn over to cause a massive crash?
What will get hit the hardest are the people left holding tether (if/when they implode) and Trex/Polo/Finex.
To think Polo/Trex would rely so much on USDT that they didn’t fully vet it is absurd as well. Whats more likely, Polo/Trex’s due diligence or this @Bitfinexed person based on conjecture?
I’ve already seen a Forbes contributor try and get ahold of Bitfinexed on twitter. https://twitter.com/laurashin/status/894437272241569792
Could I be wrong about all of this??? Of course, but, I feel I have provided more evidence than the other side. You are the Judge :)
USEFUL INFO
Some from u/udecker - Tether co-founder
Tether.to is who has the backing for the token, not Bitfinex. Bitfinex is a customer of Tether. If Bitfinex wants more Tether, they make a request to Tether, just like all other Tether customers. Tether waits for USD to show up, and when it does, creates the necessary tethers and credits Bitfinex. They both have Tawainese banking so money can flow back and forth easily. (The banking industry in the country of Taiwan are under scrutiny lately because of larger legal issues not involving crypto, but clearly affecting crypto companies)
https://wallet.tether.to/transparency
Tether wasn’t designed to be a profit machine. It was designed to be a utility for the crypto community to provide a stable token (with all the benefits of this). Tether’s business model is this: 1. Generate fees from wire deposits and withdrawals and conversions. 2. Interest income on the reserve.
Bitfinex’s parent company owns a 20% stake in Tether.
People say Tether isn’t being burned. But they are being recycled which is/was always an option.
I hope we can have a productive conversation around this without the usual Gox 2.0, sell it all, Bitfinex is the anti-christ comments with no substance. Give us your opinion and perspective because maybe I am missing something… but, maybe you are too.
This was quite time consuming (just ask my kids and boss, lol) So if you found this info helpful you can donate if you’d like here, if not, no biggie smalls :)
ETH - 0x0181D1C82229BAD741BB6c302ae523aE6DC9a1EE
BTC - 14Wz4SCuKwa81UBh1U7mcaCTxMsYLLuGZK
BCH- 16uby9gW79tjn5guQG8v5mTsdu6V6cYyKF

EDIT: I realize this is long, but I feel it's important to have this info out there. Maybe save it for later when you see this narrative being pushed around so you can come back and get the other side.
EDIT 2: TL:DR - Most negative analysis on this sub lately of Tether are likely from a single biased source that stretches a lot to make his points, and there is simply not enough Tether in the market nor is it concentrated enough to create a catastrophic problem or significant inflation for any USDT currency pair.
Like many of you, I have heard the stories and posts about the fraudulent tether, I trade in this space on many exchanges and the growing concern is worrying, so I did my due diligence, and I would like to share it with the community.
First and most importantly IMO, all this controversy stems from just one account/person. A person on twitter going by the handle @Bitfinexed - https://twitter.com/Bitfinexed
Here you can see this person's writings - https://medium.com/@bitfinexed/latest
Spoofy, Tethers and institutional investors are what they contend to be the lies and fraud, AND that this entire rally in 2017 is based on fraudulent Tethers and spoofing, and that this will implode the markets.
I feel this is also important… Turns out this person sold at $1000, maybe the real reason he is on this mission??… https://twitter.com/whalepool/status/896460700461277185
Now for some troubling info, the majority of this narrative (FUD??) here on Reddit in the last month come from just three accounts.
https://www.reddit.com/useAtlasRand1/submitted/
https://www.reddit.com/usecetusfund/submitted/
https://www.reddit.com/useAnythingForSuccess
As you can see these accounts entire mission is to post constantly about this. They all show up on the other’s post to comment regularly.
