What's the hardest thing to do?

[Infinetyp]

"close to" - you said I lost 30% and I said I hadn't which is true. I'm not giving advice, i'm giving my opinion and if someone wants to stick a 20pt stop and risk 2% of their account on every trade they're more than welcome to. After losing a lot doing that, I turned my back on that way of trading. I believe it's dangerous - if you want to go ahead and trade like that, be my guest.

Trading actually isn't that risky, it's only when people leverage up to the eyeballs that it becomes that way. Markets generally don't move very far over short periods of time. It's the tight stops which get you in and out of the market repeatedly losing you more points than the market's actually moved in that time frame. If you even look at the beginning of the year and compare it to the end, see how much the market's actually moved. I think you'll find it's not actually a substantial amount.

Finally, your logic is frankly ****. It's scary you think like that. If I told you I was 19 when I put my first trade on and started getting involved with trading and now i'm past 26 - that would mean i've been trading in some shape or form for the last 7 years to your puny 6 even though I joined in November 2007 and you joined Jan 2006 (la dee daa) so going by your logic my ****'s bigger than yours. You have **** logic and insight. Mind blowing that someone traded before they joined T2W....

As I said, if someone wants to trade that way I don't give a ****, but don't start having a go at me for voicing my opinion based on my experiences.

Actually...this post imo shows a lot of trading experience..why, well?

1> only risk 2% of account!! (any stupid trade is stupid no matter how much you risk)
2> always use tight stops!! (every trade you make you'll be wrong to begin with because of volatility/liquidity. Close a trade when you know you are wrong, the market changes every minute, learn to recognise this ...not that easy)
3> leverage!! (ha ha..everyone leverages, ever bought a house for 5% deposit??) you pocket all the increase in value (especially the 95% lent by the bank), it's easy money as long as house prices go up...you don't get a margin call on your house if prices drop 5% do you!! Well, you can't buy and hold in trading, if it goes wrong like house prices now, all your losses get taken from your 5% before the bank loses from their 95%, btw, the bank will not let their 95% lose any money, who are the clever ones then?!! Leverage should actually be renamed as the "stupidity index", the more you're leveraged the more stupid you are!

Masquarade, you should write a book... called "Trading actually isn't that risky" because I think there is never a more true statement said than that and you backed it all up in your post!! simplesss

imo..:whistling

 

[brewski1984]

Why is it almost every site I go on states "(Spread betting and CFD) trading carries a high level of risk to your capital and you can lose more than your initial deposit. These trading products may not be suitable for all investors so seek independent advice"

 

[Infinetyp]

Oh! Lol, ok, I should explain more.

Oanda allows you to break down lots into as little as 1 "point". I believe a regular lot is about $10/pip/lot, right? Then this is about 100,000 "Oanda points".

So let's say you have a $1000 account, and want to bet 60% on a trade with 4.5 stop. On Eur/Usd this is about... 23,000 points as I look at it, or ~$612 in margin (i.e. "60%"). This comes out to $2.3/pip.

So if you have a 4.5 pip loss, this is 4.5 x 2.3 = $10.35... Hardly anything to be worried about.

If average winner is 20 pips, then you bring home $46. Even assuming a 30% win rate or something, you're still profitable. That's why I said all you need is a set of high-prob setups. Run those for what they're worth, and you're fine.

Of course, this works for me since it's my style. I like making my trades as black & white as I can and a tight stop implies an "either it worked or it didn't" philosophy. I'm not about to agonize over whether my 50 pip stop at 10% account value is going to be hit or not. So if my trade isn't immediately giving me positive feedback to my expectations, it's not a trade I'm likely to want.

4.5 pip stop loss..seriously....aahhh hang on i can see the logic now, with a 0.5 pip spread gives me 4 wrong trades for every one correct trade of 20 pips...so as long as i average better than 1 right trade to 4 wrong then it's easy money...fact..currencies have a 95% probability of retracing at least 30% on any time frame (test it!!), which means based on porbabilities you're F***cked:smart:

 

[Infinetyp]

Why is it almost every site I go on states "(Spread betting and CFD) trading carries a high level of risk to your capital and you can lose more than your initial deposit. These trading products may not be suitable for all investors so seek independent advice"

 

[VielGeld]

Sure, based on probabilities, that you are, quite royally.

