What Should I Do?

Hello everyone, I need some advice for losing trades.

So here is my story, I had some trades opened up on my account and some of them were losing. The trades I had open were long usd/chf, short aud/chf, long chf/jpy, and long eur/aud. Some trades I had multiple positions open.

All of these positions were .01 - .03 lots but I had a couple open at a time. My total account value was only at about $1,000. I had these trades open and I didn’t have a stop loss on them (I know, I know) and they were running away from me. So today I decided to close all of them so they wouldn’t hurt anymore and lost about $400.

Do you think I did the right thing to not hold on to these losing trades and close them right away or should I have held on to them and hope they reverse?

Let me know what everyone thinks I’m still learning so any advice will be useful.

100% the right call, at least least you stopped the risk at $400 as it could easily have been worse. A $400 loss is better than a €650 & a line needs drawn in the sand at some point.

The other thing is that sets of an alarm for me is that you said:

[QUOTE=“Fallnsoul;735787”]Some trades I had multiple positions open.[/QUOTE]

If you are long, only ever buy in to another position when price is trading above your initial entry so only add to it if you are in profit. Adding to a loser & hoping that luck & optimism are going to save you will soon eat up your account.

Main thing though (& you know what’s coming): use a stop-loss!!!

Best to close, take the costly lesson and live to fight another day. You can’t really tell which way the market is going to go for sure and you don’t want to lose the whole $1k. Tough beat to lose 40% of your account but if you learn the lesson to not totally over-leverage yourself to get yourself in positions like this again then $400 isn’t the worst price to pay for this lesson at the end of the day.

Hi Fallnsoul,

Sorry to hear about your loss, but if it’s any consolation, I agree with Baz and Tektolnes that you made the right decision to cut your losses. The important question is what are you going to do differently going forward?

You mentioned that you didn’t have a stop and you already know your mistake there. But aside from that, you also mentioned that you had multiple positions open. What was your total exposure in the market?

My guess is that in addition to trading without a stop, you may have also been over leveraged. If that was the case, you may find this earlier discussion on leverage useful: 301 Moved Permanently

Good luck and good trading! :41: :22:

Jason

In my opinion trading on multiple pair only make confused and ineffective for trading, in addition trading without stop loss if can’t monitoring account might worst condition will leading to get fail in trades, I think we can open only one pair with using strategy averaging with use small lot size, felt to get comfortable first in trading before imagine about profit.

Thanks for the feedback, and yes I will have to remember not to add to a losing position, and a stop loss! I’ve been trying out different strategies.

Thanks!

Thanks Jason, and I’m doing a price action strategy currently where I make sure I’m using a reasonable SL. And yes I am using a higher leverage and had a larger exposure.

I’m so agree with this but it doesn’t mean that you’re not allowed to do trading with multiple pairs. You just need to understand those currencies first (including the economic habits of that country)

Hi Fallnsoul,

the others gave already pretty good answers about money management, overleverage and stop losses, which are the main issues. You should consider them point by point and go through every trade of yours.

One more point to think about: you have not mentioned your trading system/approach, but most of your trades were going against the ongoing main trends. In case you are a newbie, going against the main trend can be enough reason to lose all what you have. Don´t forget: the trend is your friend.

I wish you great trading.

For me that is the key bit. As soon as you’re letting hope into the equation, then in my view you are gambling rather than trading. I know nothing about baseball, but I could walk into a bookie and place a bet on one team beating the other. All I would have to support my decision is hope. As others have said, if ever you can’t make a logical case for being in a trade, you shouldn’t be in it. If you have a losing position and the market conditions don’t support you leaving it open, close it.

Personally, I’d never trade without a Stop/Loss, and if my Stop is ever hit then that is my prudence saving me making a worse loss. Noone is right every time. But always trade off consistent logic, rather than hope, and you can make money from the market more often than you lose it.

I think that there is no right answer on your question because no one knows what would of happen if you didn’t close your trades.
Pretty evident that you had a bad risk management there since you over traded your account balance.
Since you are still learning I would recommend you to trade on a small trading account and test your strategy on it. Once you have got a consistent profits for at least one year than you can slowly increase your trading volume.

It’s my pleasure, Fallnsoul, and it’s good to hear you’re now using stops to manage your risk. :22:

That’s what I suspected considering the size of the draw down you suffered. What amount of leverage do you plan to use going forward?

You’re advocating trading without a plan?!