Btw, some people on the pro-finex side think this is a smear campaign from other exchanges. I don’t believe this to be the case. This person(s) only talk about TetheFinex, yet Tether is used and traded by the $millions daily on 3 of the top 5 exchanges, Finex, Bittrex, Polo, yet never a word about those other exchanges. (Check the USDT volume on other exchanges) https://coinmarketcap.com/assets/tethe#markets
Therefore, if it is an exchange, it isn’t Trex/Polo because this would affect them as well. If it was an exchange other than Trex/Polo they would have plenty of fire power against 3 of the top 5 exchanges with Tether fraud.
This leads me to believe it is most likely a sad person(s) with an ax to grind. They might have lost their $ on Finex to what they believe are spoofers/fraud and or they were part of the finex hack and sold there BFX too early.
Btw I see contention that Bitfinex did NOT pay back the $ from the hack. They did, but some people are mad because they sold BFX early and didn’t recoup full $ amount from haircuts, but that was their decision.
~ POINTS OF CONTENTION
SPOOFING This is what set my alarm bells off about these articles I read from Bitfinexed. Specifically spoofing… https://hackernoon.com/meet-spoofy-how-a-single-entity-dominates-the-price-of-bitcoin-39c711d28eb4
and this nugget…“And who the hell is going to go margin long so dramatically after a huge crash?” from this article… https://medium.com/@bitfinexed/are-fraudulent-tethers-being-used-for-margin-lending-on-bitfinex-5de9dd80f330
Claiming spoofing shows this person has limited markets/trading knowledge. Clearly they haven’t watched an order book of any exchange in crypto, equities, or Forex.
This is called scalping or scare walls. Again this is done in every market around the globe.
Here is a professional FOREX trader talking about scalping, how it works, who/why they do it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYMIPmgRb_M&list=WL&index=94
TL;DW - they do this to get the price where they want it because they know people are watching the order book (the video is quite enlightening), and the key point that keeps this from being an illegal activity (on regulated exchanges) is THAT THEY DO MAKE TRADES FOR THOSE SIZES eventually. This doesn’t always work and they get stuck in these positions. Risk/reward.
The ironic part about this spoofing idea is Finex is one of the few, if not only exchanges, that offer hidden orders. So people trying to scalp always have to worry if there is a monster hidden order lurking.
Go to the UPDATE: AUGUST 7TH of this story and watch the video he claims proves spoofing and Phil Potter admitting it in the voice over. https://hackernoon.com/meet-spoofy-how-a-single-entity-dominates-the-price-of-bitcoin-39c711d28eb4
I see nothing wrong with what Phil says and no proof of anything in the video. Again this is true on every exchange trading anything of volume in the world. People with large amounts of money move markets, oh the horror. I “technically” do this when I place an order and pull it for whatever reason (scared, mistake, etc.) just not in large sums, but I would if I had large sums.
“And who the hell is going to go margin long so dramatically after a huge crash?” The crash they are referring to is from the early June ATH to the mid-July correction. A 45-day crash? Well, I am one of those people that went margin long. And many many others who read charts, resistance, support, retracement info. Again, this smacks of someone who doesn’t know what they are talking about.
REASON FOR PRICE RISE/BTC GOES UP WHEN TETHERS ARE CREATED
This is absurd. This completely negates everything else, the Japanese currency ruling and them entering the market, Koreans coming into the market in a huge way (they now have the largest exchange by far with close to a Billion traded DAILY, oh and they don’t use Tether at all), the successful hard fork, or the more (positive!) interest from the media and people than ever before in BTC history.
Instead, we are supposed to think that $395 million dollars of tethers are the reason for this rise in a $160+ Billion market cap. 
C’mon people! Look at that volume for the last 30 days. https://imgur.com/a/vKJ5g Also, the overwhelming majority of trade does not exist in Tether but KRW, CNY, USD, JPY.
Tethers are usually created when extra liquidity is needed, be it a crash or a spike. Because more people are trading.
They try to prove Tether boosts the market with this picture in their article. https://imgur.com/a/274SE
The problem is 2 of the last 3 tether dumps coincide with a downturn. In fact, there is nothing in this graph that proves this theory. Also, the last tether dump/price rise coincides perfectly with the news of the majority of miners signaling segwit2x for the first time (search bitcoin or btc around that date).
