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Hello - Introducing Myself

NightgardenerNightgardener Posts: 22
I thought I'd say hello and introduce myself to all of you. I'm new to binary options, in fact I've only known about them for a couple of weeks. I very much like the idea that trading these options appears to be somewhat easier to learn than many other trading modalities, doesn't require much starting capital, and can be done from anywhere in the world. My main problem is that because I've got an MBA and have spent several decades working in finance (although not within investments), I tend to think I'm a lot smarter than what is actually the case. I'm starting to believe that I'm actually a lot more naive than I thought. Let me give you a quick rundown on my first few weeks in binary options trading; maybe reading this might serve as a warning to other newbies:

I first read a forum post somewhere (not this site) by someone who recommended Nadex, and a signalling service sold through Clickbank called US Binary Signals. Compared to the other posters in that thread, this guy seemed very intelligent, and sincere. I figured that with a $14 day trial to try the service (and thereafter a whopping $97/month to subscribe), I had very little to lose by going for the trial. That was my first mistake; I assumed that I would have the discipline to just paper trade until I was absolutely sure that the signals worked before I did any real trading. After subscribing to this service, I paper traded for one evening, and the signals appeared to be working, so I funded my Nadex account with $350 and placed some real trades that same evening. I placed perhaps 6-7 trades, an it appeared that I would win a couple of trades for every one I lost. I finished my account with about a $100 profit, and I thought to myself, that was not bad for a few hours of trading. After all, I was still learning! That was not many days ago, and I cringe when I think about how naive I was. You guys can probably guess what happened next. The next day I kept following the signals, but this time around I would loose a couple of trades for each one I won, and I put another $200 into my trading account to make sure I had enough money to continue to trade; after all I had to recoup my losses! Well, after several days, my account went down from the total $550 I had invested to $179.75. I had lost $370.25! It was at this point I realized that every signal I received seemed to be wrong, and that the signalling service had to be bogus. After all, it appeared that a monkey would do a better job at picking signals than the software or trader providing these signals! I cancelled the signals service, and consider the $370 to be a relatively cheap education in the dangers of entering trading without having a clue what I'm doing.

Actually, the money I lost might have been worth something, because it brought my guard up. During the last few weeks I tried to educate myself and surfed a lot of web sites and watched a lot of YouTube videos on the subject. There seems to be a lot of gurus out there promoting their trading style, but I was determined not to commit to any of them without researching thoroughly. However, it amazes me how good some of the scam artists out there are! I'm sure many of you are familiar with the people I'm about to mention. I should preface this by saying that I'm not saying that all of them are scammers, just suffice it to say that I'm not sufficiently convinced that any of them are what they say they are! ;)

First, I found the web site BinaryToday, run by a guy named John Kane. He seemed very sincere, and there were a lot of comments on his blog that gave me the impression that this guy is the real deal. The results he posted seemed impressive. He's currently promoting a strategy that uses a software named Binary5, and their sales site looked really good. I emailed their support with a question, and was impressed with how quickly they responded. I had already googled John Kane's name and site, and couldn't come up with any negative information. I decided to try the software at $179, and had even entered my credit card information; all I had to do was press the "buy now" button. This is when I remembered my promise to not be too naive, and I decided to do a deeper google search. What I found was several pages that accused this guy for being a fraud operating under a false name. I couldn't believe it! Fortunately, those pages "exposing" the supposed fraud had a link to a Facebook signals group that was "a true community," this one run by Michael Freeman. This looked really good! This guy didn't even require you to sign up with a broker account under him, all I had to do was donate $25 to his favorite charity! He had to be the Real Deal, right? Well, when I researched his name I found a lot of negative information, but I figured some of it might have been put out by his rivals. Then I watched a video of a piece of software he had put his name on, Neo2. It's supposedly an automatic trading software promising great returns based on satellite weather patterns! Weather patterns....WTF?!?! OK, I'm not saying the guy is not what he says it is, but this threw up a big red flag.

Next I allowed myself to be charmed by Julian Wong and his Binary Trading lab. The jury is still out on this guy, but when I googled "Julian Wong scam" I found a discussion thread on this site. I looked around on the binaryoptions.net site, and noticed that there's a lot of sound advice being offered. I realize that the site might be making money on referrals and affiliate commissions, but there's nothing wrong with that.

