I wrote The Forex Set & Forget book over 10 years ago. When I wrote it I was like an excited teenager. At that time I had been trading since 2008, so for about 4 or 5 years, and I had spent a lot of money and a lot of time finding a way to make money from trading. I won’t go through everything I learned in those years as it would require another book to explain it, but suffice to say that many hundreds of learning hours preceded the writing of the book. I attended a course in Switzerland, went to see Steve Nisson in London, bought numerous courses, spent thousands of pounds on software, and of course tested many indicators.

By the time I wrote the book in 2013 I was making consistent profits. I had the occasional losing month, but over a rolling 12 month period my results were consistent. I confess that I did use indicators at the time, and continued to use them for some years after 2013, however I have gradually moved away from them to the point where I now just have two( which you can read about on my Indicators page.)

Chapter 1 of the book is called Indicators ALONE will NEVER make you profitable long term, so even back in 2013 I was wanting to get the message out that technical trading alone is flawed. However…..I have to say that way too much of the book is spent selling and promoting my trading rooms and indicators, and I deeply regret that. In 2013 had only just started running the trading rooms, and I was so excited by them that I wanted the world to know about them.

If I could turn back time and rewrite the book I would only include one of the nine chapters in it, which is chapter nine. Before I explain why that is let me tell you why I run my trading room service and why it features so much in the book.

When I was young I had visions of being a teacher. I went to University to study Physics and pictured myself teaching Physics a a career. This desire stemmed from the fact that my school physics teacher was fantastic. He was called Mr. Parkinson, and he taught Physics in a way that made it interesting and fascinating. Most people think Physics is hard, and it is when it is not taught well, but if you get a really good teacher that shows you how Physics applies to everyday life it becomes interesting. For example,snippets such as how a TV works to bring pictures from all over the world into your living room, or curious things like the fact that you and I are now traveling at around 1000 miles per hour even sat still, because that is the speed the earth spins at. Most Physics teachers go through the motions and just teach the equations, consequently most students lose interest and find it hard. Mr. Parkinson brought Physics alive for me, and ever since then I have been in awe of good teachers, of any subject.

Anyhow, when I was at University and in my final year, as part of a career planning process and my quest to become a teacher I was sent to a school to try my hand at teaching a bunch of 15 year old students. I was shocked. None of them were interested in learning. I also got some verbal  abuse from one or two of them, and it was a mildly traumatic experience. Suffice to say that I decided then and there that teaching was not for me. Later in life realised that the class that I was sent to was an outlier, and that most students are open to learning, but I just got unlucky with that particular class.

However the desire to teach never left me, and although I took a different career path to teaching, I found myself getting roles that involved teaching to some extent. I became a product and sales trainer for a some of companies that I worked for, and then when I set up my own company I spent a big proportion of my time training my staff.

When I quit working to trade for a living I found myself alone, on my own in my house with my computer. Although I found the freedom I had exhilarating, I missed the camaraderie of being with people, and in particular of coaching and training staff.

To cut a very long story short, I found a way into the ”trading room” industry and I have been doing it since 2013. So I have been ”teaching” for the last 10 years, and I love it.

That is how the book came about. I wanted to advertise my trading rooms, and at the same time explain my ”profit to stop loss ratio”…more on that shortly.

My trading rooms are my way of satiating my desire to teach. I spend a total of 3 hours per week on my service. It is a hobby, not a job. I do not offer any other service. I do not mentor. I do not run courses in expensive venues. I cherish my time and my freedom, and I would never want to extend my ”teaching” time beyond that 3 hours. The trading rooms frankly give me two things. Firstly a sense of immense satisfaction from the teaching process, especially when I get emails from customers whose lives have been changed with my help, and second a decent additional income to top up my trading income. 

So back in 2013, as I say I was like an excited teenager and wanted everyone to know about my trading rooms and consequently they get mentioned way too often in the book. What a mistake that was. The book makes me cringe when I look back at some of the content. However, as irritating as the book is, I completely stand by chapter nine and I am still very proud of it.

The reason I am proud of chapter nine is that it took me many hundreds of hours of trading Forex to work out the ”sweet spot” of ”profit target” to ”stop loss” ratio that the Forex market is best traded with.

What I mean by that is that the clear and obvious trading opportunities that arise each week only last for a period of time and we need to trade within that timeframe to optimise our results. 

For example, let’s say that there is some big news from the U.S about interest rates, and off the back of the news the U.S dollar weakens, giving a clear and obvious U.S dollar selling opportunity. Well, that weakness will not last more than a day or two before it becomes ”priced in”. I ”won’t go into detail about what I mean by ”priced in” here, but the point is that the markets react to significant news for a relatively short period of time. In this example, if the interest rate news is combined with further economic data in the following days and weeks that supports the U.S dollar weakness, of course the U.S dollar will continue to weaken over a period of weeks and even months. However the clear and obvious opportunities to make money from the initial news headline is short lived.

I explain more in the video above because this subject is complex, but even if a currency weakens over a period of weeks, it will still have days and occasional weeks of strength. And vice versa. A currency, such as the Euro, may have reasons to strengthen over a period of weeks, or even months, but will still be weak many times in between.

So, the bottom line is that the markets only give us relatively short windows of opportunity to make money off clear and obvious trades.

Now…given that fact, I worked out how many pips( approximately) Forex pairs tend to move off the back of a catalyst event. I also worked out how many pips Forex pairs also fluctuate and pull back when this occurs. You will already know that you MUST use a stop loss with every trade, because all markets go up and down in every time frame, and even a bull run has pull backs, as does a bear run. So I established that there is a ”golden ratio” that is best used in Forex, and it took me 3 to 4 years to work it out. That is a lot of time and effort on my part. The ”golden ratio” is contained in chapter nine, and I still use it today. I have used it every year since 2013, and I use it in every trading room I run.

That is why I am proud of chapter nine.

When I eventually write another book, I will remove the Set & Forget book from Amazon, but until then I will keep it there because I think that for $3 it is giving tremendous help to those that use the instructions in chapter nine.

So let me make one last apology for chapters one through eight, and ask that you if you buy the book, you skip straight to chapter nine.

Regards

Mark Boardman