So do you think the market traded billions of $ at that time because of a $50 million Tether dump or because for the first time in YEARS a solution and path forward became visible??
THEY DON’T HAVE BANKING//NO INSTITUTIONAL INVESTORS/FAKE TETHERS-TERMS OF SERVICE
In regards to banking, clearly they have some kind of banking and a way for large amounts of fiat to get in and out. The banking is not for you and me but for regional bitcoin exchanges and other large customers.
You know how I know this? If they didn’t the internet would be flooded with Finex withdrawal issues, there would be a price premium on Bitfinex compared to other exchanges, just like Mt. Gox had for so long and also Bitfinex earlier in the year when the banking issues started.
This article explains it very clearly (seriously read this article), it has nothing to do with this controversy, just the banking issue in April.
https://medium.com/@Austerity_Sucks/why-bitfinex-went-from-a-premium-in-its-crypto-usd-pairs-to-now-a-significant-discount-e7be193d7cb0
TL;DR - All of the imbalances discussed (Finex premium) have been a result of USD frictions into Bitfinex. It has been a chain reaction resulting from the initial freeze to the various gradual withdrawal options. As soon as Bitfinex conclusively addresses the USD flow issues, the crypto pair prices will normalize (which they did) with other exchanges that don’t have banking frictions and USDT price will return to par (which it did).
The premiums on Finex and Tether are what would prove something is wrong, yet they are not here. Surprisingly Finex has been at a discount to GDAX and GEMINI recently. Meaning people are willing to take a loss on prices to be able to lend on Finex. This too will normalize as people/bots arb.
Aug 9th… From “arguably” bank fraud https://twitter.com/Bitfinexed/status/895339675120013313
Aug 22nd…. To “admitting” bank fraud https://twitter.com/Bitfinexed/status/900230917196836864
Listen to that audio in the second link, listen carefully. His explanation is perfectly reasonable. Banks don’t work well, consistently, or at all with crypto related companies (marijuana companies too for that matter) especially in jurisdictions that are outside US/Europe. Surprise surprise, this is nothing new. When they find out customers, deposits/wire are cryptos related they pull the plug (a reason why Trex/Polo don’t mess with USD).
Also, they gave their customers a haircut, probably a lot of complaints about the hack to Wells Fargo and other banks. These are the correspondent's banks, not Finex’s, they have banking. This is how they can receive large institutional deposits and withdrawals. Which I bet make up the majority of the fiat deposits and withdrawals.
Classic 80/20 business rule, 20% of your clients are providing 80% of the liquidity plus you are having banking issues (which is expected in crypto-land), so you cut this service to the 80% saving time/resources/headaches for the 20% loss in a single service to them (no fiat withdrawal/deposits- but crypto flows in and out with ease).
Again if they weren’t able to get money in and out there would be a premium, there would be a long line of complaints online. I have no reason (or proof) to believe that money is NOT coming into/out of the exchange.
It makes total sense too, they are the best lending platform, have one of the most liquid exchanges, and have by far the most reliable and best software/servers/UI/order options. You cannot deny this fact, they are constantly a top 3 exchange in volume, even after a hack.
I use Finex (as well as others) because of all those things. Also, they have already been hacked, a second hack seems less likely (IMO, they have more to lose with another hack). They have many big events on the horizon (Ethfinex). Would a company be putting resources into these things if this is all fraud or an exit scam? I find that unlikely. Is this 100% full proof? Of course not, nothing is, especially in crypto, just my reasons for trading there.
Institutional Investors - https://medium.com/@bitfinexed/are-legitimate-institutional-investors-really-coming-onto-bitfinex-s-platform-i-don-t-think-so-cb4ed5175092 Here is what this person doesn’t comprehend, what if these institutional investors are… you ready… here it comes… other exchanges that use Tether, as well as other crypto related businesses. It is only $395 million Tethers. These exchanges (Trex, Finex, Polo) are printing money.
