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It's good to see that you are not in a hurry, that would seem to be the downfall of many aspiring traders.
As for recommendations, these are two of my favorite posts on nexusfi.com (formerly BMT). They paint a broad stroke of the information and skills required to make a successful attempt at trading.
+1 to this. @Lornz seemed quite unique. The amount of knowledge that guy was able to absorb from the world was staggering. Such a huge loss that he chose to end his forum-addiction. Adding insult to injury he also lives in my city and seems to be the only fellow trader here. Would love to have picked his brain on singularity, LSD, and life in general over a beer or three.
So if anyone has a way of reaching @Lornz, please let him know there's a fellow life-ponderer nearby!
Anyway back on topic, the advice you've gotten seems pretty golden. Coupled with your patience and expectations, the outlook is promising. You asked for good quality educational material. Unfortunately i cant recommend much. But you've already identified the biggest hurdle in this this industry- the overwhelming amount of snake-oil and misinformation out there. The ability to filter the bad information from the good, might just be one of the most important prerequisites to success. So spend your time wisely.
Even when you manage to separate good info from bad, you are left with an overwhelming amount of options. Are you a break out trader? Continuation? Reversal? Ironically enough there seems to be too many ways to succeed in trading and approaches that can work. The trick is finding one that you like and are able to make work, for you.
So my best advise would be to get an elite membership and start gathering an overview over your options. Identify the people on here who are on the right track and start your hunt for their ideas, approaches, point of views and select the ones that resonate best for you.
Whatever you end up with, your foundation will inevitably be based on an understanding of how your specific markets typically move. This fundamental understanding is important, because it will change over time or during seasons and you will need to be flexible and adapt to it. Once you have that foundation the next step is devising a way to exploit it with high probability situations.
So make sure you spend enough time experimenting hands-on and learning-by-doing, rather than only reading about theories and mechanics and obvious universal truths. Screentime in front of moving charts is equally(if not more) as important and will feed your subconscious with valuable experience without you even realizing it. I'm one of those who believe trading is mainly a skill you need to hone and develop over time. At least it is for me, so i practice, practice, and then practice some more.
So to wrap up a long winded post, a few general tips that i wish i had(might be a waste of time for you) when starting out.
- Trading to me is an epic challenge. Its a fun and frustrating game. You will likely spend years and years on learning how to beat it. It's all about learning, mainly from mistakes - and mastering it, not about the money it produces as a by-product.
- Start with emerging yourself in Price Action (PA) on a naked chart. Any other strategy you might advance to will likely have some relevant relation to PA.
- Sometimes the biggest clue is not in where Price moves, but how it moves. Try detaching yourself from history and focus only on movement, by staring at the DOM for a few weeks.
- Look into S/R levels and pivots/key price levels. Highs, lows, opens closes and what happens around those levels.
- Be extremely picky about spending time on indicators. Dont look for green light/red light shortcuts. Look for indies that will help frame price in a way that tells you what is going on. VWAP, pivots, S/R, Moving Averages, keltner channel(or bollinger bands) can be interesting and helpful.
- Similarly, if you decide on spending time with books, be very choosy. I'd probably go with the suggestions Lornz made, on fundamental of any market and how they work.
- Spending some time with order flow, market profile, volume profile, and reading a tape('Time & Sales') can be an interesting use of time and broaden your horizon.
- Knowing where others are stuck can be extremely beneficial. Ask yourself, where would the 80% of traders (the bad ones) enter and where did they place their stops? Notice how those stops tend to get taken out pretty much to the tick.
- Knowing what the professionals are doing would be great. They hide their footprints well, but can they really make a giant pink elephant vanish completely without a trace?
Last but most importantly. If anything you read or watch has a dollarsign or "Free Trial" attached to it, 99.9% of the time it will be because they arent good enough to make money trading. Yet trading success is exactly what they are trying to sell you.
The only educational investment i've made towards trading is an elite membership here. It is worth its price in gold.
I also can say that any new trader should find what kind of traders they want to be. Before I was trying to swing trade, I was also using many indicators and i was trading from 4 hour chart. It was ok, but i was too long in a trade and many times i didn't put a trade even for days. After some time I realized that I should trade from a smaller time frame and to be in a trade just for few minutes which was less stressfull for me. Now I use 1 minute chart, no indicators and just pure price action by using support/ resistance levels. I have set of rules like: I'm in a trade max 3 minutes, if there is no movement I close the trade, or my SL is 5 ticks only so I don't loose too much if it goes against me, or 5 losses in a row and I don't trade that day. Something like that. It helped me so smth like that can help a new trader as well.