This is a mechanics manual for putting on and managing a forex trade, not a tested strategy. The useful parts are the daily risk cap, the ATR-based stop rule, and the account-size ladder; the Fibonacci and indicator chapters are description, not evidence.
The one idea
Cofnas does not deliver one trading edge. He walks through three separate layers: fundamentals that move currency pairs (interest rate differentials, housing data, commodity correlations), technical mapping of price (trend lines, Fibonacci retracements, pivot points, 14 named indicators), and then trade management (stop placement, profit limits, multi-lot exits). The book's real spine is the last layer, where it gets specific with numbers.
The organizing idea that actually holds together is treating account size itself as the constraint. Cofnas builds a graduated ladder: a $5,000 account trades mini lots and logs its first 100 trades purely for competence, a $10,000 account adds a second pair and trims daily risk to 3 percent, and by $100,000 the trader is expected to already be running a 55-to-45 win-loss ratio before scaling into six-lot standard positions. Each tier comes with its own dollar risk-per-day cap and lot-size ceiling.
Underneath the account ladder is a risk-per-day framework: pick a percentage of equity you'll tolerate losing in a day, translate it into pips at your lot size, and let that number cap how many trades and how much size you can put on. Multi-lot entries are gated by a self-scored 1-to-5 confidence rating, with lots only stacked on a 4 or 5.
What it actually teaches
The book's own onboarding sequence runs from setting a daily loss cap through to scaling account size, in this order.
CAP YOUR RISK PER DAY BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE
Pick a percentage of account equity you'll tolerate losing in one day. On a $10,000 account at 2 percent, that's a $200 daily cap. At standard lot size ($100,000), each pip is worth $10, so a single 20-pip loss burns the entire day's risk budget. Cofnas's fix for beginners is to trade mini lots ($10,000, $1 per pip) so a 20-pip loss costs $20 instead, leaving room for ten more losing trades that day.
MAP FIBONACCI LEVELS OFF THE BIGGER TIME FRAMES
Find the most recent completed price swing (a low to a high, or the reverse) on the weekly, daily, or 4-hour chart, even if you plan to enter on a 5-minute chart. Anchor the Fib tool at the most recent significant high or low, then at the high or low that preceded it. The tool projects the 38.2, 50, 61.8, and 100 percent retracement lines forward; the book treats a price that probes one of these lines and fails to close through it as a signal of real support or resistance.
SIZE STOPS TO TWO TIMES THE 14-PERIOD ATR
The average true range (ATR), set to 14 periods, measures how far a candle's high and low typically stretch beyond the previous close. Cofnas's rule of thumb is to place stops at two times the ATR of your trading time frame. In the book's own comparison table, the 15-minute ATR was 9 pips for GBPUSD and 5 pips for EURUSD, meaning a 15-minute GBPUSD trade needs a stop wider than 18 pips and a EURUSD trade wider than 10, or the normal noise of the market stops the trade out for no reason.
SCORE EVERY SETUP 1 TO 5 BEFORE ADDING LOTS
Before sizing up beyond one lot, rate the setup's quality from 1 (countertrend, indicators disagreeing) to 5 (Fib level, Bollinger band, trend, and multiple time frames all lined up). Only stack multiple lots on a 4 or 5. When trading three lots, the book assigns each a different job: the first targets the average 15-pip goal, the second targets a wider level based on the day's range, and the third is left open as the discretionary 'wild card' lot.
CLIMB THE ACCOUNT-SIZE LADDER, NOT JUST YOUR LOT SIZE
Each account tier in the book comes with its own rules: a $5,000 account trades $1 to $2 per pip for its first 100 trades at 4 percent daily risk purely to build competence, not profit. A $10,000 account adds a second currency pair, caps lots at three, and drops daily risk to 3 percent. A $100,000 account is only meant to be reached after the trader has already achieved a 55-to-45 win-loss ratio, and runs standard lots up to a six-lot maximum at 2 percent daily risk.