This isn’t “someone” with 100’s of millions of dollars as the article suggests, it’s many people with millions/thousands of dollars. Again this all ignores the fact that many more people have entered the ecosystem this year. This is proven by Coinbase growth, transaction growth, and exchange growth (both in volume and # of exchanges), and growth in crypto-related sub-Reddits.
Yet Bitfinexed is shocked that lending hits ATH’s, but it is perfectly explainable and reasonable based on the evidence and data of gthe ecosystem. Let us not forget BTC is a finite amount, more people are going to increase demand/price, if you think this is a bubble... you haven’t seen anything yet.
The TOS are sketchy and a point of concern but there are two things to keep in mind- It was necessary to word it that way, and the market clearly doesn’t care.
If they had worded it that they will redeem no matter what, they would have money launderers flocking to the service (bogging down resources), plus law enforcement knocking.
Tethers weren’t created to get $ in/out of crypto but to provide a safe haven and liquidity on exchanges that don’t use USD. And I would say they are working perfectly. Very few are withdrawing USDT for USD.
I think it is precisely because of what the co-founder of tether refers to here (and below)… “If you want to convert USD₮ into fiat currency (or vice-versa) at tether.to, you must go through the whole “aggressive” KYC/AML process and get verified. I’ve heard from many who tried and were unable to provide sufficient documentation. Tether’s KYC/AML policies were written by experienced compliance officers and it’s critical that it be done properly and with diligence. It really is about “knowing your customer” and making sure that their uses are legitimate.” This is a perfectly reasonable explanation why people are not lining up to cash out of Tether, and also why large/reputable institutions can (exchanges, investors, etc.).
TETHERS REPLY TO ALL THIS, PLUS UPCOMING AUDIT https://tether.to/tether-update/
Now ask yourself this, would a company that is operating fraudulently have a roadmap of all these new features that no one will ever use if they don’t provide these promised audits as they say they will by the end of the year?
So as of now they have enough runway until the end of the year. I say we give TetheFinex the benefit of the doubt.
While Tether could be operating fractionally (so to could any exchange in crypto btw), there is no proof or evidence of it today. It trades at normalized rates. You can’t just create 100’s of million of dollars without the marketing realizing somewhere.
Sure, you can say this is a confidence game, but so is crypto, so is the USD, so is the concept of money. I see no reason to be more concerned with this risk than the already risky environment we trade in with exchanges.
WHAT IF I”M WRONG? CRYPTO WILL IMPLODE!
No it won’t. Sure there will be a dip maybe even a correction, but there are only 395 million Tethers. People will get out of Tether even at massive discounts (until $0) into crypto because they can’t get USD, but not more than the 395 million tethers circulating (at this time).
At a certain discount people will understand what is going on and stop trading for Tether. BTC + ETH is worth over $100 billion, how many time does the entire amount of USDT have to turn over to cause a massive crash?
What will get hit the hardest are the people left holding tether (if/when they implode) and Trex/Polo/Finex.
To think Polo/Trex would rely so much on USDT that they didn’t fully vet it is absurd as well. Whats more likely, Polo/Trex’s due diligence or this @Bitfinexed person based on conjecture?
I’ve already seen a Forbes contributor try and get ahold of Bitfinexed on twitter. https://twitter.com/laurashin/status/894437272241569792
Could I be wrong about all of this??? Of course, but, I feel I have provided more evidence than the other side. You are the Judge :)
USEFUL INFO
Some from u/udecker - Tether co-founder
Tether.to is who has the backing for the token, not Bitfinex. Bitfinex is a customer of Tether. If Bitfinex wants more Tether, they make a request to Tether, just like all other Tether customers. Tether waits for USD to show up, and when it does, creates the necessary tethers and credits Bitfinex. They both have Tawainese banking so money can flow back and forth easily. (The banking industry in the country of Taiwan are under scrutiny lately because of larger legal issues not involving crypto, but clearly affecting crypto companies)
https://wallet.tether.to/transparency
Tether wasn’t designed to be a profit machine. It was designed to be a utility for the crypto community to provide a stable token (with all the benefits of this). Tether’s business model is this: 1. Generate fees from wire deposits and withdrawals and conversions. 2. Interest income on the reserve.
