If you're truly passionate and dedicated then don't give up. Sometimes it's best to just revert to demo for a while and perfect your strategy. It took me 5-6 years to become consistently profitable and it was a lot of hard work to get there.
IMO you can either trade with tight stops for the shorter term or trade longer-term with larger stops, there's no in-between. You can trade on any timeframe, it doesn't make a difference - I look at the larger time frames but use the 1hr and 4hr for entry, exit, and to monitor the trade. So when Rick says it's a miracle you can win over a month on those time frames - absolute BS. You just need a system that works for those timeframes, his clearly does not.
I think the biggest game changer when learning is controlling your risk. I risk no more than 1% per trade and scale into positions with a 3-step method. I don't think my investors would be too happy if they found out I took a full position off the bat..
Also, overtrading is what kills most traders. The world has this image about forex that you have to be ADHD and constantly placing trades - this is false. I can go days without placing a trade.
An index is a good option - I know two guys in the US who only trade indices. If you've had better luck than with FX, then perhaps you could go down that road also..
I'm unsure why Rick is always saying I'll disagree.. perhaps I've offended him somehow, or he feels some sort of competition.. either way it seems bizarre as we're two completely different traders. With news, either don't trade around major releases, or have a stop wide enough that any whipsaws won't affect you. One news release isn't going to change the trend of a currency entirely - multiple factors come into it. And when news does change the trend, it's normally just the feather that broke the camels back. FA really isn't that difficult and I really don't see how people trade without it.