So my plan at the moment is to read the articles on this site and watch the videos. I'm doing the same on the Nadex site, as they also seem to be for real. It's not as easy as following some guru, but I've finally opened my eyes to the fact that if something seems to be too easy, it's probably not worth my time and money.

I hope reading about my short experience with binary options might help someone else, or perhaps at least make them feel less guilty for being too naive. Some of you that are more experienced may think to yourself what an idiot I am, but perhaps you've forgotten your own mistakes when you started out. The way I see it, it's OK to make mistakes as long as you can analyze them and determine where you went wrong and decide not to make the same mistake twice.

The takeaway lesson for me is that despite my good intentions to learn by demo trading, to develop a sound trading strategy and never loose more than $100 in one day....all that went out the window the moment I won a couple of trades in a row! ;)

That's my story so far about my venture into binary options; I hope to be able to update this story in a few months time with some more positive reports. Feel free to comment and offer any advice you think might be helpful. I sincerely believe that if a person takes time to educate themselves, to develop and stick to a good trading strategy and practice good money management, that binary options trading can be profitable. If you're doing well with your trading and believe it's possible to achieve consistent results, I would very much like to hear from you!

Thanks for reading.

Comments

  • OkaneOkane Posts: 1,282 admin
    Hey welcome!
    Sorry to hear that but the I hope you learned something! Always do your research first.
    Perhaps you would have found yourself to my article on that Julian guy, where I exposed him last year in November.
    A bit late now, but again, let's hope you don't do those mistakes again.

    There are no shortcuts but you can learn from the traders here in the forum, also check out my trading diary!
    And yes, I am doing well but everyone well tell you that so it's better you check the analysis and the trades and see if
    you learn anything from them that you can use on your own trading and you be the judge rather than taking people's words for
    it.

    Also, do check out some of the recent articles:
    http://www.binaryoptions.net/blog/
  • NightgardenerNightgardener Posts: 22
    Thanks, Okane. I don't think it was your article on Julian Wong that I read, I think it was just a discussion thread. So I'll do a search for that article, glad you mentioned it! I should also clarify that I didn't loose any money following Julian Wong or Michael Freeman, I managed to do that on my own! I was about to join these guys though, and because of my experience I decided to dig a a little deeper before joining them. Where I'm situated now is at the point where I want to learn the basics first and then develop my very own trading strategy, based on what works for me. I also want to have a trading plan built on discipline and proper money management, otherwise I'm just gambling. It's encouraging to hear that you you're doing well. I take your word for it, but I will definitely check out your trading diary as well and see what I can learn from that. Thanks again for welcoming me and for the encouraging words!
  • OkaneOkane Posts: 1,282 admin
    Sounds good. As for the strategy, this article might help you avoid some basic mistakes when you put together yours:

    http://www.binaryoptions.net/blog/top-5-reasons-why-your-strategy-is-not-going-to-make-money/

    Hope it helps. Yeah feel free to comment in my journal if you need any help.
  • NightgardenerNightgardener Posts: 22
    Thanks, Okane, I'll read this article. I did visit your trade journal and read the first few pages; it looks good. However, to be honest, there are terms you're using that I'm not familiar with yet, I'm still a newbie. So I'll check out your Youtube videos and look up some of the terms over the next few days. Then, if I still have questions, I'll ask them in your trade journal. By the way, I noticed from one of your early trade journal entries that you're trading on Swedish time; are you from Sweden? I'm actually Norwegian. Born and raised there...but I've lived in California since 1988. This means I have to beat your trading results, right? Oh man, the pressure!!! ;)
  • OkaneOkane Posts: 1,282 admin
    edited August 2016
    Yes I'm from Sweden but my charts are now GMT-5 cause that other broker went bankrupt lol so now I am
    connected to Oanda's demo account for my MetaTrader 4 and the time is waaaay off but it doesn't matter.
    What matters the most is that the prices are pretty similar to my broker so it makes trading easier.

    Haha, that's right :smiley: - actually there are many Scandinavians around and they are doing great.
    Sure, but better you check the latest page as my strategy is more price action based now.

    Don't expect to learn everything in a week, of course this whole thing is a process and even if you learn you need
    to get some experience too so give it time, don't rush it.


