The Investment Blog

I have a forex account and would like to know that people think is the best startegy to employ in the current market conditions?

If you have an account open and have begun to try to trade, then you’ve seen there are literally thousands of trading methods and indicators and signals and setups and triggers to exponential infinity if you begin to combine them.

There is no single "best" strategy. I know this is not what you want to hear, because your question presumes there IS a best strategy. There is no crystal ball or pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. That may seem harsh, but I’m going to beat you over the head with this because you must understand in advance. There is no certainty, and the future will always be uncertain. There is no one best book or webinar or seminar or single answer or holy grail. The best we can do is give ourselves a small edge over 50% certainty, then use good money management to control losses if we’re wrong. There are hundreds of "best" systems that work. You may have a simple trigger to enter the trade, but the setup is always going to be a combination of things. If you can’t juggle several things at once, if you can’t remember what it did before and don’t have a good memory, forget it; give up. If you can’t handle the fast pace, constantly changing, stressful environment, just quit. And if you don’t address your psychological inhibitions and address your fear/greed and honesty disorders, you will not succeed. For example, people that need to be in control, like lawyers and doctors, are the worst traders. So far, you have failed to see that there are many more issues to becoming a trader than the system or computer.

Each trader has to discover on his own his particular style and time frame and methodology. Joseph Granville said he could give you 10 successful trading systems, but you still wouldn’t make money because you wouldn’t follow them. You cannot make a duck into a good runner. He’s a swimmer.

I’ve found literally hundreds of good trading systems, that seem to trade well in backtesting, that I can show you phenomonal profits on years of historical charts, but I can’t trade them. Most of these require you to be glued to a computer screen six hours a day, focused and ready full time, which can’t be done. Many people try, 90% fail. I get bored, or distracted, and start checking email for just a minute or two, and the trade has broken out and extended. Rules do not allow to chase price in most cases. Or worse, I simply can’t hit the button because it doesn’t look good or whatever, hesitate, and miss the trade. The battle is in your head, not with a computer or system or the market.

The answer to your question is to read everything you can, find what works for you, develop a trading plan and test it meticulously real time. You will find something that seems to click for you, and you will probably modify it to suit you, making it your own.

In general, it is more profitable to trade with the trend. But this in itself is part of the problem; which time frame? Only you can answer that question for what suits you. It goes without saying that you can’t trade leveraged trades without a stop, so you must learn to define your risk with your stop loss order, away from key support and resistance levels, away from where everyone else places their stops, or they will work against you. So you’ll end up taking more risk than you intended, which seems to make it less likely you can trade a leveraged position, so decrease leverage or get in sooner.

Moving averages and trendlines are good support and resistance levels, as are pivot points and fibonacci levels.