Making Money Trading

[shadowninja]

Thanks for the reply TD, I appreciate it, good to know I was thinking about the right sort of things.

And thanks for that shadowninja, force myself to close some of the position earlier than I normally would, I can easily do that now on any size trade at oanda so Ive no excuse for not at least trying that!

How do you close a portion of a trade on Oanda? I couldn't work it out - it was close all or nothing. Ended up having to open 3 trades at the same level to simulate wanting to close 2/3 of a trade later on!

 

[drspartacus]

What I do is If you are short GU 100000 units and you want to take 1/2 off just buy 50000 GU and it will close out 1/2 your position and leave 50000 units still in short.

Brad

 

[dubala]

, Do not want to derail the thread or sound abrupt. I was just wondering If had a pound5k account with 100% levarage trading fx what would be a relistic average. return in 1 year if i have a sound simple strategy and good money management skills and sticking to my guns. A reply would be appreciated, looked all over and just cant find anything on it.

 

[trader_dante]

, Do not want to derail the thread or sound abrupt. I was just wondering If had a pound5k account with 100% levarage trading fx what would be a relistic average. return in 1 year if i have a sound simple strategy and good money management skills and sticking to my guns. A reply would be appreciated, looked all over and just cant find anything on it.

That's an impossibly hard question to answer.

A sound, simple strategy would, presumably, have a POSITIVE EXPECTANCY and good risk management skills will be vital to ensuring you stay in the game long enough to profit from that expectancy BUT both elements are not neccessarily likely to DEFINE your profit potential.

There are so many other variables that it makes the exercise of predicting your profit potential almost pointless.

 

[dubala]

I was wondering on a strategy like yours with an outlay like mine. What a potentiol profit could be im just after a ball park figure thats all.

 

[shadowninja]

Dubala, your question deserves a new thread of it's own. Go on, be a devil. Welcome to the site.

 

[shadowninja]

What I do is If you are short GU 100000 units and you want to take 1/2 off just buy 50000 GU and it will close out 1/2 your position and leave 50000 units still in short.

Brad

Ah! Of course. Forgot you could do that.

ETA: did it! Only thing is, you can't set it to automatically do that in Oanda when it hits a certain level... or can you? I haven't worked out how to set up orders.

 

[trader_dante]

I was wondering on a strategy like yours with an outlay like mine. What a potentiol profit could be im just after a ball park figure thats all.

Two different traders that trade "my" strategy will, by the very nature of the game have wildly different results.

That is trading for you.

I am not going to guess what you could do, so the only answer I can give you is what I HAVE done.

If you had £5,000 and entered and exited every trade as I had done with my risk management, you would have just over £150,000 six months later.

That is a percentage return of 2,992%.

Of course, I bet 100% of my account on my first trade.

Well, it was only £63...I didn't expect it to grow like this...

 

[dubala]

Last question dante how much pips did you win on that first trade so I can get a more realistic idea. Thanks for the input. Have been browsing this thread and things look good. Im still young i would like to get some experience in the city before I go solo. It will probably be years but I was just searching for a bit of input from a few veterans. cheers for the input.

 

[trader_dante]

Last question dante how much pips did you win on that first trade so I can get a more realistic idea. Thanks for the input. Have been browsing this thread and things look good. Im still young i would like to get some experience in the city before I go solo. It will probably be years but I was just searching for a bit of input from a few veterans. cheers for the input.

dubala,

I made 40 ticks on my first trade.

Here is the screenshot.

I'd wiped my account out previously and spent some time on the sidelines learning about price action and watching the market.

I had £13.63 left in my account, added another £50, saw an opportunity in the bund and went in.

Fortunately for me, I haven't looked back.

So far

 

[dubala]

Dante do you mostly trade fx then and if so how muc levarge do you use?

 

[drspartacus]

TD, any thoughts on Jap pin bar set up ? How would you have rated the setup- strong, medium, low and would you have traded it ?
Cheers Brad

 

[jitasb]

Hi shortorlong,

Friday's bar is an inside bar and the s/r pivot that the pin bounced off has held so I still have my order in.

Hello TraderD.

We have had a few Inside bars after the pin. From the thread in general, I get the view that your order would still be in play on break of the daily pin. As there has been no price action below the pin nose which would be the stop.

Is that a correct assessment ??

PS> I'm referring to the EUR/JPY daily pin on the 3rd Jan 2008.

Thanks

 

[trader_dante]

Dante do you mostly trade fx then and if so how muc levarge do you use?

I really do trade anything that moves but I trade heavily in the foreign exchange market.