  • NightgardenerNightgardener Posts: 22
    Thanks Okane, I started out reading from the beginning, but I was actually thinking before you said it, that it's likely that your strategy has changed over the past couple of years, so maybe I should start reading from the end. Good to hear that there are some Scandinavians around, and that they're not all following Julian Wong! ;) I know, in general, l those of us from that corner of the world tend to be a little bit naive and trust people too much. That's maybe not a bad reflection on our people. On the other hand, once we catch on, we catch on, and people rather not mess with us! ;) In any case, it looks as if you're still trading EUR/USD mainly. I have to start somewhere, so I might as well start there.
  • OkaneOkane Posts: 1,282 admin

    Thanks Okane, I started out reading from the beginning, but I was actually thinking before you said it, that it's likely that your strategy has changed over the past couple of years, so maybe I should start reading from the end. Good to hear that there are some Scandinavians around, and that they're not all following Julian Wong! ;) I know, in general, l those of us from that corner of the world tend to be a little bit naive and trust people too much. That's maybe not a bad reflection on our people. On the other hand, once we catch on, we catch on, and people rather not mess with us! ;) In any case, it looks as if you're still trading EUR/USD mainly. I have to start somewhere, so I might as well start there.

    That could be true but on the other hand we are exposed to internet from an early age and access everywhere so I think
    most of us have seen plenty of scams before and know they should at least research a bit.
    Main asset is still EUR/USD cause I get the highest payouts there but lately I have been trading USDJPY, GBPUSD and EURAUD
    too. Price action works the same way there too, just a bit lower payouts. Sometimes I use currency correlation to trade two assets
    at the same time.
  • NightgardenerNightgardener Posts: 22
    TBN, it's quite possible that I'm retarded. Or maybe not; there are a few ways to measure intelligence. Once a person gains some real life experience, thy usually find that most people make mistakes sometimes, or get fooled even. That doesn't necessarily make them retarded, but I think you're using the term loosely, so I think I get your point. Good job on the video. I like what you say about money management. I have a question, though, if you start out with $25, what kind of binary options allow you to risk only $1 to $2 per trade? And doesn't the number of trades per day also factor in, or did I miss something? I'll watch the video again and see if I'll catch that. But on the face of it, your money market strategy seems to make a lot of sense, and I'd like to study it some more. Where can I get a copy of the info-graphic? Thanks for your input.
  • NightgardenerNightgardener Posts: 22
    edited August 2016
    Okane, I'm a bit older, so I wasn't exposed to internet scams from an early age. But I guess even those of us who are a bit older learned about them at some point. Back when I was a young adult, financial investment scammers didn't use the internet, they used the mail or they called you during dinner. Well, they were easier to spot as scammers back then because they had already invaded your space by interrupting your dinner or cluttering your mailbox, so you were annoyed and had your guard up! ;) On YouTube, I we tend to seek out information we're interested in, and I think it makes us a bit more vulnerable to getting duped. Some of these gurus are not very polished, but in a way that makes them seem even more believable, like regular guys just trying to make a living trading. Some of them even focus a lot on not getting scammed by brokers, or other marketers. It's only when you dig a bit deeper that you realize that they all own review sites where they're attacking each other. Lol, maybe the problem is that I'm just an old fart. I guess the good news is that I didn't fall for any of those YouTube gurus by opening accounts under them, so I guess I could have done a lot worse. Yeah, the $375 that I lost trading bad signals...that was pretty stupid of me, I just acted impulsively; that's never a good idea. However, I'm not going to beat myself up over it too much, I'll chalk it up to tuition for learning to be more careful. I'd rather focus on learning to trade for real from now on.
  • The_Geek_MHThe_Geek_MH Posts: 860 mod
    Still looking at NADEX? I love it, let me know if you need help with anything.
  • NightgardenerNightgardener Posts: 22
    Yes, I've still got my account with them, and I agree, they're for real. Lots of educational videos on their web site, and they even called me the day after I opened their account and directed me to their training videos. I understand they're in the business to make money, like every brokerage, but they seem to understand that if all traders lose money, then sooner or later there won't be any more money to be made. So I'll stick with them for now....but only demo trading for me, until I've got the basics down. Thanks for the offer to help, I'll take you up on it if I need it!
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