But again, it doesn't matter because you're only going for high-prob setups. You're sifting through trades for the ones that are least likely to give you a loss.

Those probabilities are merely a mechanical account of how much you can be wrong. In reality, if you only take A+ setups, you can have an 80% win rate... At which point, who cares?

 

[brewski1984]

I don't get how you can say it isn't actually that risky. Once you're in a trade literally anything could happen and if you do enough trades eventually it will.

 

[Infinetyp]

Sure, based on probabilities, that you are, quite royally.

But again, it doesn't matter because you're only going for high-prob setups. You're sifting through trades for the ones that are least likely to give you a loss.

Those probabilities are merely a mechanical account of how much you can be wrong. In reality, if you only take A+ setups, you can have an 80% win rate... At which point, who cares?

Tom, if you can do that with such a tight stop loss then I hereby re-name thee as Sir Tom (queen vic is a mate of mine so i have the power) as that is pure genius!!! PM me when you're selling it.

 

[Infinetyp]

I don't get how you can say it isn't actually that risky. Once you're in a trade literally anything could happen and if you do enough trades eventually it will.

my god, you're right... are you saying the more you trade the less the risk you have in the trade, or is it the longer you're in the trade the more risky it is, or is it a combination of both...what re you saying?

 

[Infinetyp]

Sure, based on probabilities, that you are, quite royally.

But again, it doesn't matter because you're only going for high-prob setups. You're sifting through trades for the ones that are least likely to give you a loss.

Those probabilities are merely a mechanical account of how much you can be wrong. In reality, if you only take A+ setups, you can have an 80% win rate... At which point, who cares?

How do you find optionexpress? i've heard a lot about them, tempted to give them ago, are they any good in fx Tom?

 

[brewski1984]

You know what I'm saying, you're just trying to wind people up.

 

[Infinetyp]

You know what I'm saying, you're just trying to wind people up.

yep, sorry!

 

[ldk22233]

The reason I don't use stop losses Is I because every time I used one I get stopped out by 2-3 points and then market makes full recovery. Now you may say I might have the wrong technique for putting stop losses into place which is probably right but I have tried everything tight stops very wide stops and they have never worked for me as good as mental stops. Plus I have the luxury of time to sit at an computer and monitor my positions which is why I possibly can get away with it. On the other hand I still do put stops in places but very very wide ones as a just encase there is a market crash or something so I dont end up owing the shirt of my back!

 

[VielGeld]

How do you find optionexpress? i've heard a lot about them, tempted to give them ago, are they any good in fx Tom?

There's better out there, imo.

Their site lags a lot and their commissions are quite high ($15 for first 10 option contracts + $1.5/c after). Their tools are good, though. Not great, but good.

Overall, yeah, there's better out there. I stumbled upon Interactive Brokers a couple weeks ago and went ape **** when I found out their option trades are like $1 when I was paying up to $30, $50+ just for option round-turns (depending on trade... some spreads cost mucho $$$).

Fully 1/4th of my losses this year were based on OX's commissions alone! Imo, they're just capitalizing on the recent massive increase in interest in options.

 

[tomorton]

According to me the most difficult thing in trading is to stick with a trend as we are often apprehensive about not continue making profit. However there are various platforms where you can make things easier for you. For instance I took help from the trading tools of Signalstime that not only improved my performance but also rescued me from different risks.

Goodness me! I thought dear old mcrlogitech was back.....

 

[ffsear]

 

[SmartGeek]

The hardest thing according to me would be staying calm after a loss. We have to control our emotions if we really wanna become a successful trader.

 

[NVP]

the hardest thing to do is walk away ........always has been and always will be .........

N

 

[ffsear]

from Trader Dante's twitter

 

[ralfSchu]

Interesting diagram. But I would say the hardest thing is finding a trading strategy that actually works! Once you have that everything else falls into place.

 

[futures oil]

Interesting diagram. But I would say the hardest thing is finding a trading strategy that actually works! Once you have that everything else falls into place.

Personally I think that sticking to the strategy is the hardest. Consistency is actually the key to success. There are hundreds of thousands of strategies that do work but people are unable to follow them.

The strategy has to be built for you, for your risk tolerance, time frame everything has to be whit what you are comfortable.

When the draw downs come your confidence will be tested every time, and this is where people usually switch to the next system. If you don't want draw downs you should invest in High Frequency Trading because the only way to not lose money so far.