Hope it's ok to chime in even though I'm just a lurker most days. :-)

If it is of interest, I've been demo trading using Track 'n Trade High Finance Forex software.

It may not be for everyone, but I'm finding after some trial and error, I kinda like it.

It might be a place to start small as you can trade a mini account (I think you can set one of them up for like $300) and do some small trades to build your strategies and confidence and experience.

For me, (and others may have different experience), the technical stuff seems to work well on 20 min, 40 min & 60 min charts as well as the daily. Looking at a 1 min chart, the technical stuff doesn't typically work well for me at all.

Just quickly, my current successes have much to do with finding the general trend on a 20 min chart (40 min or 60 min if it's clearer), and jumping to the 1 min for the actual trading, looking for places to sell rallies in a downtrend or buy dips in an uptrend. (I don't go the other way, others might, but I don't do as well when I try to do that.) I'm generally far too impatient to let a trade run very long, and that's one of the hangups I'm trying to overcome. I went from little $5 to $10 winners and I'm trying to get towards maybe $15 and $20 (+) winners. Yup, small potatoes, but if done consistantly, they can be multiplied by bigger positions.

If it's something you want to check out, you can download the software from Gecko for free. And they'll set you up with free live data (sorry, it's only for forex) too. If you don't want to get Gecko's software, FXCM will also set you up with just about an unlimited supply of demo accounts to play with, too.

No doubt Erich and others will have some input with other ideas but I thought I'd share one possibility.

Good luck & good trades,

Brian T.