Bitfinex’s parent company owns a 20% stake in Tether.
People say Tether isn’t being burned. But they are being recycled which is/was always an option.
I hope we can have a productive conversation around this without the usual Gox 2.0, sell it all, Bitfinex is the anti-christ comments with no substance. Give us your opinion and perspective because maybe I am missing something… but, maybe you are too.
This was quite time consuming (just ask my kids and boss, lol) So if you found this info helpful you can donate if you’d like here, if not, no biggie smalls :)
BCH- 16uby9gW79tjn5guQG8v5mTsdu6V6cYyKF

EDIT: I realize this is long, but I feel it's important to have this info out there. Maybe save it for later when you see this narrative being pushed around so you can come back and get the other side.
EDIT 2: TL:DR - Most negative analysis on this sub lately of Tether are likely from a single biased source that stretches a lot to make his points, and there is simply not enough Tether in the market nor is it concentrated enough to create a catastrophic problem or significant inflation for any USDT currency pair.
Like many of you, I have heard the stories and posts about the fraudulent tether, I trade in this space on many exchanges and the growing concern is worrying, so I did my due diligence, and I would like to share it with the community.
First and most importantly IMO, all this controversy stems from just one account/person. A person on twitter going by the handle @Bitfinexed - https://twitter.com/Bitfinexed
Here you can see this person's writings - https://medium.com/@bitfinexed/latest
Spoofy, Tethers and institutional investors are what they contend to be the lies and fraud, AND that this entire rally in 2017 is based on fraudulent Tethers and spoofing, and that this will implode the markets.
I feel this is also important… Turns out this person sold at $1000, maybe the real reason he is on this mission??… https://twitter.com/whalepool/status/896460700461277185
Now for some troubling info, the majority of this narrative (FUD??) here on Reddit in the last month come from just three accounts.
https://www.reddit.com/useAtlasRand1/submitted/
https://www.reddit.com/usecetusfund/submitted/
https://www.reddit.com/useAnythingForSuccess
As you can see these accounts entire mission is to post constantly about this. They all show up on the other’s post to comment regularly.
Btw, some people on the pro-finex side think this is a smear campaign from other exchanges. I don’t believe this to be the case. This person(s) only talk about TetheFinex, yet Tether is used and traded by the $millions daily on 3 of the top 5 exchanges, Finex, Bittrex, Polo, yet never a word about those other exchanges. (Check the USDT volume on other exchanges) https://coinmarketcap.com/assets/tethe#markets
Therefore, if it is an exchange, it isn’t Trex/Polo because this would affect them as well. If it was an exchange other than Trex/Polo they would have plenty of fire power against 3 of the top 5 exchanges with Tether fraud.
This leads me to believe it is most likely a sad person(s) with an ax to grind. They might have lost their $ on Finex to what they believe are spoofers/fraud and or they were part of the finex hack and sold there BFX too early.
Btw I see contention that Bitfinex did NOT pay back the $ from the hack. They did, but some people are mad because they sold BFX early and didn’t recoup full $ amount from haircuts, but that was their decision.
~ POINTS OF CONTENTION
SPOOFING This is what set my alarm bells off about these articles I read from Bitfinexed. Specifically spoofing… https://hackernoon.com/meet-spoofy-how-a-single-entity-dominates-the-price-of-bitcoin-39c711d28eb4
and this nugget…“And who the hell is going to go margin long so dramatically after a huge crash?” from this article… https://medium.com/@bitfinexed/are-fraudulent-tethers-being-used-for-margin-lending-on-bitfinex-5de9dd80f330
Claiming spoofing shows this person has limited markets/trading knowledge. Clearly they haven’t watched an order book of any exchange in crypto, equities, or Forex.
