70% Win Rate, but struggling to break even...

[Ponce]

Greetings,

Was very hard to accept,30% win rate is optimum,with a r/r in the 5+.MJ shot 40% and was considered the greatest scorer ever.Not to discourage you,make it easy by dumping all indicators.Price alone should dictate your trade.

cordially Ponce

 

[jiggly]

keep at it another few years you may be onto something.

regardless of all the advice you will get here, it will conflict with your belief system and the actions you take through your genetic make-up.

let your profits run,
cut your losers short,

scale into winners.

trade in the direction of the major trend,

you cant predict the future.

 

[MrGecko]

* Time frames

* Risk adjusted returns (as opposed to absolute)

* Don't c0ck around by shortening your stops

 

[Ponce]

Greetings,

B/E stops do more damage to math expectancy than anything.If you have clearly defined a stop,and target,let the trade run its course.Common sense must come into play like target within 1 tick,and you are pressed fro time,exit and next trade will be waiting.

cordiallyPonce

 

[Newtron Bomb]

Greetings,

B/E stops do more damage to math expectancy than anything.If you have clearly defined a stop,and target,let the trade run its course.Common sense must come into play like target within 1 tick,and you are pressed fro time,exit and next trade will be waiting.

cordiallyPonce

anotehr top piece of advice... for me when I stopped moving my stops and tinkering with my trade and stuck to my guns I started to become a lot more profitable there are other ways to manage your position to a break even point than moving your stop loss locations

 

[PokerBrat]

Part of my strategy is something called WIPLIP (I've mentioned it before on here) but it stands for When In Profit, Lock In Profit. I devised it so that winners never turn round and become losers. So when a trade goes into blue, I lock in 1pip so that the worst that could happen is a tiny profit (maybe this helps explain my 70% win rate).

This sounds exactly like something I was using when I first started. I devised it because I a) hate taking losses, and b) kept reading that capital preservation was paramount in any trading strategy.

I have stopped doing this now because I quickly realised that I was missing the big movements. For example, I recently went short on Gold and Silver, watched them go into profit, moved my stop to lock in a small profit, watched them retrace to stop me out and then watched them take off. My desire to avoid taking any losses meant that I locked in a couple of points profit but missed 10 times as much. This would have given me enough profit to cover many losses. But what happened was I took a tiny profit that doesn't cover even one losing trade.

So I was only ever getting small profits and small losses, which ultimately ended up with me suffering drawdown on my capital. I have now realised that I have to accept the losses in order to capture the big profits.

My stops are based on support/resistance and so if they hit, I am wrong in my reading of the trend. If I am right, then they shouldn't hit and I will capture the big movement. But if I move my stop to another place based only on my desire to avoid losses then the price can hit these while I am still right in my reading of the market.

I can't stress how important this last bit is, so I will explain it again. Your system of entry and stops is based on your technical analysis of the market. Your WIPLIP is based on your fear of losing money. These two things do not complement each other, and in both our cases they actually conspire against us.

Your fear of losing money and desire to preserve capital should dictate your position size only. Your entry, stops and take profit should only be based on your technical analysis of the market.

You have to stop using your WIPLIP as it is basically suffocating your trading system by not allowing your trades any room to develop.

 

[ashish_jamloki]

hi,
sorry i am not prop trader but what can i say is dnt close your run with small profit if u know that trade is working for you thn just go with flow and close your pos. when u see reversal signal only..
70% success rate is gr8 but manage your trade.. dnt run the losses

that's what i can say

 

[madmentrade]

check the post:

Day Trading Blog: Break Even

 

[mikeeg]

Hi, I'm so grateful for all the responses. So much to take in and think about. I looked at tightening my S/L but I think the way forward is more a case of looking at S/R and assessing R:R before entering each trade.

I am going to try and scrap the WIPLIP thing and work on predefined limits and targets and try and let the winners continue. The problem is I know I personally have a mental hang up of seeing profits turn into losers! Take last week for example, had two good(ish) trades, they quickly went into profit by some 14-17pips, and then they turned on me and before I knew where I was, i had two losses of around 20pips each! I accept we all have to lose and I accepted the amount of risk prior to entering, these things dont bother me, what bothers me is seeing profit become a loss...it's psychological. If I had WIPLIP, I would have avoided these losses you see. Hmmm, what to do! I'll keep battling away, I am enjoying the challenge.

For those of you who might be interested, I use a MTF trading strategy. Only one indicator (stoch)...the rest is all S/R, following main trend and using price action to pinpoint entries.

 

[tomorton]

mikeeg - A system that has r:r less than 1 just isn't worth pursuing, its not a system, its giving you a worse result than random shorts / longs (dependent on an irrelevant factor such as the prevailing weather) with a modest fixed target / stop (e.g. each morning, heads go long on FTSE, tails go short, with 40pts profit target and stop-loss: this system will make money, but its not a system). If your 70% win ratio had to fall to 60% but your r:r was 1 or above, now that would be worth working on.