What it looks like Monday morning
A reader who actually uses this book writes down an explicit dollar risk-per-day number before opening a platform, sized to their real account, and stops trading for the day once it's hit. They replace whatever arbitrary pip-count they were using for stops with two times the 14-period ATR of the time frame they trade, checked against their own broker's data rather than the book's decade-old GBPUSD and EURUSD numbers.
The bigger behavioral change is treating account size as a gate rather than a vanity number: not trading standard lots, multiple pairs, or stacked positions until the smaller-account milestones in the book (or an equivalent self-imposed ladder) are actually logged and reviewed, not just assumed.
| Pair | 5-min | 15-min | 30-min | 4-hour | Day | Week |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GBPUSD | 3 | 9 | 15 | 36 | 101 | 295 |
| EURUSD | 5 | 5 | 9 | 28 | 62 | 179 |
The book's rule of thumb is a stop at two times the ATR of your chosen time frame, so on this table a 15-minute GBPUSD trade needs a stop wider than 18 pips, and a 15-minute EURUSD trade needs one wider than 10.
forex trading is a great equalizer among all professions, leaving most people challenged, as never before, in mastering profitable tradingAbe Cofnas, The Forex Trading Course
Where it fails
- The method is a toolkit, not a tested edge. The book presents 14 named indicators, seven trading styles, Fibonacci levels, pivot points, and renko charts, but no win-rate or backtest ties any of them to a stated edge. The only evidence offered for the whole approach is a single beginner's real 50-trade log (Ross, in the $10,000 account chapter), presented without a losing counter-example or any statistical summary of what made his wins wins.
- The signature news-trading tactic was closed off to US traders within a year. Chapter 14's 'Hedger' tactic requires buying and selling the same currency pair simultaneously in one account, then closing the losing side after the news hits. The NFA's no-hedging (FIFO) rule for US-regulated retail forex brokers took effect in 2009, one year after this 2008 edition published, making that exact tactic unavailable through a US-regulated broker today.
- The carry-trade chapter is a period piece from just before the trade blew up. Cofnas presents NZDJPY (an 8.0 percent versus 0.50 percent rate gap) and AUDJPY as durable income strategies, and the book's own $30,000 account example already shows a 20 percent one-day equity loss on February 27 (2007). The broader yen-carry unwind that followed in 2008, the same year this book published, hit exactly these pairs hard, and the chapter doesn't flag that risk beyond the one anecdote.
- Fibonacci levels are conceded to be self-fulfilling, not predictive, yet they anchor the technical section. The book states outright that Fib levels matter partly because 'these levels are projected and therefore known in advance' and so 'generate a self-fulfilling process.' That's an honest admission, but it means the chapter is describing crowd psychology around a known level, not demonstrating an edge, and no independent win-rate for Fib-based entries appears anywhere in the book.
- The top account tiers assume leverage that US retail traders can no longer get. The $50,000 challenge in Chapter 17 has the trader running up to 30 mini lots, roughly $3 million in notional exposure on $50,000 of capital. The CFTC capped major-pair leverage at 50:1 for US-regulated retail forex accounts in 2010, two years after this edition published, so the position sizes described in the higher account tiers are no longer legally available through a US broker at the assumed capital levels.
Who it is for
Buy it if
Buy it if you already have a funded live forex account and no consistent process for setting stops, sizing positions, or deciding when to add lots. Chapters 11, 15, and 17 alone (Fibonacci mapping, ATR-based stops, and the account-size ladder) are worth reading even if you skip the rest.
Skip it if
Skip it if you're looking for a strategy with a demonstrated win rate or backtest, or if you trade through a US-regulated broker under post-2010 rules, since the hedging tactic and the leverage assumed in the larger account challenges are no longer available to you. Skip it too if fundamentals from a pre-financial-crisis housing and carry-trade environment aren't relevant to how you trade now.
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