This is called scalping or scare walls. Again this is done in every market around the globe.
Here is a professional FOREX trader talking about scalping, how it works, who/why they do it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYMIPmgRb_M&list=WL&index=94
TL;DW - they do this to get the price where they want it because they know people are watching the order book (the video is quite enlightening), and the key point that keeps this from being an illegal activity (on regulated exchanges) is THAT THEY DO MAKE TRADES FOR THOSE SIZES eventually. This doesn’t always work and they get stuck in these positions. Risk/reward.
The ironic part about this spoofing idea is Finex is one of the few, if not only exchanges, that offer hidden orders. So people trying to scalp always have to worry if there is a monster hidden order lurking.
Go to the UPDATE: AUGUST 7TH of this story and watch the video he claims proves spoofing and Phil Potter admitting it in the voice over. https://hackernoon.com/meet-spoofy-how-a-single-entity-dominates-the-price-of-bitcoin-39c711d28eb4
I see nothing wrong with what Phil says and no proof of anything in the video. Again this is true on every exchange trading anything of volume in the world. People with large amounts of money move markets, oh the horror. I “technically” do this when I place an order and pull it for whatever reason (scared, mistake, etc.) just not in large sums, but I would if I had large sums.
“And who the hell is going to go margin long so dramatically after a huge crash?” The crash they are referring to is from the early June ATH to the mid-July correction. A 45-day crash? Well, I am one of those people that went margin long. And many many others who read charts, resistance, support, retracement info. Again, this smacks of someone who doesn’t know what they are talking about.
REASON FOR PRICE RISE/BTC GOES UP WHEN TETHERS ARE CREATED
This is absurd. This completely negates everything else, the Japanese currency ruling and them entering the market, Koreans coming into the market in a huge way (they now have the largest exchange by far with close to a Billion traded DAILY, oh and they don’t use Tether at all), the successful hard fork, or the more (positive!) interest from the media and people than ever before in BTC history.
Instead, we are supposed to think that $395 million dollars of tethers are the reason for this rise in a $160+ Billion market cap. 
C’mon people! Look at that volume for the last 30 days. https://imgur.com/a/vKJ5g Also, the overwhelming majority of trade does not exist in Tether but KRW, CNY, USD, JPY.
Tethers are usually created when extra liquidity is needed, be it a crash or a spike. Because more people are trading.
They try to prove Tether boosts the market with this picture in their article. https://imgur.com/a/274SE
The problem is 2 of the last 3 tether dumps coincide with a downturn. In fact, there is nothing in this graph that proves this theory. Also, the last tether dump/price rise coincides perfectly with the news of the majority of miners signaling segwit2x for the first time (search bitcoin or btc around that date).
So do you think the market traded billions of $ at that time because of a $50 million Tether dump or because for the first time in YEARS a solution and path forward became visible??
THEY DON’T HAVE BANKING//NO INSTITUTIONAL INVESTORS/FAKE TETHERS-TERMS OF SERVICE
In regards to banking, clearly they have some kind of banking and a way for large amounts of fiat to get in and out. The banking is not for you and me but for regional bitcoin exchanges and other large customers.
You know how I know this? If they didn’t the internet would be flooded with Finex withdrawal issues, there would be a price premium on Bitfinex compared to other exchanges, just like Mt. Gox had for so long and also Bitfinex earlier in the year when the banking issues started.
