Salam to All,

Start (your account) small or big? Hmmm.. I get this question a lot from my friends who are interested in forex and can't wait to get it on.

Well, it truly depends on your preference and affordability. But the best of all, nowadays we have plenty of brokers who are willing to accept just a small amount of money to allow you to open a trading account with them. Unlike years ago, where you need to fork up USD100K to open a full size account, online broker nowadays allows traders to open up mini accounts and start trading for as little as USD5.

Personally, I have opened and account with Marketiva , free registration and was given USD5 in the account for me to get started.

I have also opened an account with NorthFinance, a broker that allow the use of Metatrader4 as trading platform with USD300 as a starting account which I think is appropriate for a beginner like myself at that time.

Another broker that I think worth to mention is FXOpen also a Metatrader4 based platform broker that allows you to have initial deposit for as low as USD1 for Micro account and USD25 for Standard account.

Or the best thing yet, if you like to have a feel of what forex is all about, just register for a demo account with any of the broker above (no commitments what so ever) and have your account deposited with as much as USD100K (virtual money only ok, what do you expect?? haha) and you can start doubling (or blowing) your demo forex trading account in no time.

Regardless of that my advice to you all is, what ever or how ever big (or small) your trading account is, never ever risk more than you can lose, set your leverage and margin right and trade sanely with clear and defined strategies.

While small sized account enables you to start trading at no time, larger size accounts say USD1K (with a proper leverage and margin set) enables your trade to have more room to breath, you can have larger (not too tight) stop loss and etc. allowing you to trade with less pressure than trading with smaller account and small margin.

With so much options that you have, just make you choice, and be wise with it.

Salam,

Today's post is a bit out of norm as I would like to review, as well as share some of the pointers I acquired from reading a book by Mark Tier entitled "The Winning Investment Habits of Warren Buffett & George Soros". This book by Mark Tier listed and elaborated the 23 common traits and habits of the 2 most successful traders and investors the world have known today; Warren Buffet and George Soros and how their seemingly different career world ( Warren Buffet trade stocks while George Soros trade currencies) and trading approach does actually share a lot of common grounds.



The reason's for the review was, for the past few days, I saw the important points elaborated in the book being discussed in various websites as well as newspapers here in Malaysia. Syazwan from Saifulsham.com for example posted an entry entitled "Exit Strategy" which happens to be one of the 23 Winning Investment Habits of Warren Buffett & George Soros. You can also view my comments on the post here.

Reading the book I have identified some of my weaknesses ( I expect to learn more of them as I'm still halfway reading this book) when it comes to trading forex.

Among other, quotes and pointers such as "Invest, don't speculate" allow me to realize that all these while I'm trying to predict (speculate) the market when I should be reacting to signals the market have given. This kind of approach (predicting and speculating) is dangerous as no one could ever know exactly what will happen in the market the next moment.

Then there's this quote from Warren Buffet " Stay within the circle of competence" is an enlightenment to me, to never jump into investment (or trades) that is outside my circle of competence. I'll give you an example, previously I would open up 5 to 7 charts of currency pairs and try to trade them although I am not really familiar with their behavior. Of course my trades would end up in losing position as I have never really understand what drives them (whether up direction or down direction) in the market. The same advice would also applies to other types investments or businesses that one would like to try. If you are an internet marketeer for example and you are already successful at it, it is best for you to focus in the current business and not jumping into forex or stock trading and hoping to be successful at them also, UNLESS you had done your due diligence and acquire as much as knowledge and experience to competently handle the new business you're venturing into.

And the last pointer (but not least) that I would like to share is "to know your exit strategy". I recalled watching the movie "Ronin" when the main character Sam (played by Robert De Niro) said something like this ""I never walk into a place I don't know how to walk out of". Well how true it is. According to Mark Tier in his book, both Warren Buffet and George Soros would carefully plan their exits (in investments) in detail even before they place the investment itself. And how is this "know your exit strategy" stuff applied in our real world investment? One might ask.

Well, it is quite simple. Before putting your hard earned money into any investments ask yourself these 2 questions:

i) What should I do when the investment reaches my investment goals.
-( in other words when should I secure and take the profit?)
ii) What should I do when the investment doesn't go as planned ?
-( when should I bail out from the investment? how much loss I am willing to risk / take?)

I guess that really sums up my post for today. If you need to learn more on habits that made Warren Buffet and George Soros successful in their investments, then I'd suggest that you grab a copy of Mark Tier's book "The Winning Investment Habits of Warren Buffett & George Soros" from your nearest book store, priced at RM39.90, it is a good read for all investors wannabe.

Salamz to all...

Huhuhu.. you see.... few days (if not weeks back) I have posted my so-called Myswissbank Setup for forex trading...then today I stumbled upon the custom dummies book cover generator.
And so I thought.. I have a proper documented method (yeah rite... 2 pages and then call it proper documented hahaha). So why not I create a dummies cover for it... why not?

Err.. there's 2 version of it... so SMS vote for your favorite version now... kidding!