Forexmospherian
Legendary member
- Messages
- 39,928
- Likes
- 3,306
Hi Steve
Just seen you results today and this comment - so thought i would try and assist you now on your review and the way to improve next.
i would agree with you that 20 trades for just 20 pips ( and is that net? as all spreads etc should be included in stops and profits gained) - is very poor
What amazed me is you had 10 losing trades - that can really be a negative - I do not allow myself to have over 5 bad trades in a day - although I did once have my black swan event of 7 consecutive losses about 4 yrs ago.
i have probably not explain enough to you on the money management side and so will just list a few key points now -
1. Dont let a winning trade go to a loss - if you are up just 4 pips or 7 pips - dont come away minus 3 or stopped out - just exit with what you can
2. Dont wait to be stopped out - if you are down say 2 pips - don't wait for minus 5 or 7 - just exit and then if the pair turns as happened today just 1 pip under your stop - it's no problem - re enter - its still more cost effective than losing say 7 pips.
3. The timings for entries are key - you need to be in profit asap and then you can either take profit - and reenter - lock some profit in - or take part profit - allowing you a bigger stop if needed - ie - say you are up 9 pips - take 70% off and now your 30% stake could actually go beyond minus 5 - and you would still be in profit - however I prefer the "free trade" were the 30% stake is in profit - even if just 2 -3 pips - as then you can relax -what ever happens - ie a win win situation.
I would be interested to know your approx targets - as mine are totally adjustable between 7 and 25 pips and depend on the time and PA. Some days I might have loads of 4 and 6 pip trades and just a couple of wins over 15 pips.
Other days I am having -12 -25 pip wins and only a few 3- 5 pip grabs
The other key is win ratio,
For short term intraday - nothing under 65% is acceptable and the real zone is 70 - 80% on batches of 50 or 100 intraday trades. You might think that's really difficult - but when your target sis say 13 pips and you come out with only 7 pips - its still a win with a RR of over 1 . So many traders think they are doing well with say a 28 pip win - but their stop was 35 pips - so ratio all wrong and that leads to losing money.
You need to review every trade today - and see what was minimum stop - what was move within say 15 min or 30 mins and how many of those 10 losses were due to 5 pip stops and even if half needed 10 or 12 pips - you could have still been worse off - simply due to the amount of losing trades only being 50%.
If you had 10 losing trades - but have taken say 35 or 40 trades - thats then no problem - but similar if you only had only 4 losing trades and only 4 winners - same result again - to low a win ratio.
I think you need to do 100 trades over say 7 -10 days and review every day - fine tune and then see the results - I think you will be surprised
Glad you have remained un emotional losing 10 times - that would do some traders heads in - but its all part of the intraday learning process
I can remember one trader on another site I was helping counting one trade as a loss after he had been up 14 pips. i said to him why did you not take some profit - especially after getting a great entry and the stop could have been just 3 pips - it was that good
He replied - well my first target was 18 pips - we did not make it - and so I got stopped out - and I counted it as a loss
He soon realised even just taking 10 pips - he would have had a winning trade with a RR of 2 and no loss - he was just so set in his old ways - and needed to adjust - ie the devil is really in the detail - small change can make large differences
Tomorrow Steve - limit yourself to only say 8 or 10 trades or 14 if you feel comfortable.
Any questions feel free to ask
Regards
F
Last edited:
