Ok, the first real post

Last night I had a card night, biggest one yet. 11 people playing Texas Hold'em poker. No money, many of my friends are tight after the holidays, but very fun! Some friends were saying that Forex trading is like gambling. I see the point, but it really isn't in my humble opinion. It is reading market indicators to a point where you THINK you know where the market is going.

OK, so at 4:30am the reports for unemployement and non-farm payroll (here is a great calendar for what's going on http://forexfactory.com/calendar.php) came out and the market jumped almost 100pips. I set two entry orders (if you want to know the definitions for Forex terms go to http://www.forex-markets.com/forexterms.htm or drop me a line) Each entry order was headed in a different direction to trigger a buy/sell if the market moved in a certain direction. David, my brother and I set up the orders together. They ended up being too tight on the stop (safety out) and I lost $40. So I watched the market climb WAY too fast and knew it was going to level out, once I saw a peak in the climb I sold 100,000 EUR and by the time I woke up at 1pm the next day I had made over $1000 on two trades that used about $6000 in the trade. That was a healthy take for a big market move in my learning stages.

So the good news is that since Dec 27, I have made $3000 in trading on the learners account. Once I have $75k in the account that started at $50k I will go back and start a mini account with FXCM.com with $1000 and then you will see a little more drama on this board...

So the lessons for the day for me were when a large movement is expected, to put your stops at least 20-30 pips out to save from the market whiplash or whipsaw, or whatever they call it (traders love to use terms that mean nothing to you and me, but once you learn them it does make sense, it's kinda like doctors and their 18 character disease names..)

The trading has stopped for the weekend (I dont' like weekends much anymore because I want to trade everyday), but I will review my trades and see what I learn from my experiences.

Just so you know I'm not bs-ing, here is my trade report from today all the way back to the beginning in December 07. http://www.startime.com/!trading/010407fx.pdf. This details every trade I made, shows my losses, gains and my open trades through the weekend. So read em it weep or jump for joy, I am $3700 up and only using a few thousand dollars at a time to trade.

I will be sharing my concepts on trading as they develop. They are not the norm, so I'm sure I will have people on here telling me I'm wrong (already heard that in real life), but we shall see, money talks. Next week I will be focusing on trading three different ways, NEWS trading (trading on what comes out in the news affecting the markets), STATIC trading (using the tick, 1 min and 5 min charts to trade and make money on 'static' or the small ups and downs of the market), and of course trading on the calendar and general market indicators.