This article explains it very clearly (seriously read this article), it has nothing to do with this controversy, just the banking issue in April.
https://medium.com/@Austerity_Sucks/why-bitfinex-went-from-a-premium-in-its-crypto-usd-pairs-to-now-a-significant-discount-e7be193d7cb0
TL;DR - All of the imbalances discussed (Finex premium) have been a result of USD frictions into Bitfinex. It has been a chain reaction resulting from the initial freeze to the various gradual withdrawal options. As soon as Bitfinex conclusively addresses the USD flow issues, the crypto pair prices will normalize (which they did) with other exchanges that don’t have banking frictions and USDT price will return to par (which it did).
The premiums on Finex and Tether are what would prove something is wrong, yet they are not here. Surprisingly Finex has been at a discount to GDAX and GEMINI recently. Meaning people are willing to take a loss on prices to be able to lend on Finex. This too will normalize as people/bots arb.
Aug 9th… From “arguably” bank fraud https://twitter.com/Bitfinexed/status/895339675120013313
Aug 22nd…. To “admitting” bank fraud https://twitter.com/Bitfinexed/status/900230917196836864
Listen to that audio in the second link, listen carefully. His explanation is perfectly reasonable. Banks don’t work well, consistently, or at all with crypto related companies (marijuana companies too for that matter) especially in jurisdictions that are outside US/Europe. Surprise surprise, this is nothing new. When they find out customers, deposits/wire are cryptos related they pull the plug (a reason why Trex/Polo don’t mess with USD).
Also, they gave their customers a haircut, probably a lot of complaints about the hack to Wells Fargo and other banks. These are the correspondent's banks, not Finex’s, they have banking. This is how they can receive large institutional deposits and withdrawals. Which I bet make up the majority of the fiat deposits and withdrawals.
Classic 80/20 business rule, 20% of your clients are providing 80% of the liquidity plus you are having banking issues (which is expected in crypto-land), so you cut this service to the 80% saving time/resources/headaches for the 20% loss in a single service to them (no fiat withdrawal/deposits- but crypto flows in and out with ease).
Again if they weren’t able to get money in and out there would be a premium, there would be a long line of complaints online. I have no reason (or proof) to believe that money is NOT coming into/out of the exchange.
It makes total sense too, they are the best lending platform, have one of the most liquid exchanges, and have by far the most reliable and best software/servers/UI/order options. You cannot deny this fact, they are constantly a top 3 exchange in volume, even after a hack.
I use Finex (as well as others) because of all those things. Also, they have already been hacked, a second hack seems less likely (IMO, they have more to lose with another hack). They have many big events on the horizon (Ethfinex). Would a company be putting resources into these things if this is all fraud or an exit scam? I find that unlikely. Is this 100% full proof? Of course not, nothing is, especially in crypto, just my reasons for trading there.
Institutional Investors - https://medium.com/@bitfinexed/are-legitimate-institutional-investors-really-coming-onto-bitfinex-s-platform-i-don-t-think-so-cb4ed5175092 Here is what this person doesn’t comprehend, what if these institutional investors are… you ready… here it comes… other exchanges that use Tether, as well as other crypto related businesses. It is only $395 million Tethers. These exchanges (Trex, Finex, Polo) are printing money.
This isn’t “someone” with 100’s of millions of dollars as the article suggests, it’s many people with millions/thousands of dollars. Again this all ignores the fact that many more people have entered the ecosystem this year. This is proven by Coinbase growth, transaction growth, and exchange growth (both in volume and # of exchanges), and growth in crypto-related sub-Reddits.
Yet Bitfinexed is shocked that lending hits ATH’s, but it is perfectly explainable and reasonable based on the evidence and data of gthe ecosystem. Let us not forget BTC is a finite amount, more people are going to increase demand/price, if you think this is a bubble... you haven’t seen anything yet.
The TOS are sketchy and a point of concern but there are two things to keep in mind- It was necessary to word it that way, and the market clearly doesn’t care.
If they had worded it that they will redeem no matter what, they would have money launderers flocking to the service (bogging down resources), plus law enforcement knocking.