The amount of leverage used changes on each individual trade.

However, to take that £2 a point position in the Bund required a leverage of approximately 370:1

My maths is not great but I worked that out as follows:

With the Bund at 111.15 when I took £2 a point position long, I had a total risk of £22,230.

The margin required was £30 per £1 a point staked which meant I had to stake £60 to take my position.

£22,230 / 60 = 370.5

I hope I did that right...that leverage sounds a bit insane!

 

[omni]

Dubala,
To give your question a direct answer......... if you make more than any of the following: savings account / US treasuries / the ftse all share / ftse 100. You have done better than 90% of fund managers and are doing well.

Personally, I would say, if you had a big pot of money (5k is not a big pot of money) 20% return is very respectable.

But if you are playing with a few grand....... you probably want to double/triple and more with your money.............. as you have "nothing to lose"

If you had $100m and took home 12% of profit....... you would be pretty happy with 20%....

Regards,
James.

 

[trader_dante]

TD, any thoughts on Jap pin bar set up ? How would you have rated the setup- strong, medium, low and would you have traded it ?
Cheers Brad

The nose wasn't particularly long but otherwise it was a nice looking pin bar.

However, what concerned me was the ascending triangle. To me it looks like one of those situations where the price is eroding the resistance and is going to break out violently to the upside.

drspartacus made a great post on this pin bar here: http://www.trade2win.com/boards/382130-post1300.html

I that he is analaysing the situations very well. I am not neccessarily saying that I would use the same factors to come to the same conclusions as him but I mean the idea of looking at the positive and the negative aspects of the trade and thinking carefully about whether it is worth risking your money on a particular setup.

 

[trader_dante]

Hello TraderD.

We have had a few Inside bars after the pin. From the thread in general, I get the view that your order would still be in play on break of the daily pin. As there has been no price action below the pin nose which would be the stop.

Is that a correct assessment ??

PS> I'm referring to the EUR/JPY daily pin on the 3rd Jan 2008.

In a word: yes

 

[1Pipped]

Ah! Of course. Forgot you could do that.

ETA: did it! Only thing is, you can't set it to automatically do that in Oanda when it hits a certain level... or can you? I haven't worked out how to set up orders.

I think you can shadowninja, only done 2 trades on oanda so far so I might well be completely wrong. As far as I can gather all orders (except market) on oanda are called limit orders, so you can put a limit buy order in above current price... not your traditional limit order but I think thats how they do it. Test it with 100 EURUSD .... might even make 10p

 

[lurkerlurker]

I really do trade anything that moves but I trade heavily in the foreign exchange market.

The amount of leverage used changes on each individual trade.

However, to take that £2 a point position in the Bund required a leverage of approximately 370:1

My maths is not great but I worked that out as follows:

With the Bund at 111.15 when I took £2 a point position long, I had a total risk of £22,230.

The margin required was £30 per £1 a point staked which meant I had to stake £60 to take my position.

£22,230 / 60 = 370.5

I hope I did that right...that leverage sounds a bit insane!

It is! I'd need about 3x that to trade the same position size with my SB firm. They generally don't do more than 100:1 leverage, which is fine with me. I think the bucket shops which allow tiny deposits without guaranteed stops are great. When I was with CS I could do £20pp in the Dow for £1k. Given that that is a risk of £280,000, the leverage is a bit silly (although not as high as your bund!)

 

[lurkerlurker]

Dubala,
To give your question a direct answer......... if you make more than any of the following: savings account / US treasuries / the ftse all share / ftse 100. You have done better than 90% of fund managers and are doing well.

Personally, I would say, if you had a big pot of money (5k is not a big pot of money) 20% return is very respectable.

But if you are playing with a few grand....... you probably want to double/triple and more with your money.............. as you have "nothing to lose"

If you had $100m and took home 12% of profit....... you would be pretty happy with 20%....

Regards,
James.

I didn't really want to announce this on T2W, but I started the year with £1800 in my account. I don't intend to make deposits or withdrawals. My profit target for the year is £10,000. That is £250 per week for 40 trading weeks (I think someone said there were 40 trading weeks in the year). Alternatively, that is £1k per month with 2 months making nothing. I'm on target so far, but this does involve risking 10% of the account per trade.

If I make the £10k, I'll have4 £12k in the account and will be risking 3% per trade. (still high I know)

Also, does anyone know if you get any UK futures or spreadbet brokers who accept gilts as deposits? I know you can place US Treasuries with IB in the US - this means you do not lose the risk free rate of return on your margin.