Tethers weren’t created to get $ in/out of crypto but to provide a safe haven and liquidity on exchanges that don’t use USD. And I would say they are working perfectly. Very few are withdrawing USDT for USD.
I think it is precisely because of what the co-founder of tether refers to here (and below)… “If you want to convert USD₮ into fiat currency (or vice-versa) at tether.to, you must go through the whole “aggressive” KYC/AML process and get verified. I’ve heard from many who tried and were unable to provide sufficient documentation. Tether’s KYC/AML policies were written by experienced compliance officers and it’s critical that it be done properly and with diligence. It really is about “knowing your customer” and making sure that their uses are legitimate.” This is a perfectly reasonable explanation why people are not lining up to cash out of Tether, and also why large/reputable institutions can (exchanges, investors, etc.).
TETHERS REPLY TO ALL THIS, PLUS UPCOMING AUDIT https://tether.to/tether-update/
Now ask yourself this, would a company that is operating fraudulently have a roadmap of all these new features that no one will ever use if they don’t provide these promised audits as they say they will by the end of the year?
So as of now they have enough runway until the end of the year. I say we give TetheFinex the benefit of the doubt.
While Tether could be operating fractionally (so to could any exchange in crypto btw), there is no proof or evidence of it today. It trades at normalized rates. You can’t just create 100’s of million of dollars without the marketing realizing somewhere.
Sure, you can say this is a confidence game, but so is crypto, so is the USD, so is the concept of money. I see no reason to be more concerned with this risk than the already risky environment we trade in with exchanges.
WHAT IF I”M WRONG? CRYPTO WILL IMPLODE!
No it won’t. Sure there will be a dip maybe even a correction, but there are only 395 million Tethers. People will get out of Tether even at massive discounts (until $0) into crypto because they can’t get USD, but not more than the 395 million tethers circulating (at this time).
At a certain discount people will understand what is going on and stop trading for Tether. BTC + ETH is worth over $100 billion, how many time does the entire amount of USDT have to turn over to cause a massive crash?
What will get hit the hardest are the people left holding tether (if/when they implode) and Trex/Polo/Finex.
To think Polo/Trex would rely so much on USDT that they didn’t fully vet it is absurd as well. Whats more likely, Polo/Trex’s due diligence or this @Bitfinexed person based on conjecture?
I’ve already seen a Forbes contributor try and get ahold of Bitfinexed on twitter. https://twitter.com/laurashin/status/894437272241569792
Could I be wrong about all of this??? Of course, but, I feel I have provided more evidence than the other side. You are the Judge :)
USEFUL INFO
Some from u/udecker - Tether co-founder
Tether.to is who has the backing for the token, not Bitfinex. Bitfinex is a customer of Tether. If Bitfinex wants more Tether, they make a request to Tether, just like all other Tether customers. Tether waits for USD to show up, and when it does, creates the necessary tethers and credits Bitfinex. They both have Tawainese banking so money can flow back and forth easily. (The banking industry in the country of Taiwan are under scrutiny lately because of larger legal issues not involving crypto, but clearly affecting crypto companies)
https://wallet.tether.to/transparency
Tether wasn’t designed to be a profit machine. It was designed to be a utility for the crypto community to provide a stable token (with all the benefits of this). Tether’s business model is this: 1. Generate fees from wire deposits and withdrawals and conversions. 2. Interest income on the reserve.
Bitfinex’s parent company owns a 20% stake in Tether.
People say Tether isn’t being burned. But they are being recycled which is/was always an option.
I hope we can have a productive conversation around this without the usual Gox 2.0, sell it all, Bitfinex is the anti-christ comments with no substance. Give us your opinion and perspective because maybe I am missing something… but, maybe you are too.
This was quite time consuming (just ask my kids and boss, lol) So if you found this info helpful you can donate if you’d like here, if not, no biggie smalls :)
ETH - 0x0181D1C82229BAD741BB6c302ae523aE6DC9a1EE