Going short and long at the same time

Hi guys

I was thinking what if you went short and long on a single pair at the same time.

For example if I go long on the GBPUSD set my stop loss 10pips below and set my take profit 20 pips above and at the same time go short set my stop 10pips above and set my take profit 20pips below. if the market goes long my sell trade will lose 10pips before it hits my stop but my buy trade will profit 20pips making it a 10pip profit. the same if the price moves downwards it’ll hit the stop on the long trade but earn 20pips on the short making a 10pip profit.

Has anyone tried this before? I am going to trying this tech on my demo account first, it works in theory but will it work in real life?

Hello and welcome.

Have you thought of trying OCO orders?

One Cancels the Other… If your short is triggered, the long is cancelled, and vice versa…

If trading was this easy we’d all be placing these kind of orders and raking in 10 pip profits all over the place. Unfortunately it’s not this easy. For one you’re not factoring in all the possible end results. In addition to the result that you’ve described there’s also the possibility that price drops 10 pips and then reverses course and goes up 20 pips stopping out both your long and short trade.

If you really want to prove it to yourself you can demo it to see if it’s a successful strategy or not. The fact that it’s not widely used as a successful strategy should be indicator enough though.

Going short and long in the same pair at the same time makes no sense. It is a terrible way to hedge and I don’t even refer to it as a hedge. There is a spread in each and you may end up with losses on both. Even if it works in demo, real is different which is one small thing new traders don’t comprehend. Test it in a live account with a small $500 account and execute a few thousand trades. That is how you test and learn how to trade. Just my two cents, of course every trader needs to decide which way to approach anything.

Most new traders will try what you suggested, test something in a demo account. At the same time you may notice that most traders fail.

What you may try is what currency futures traders do, which you cannot do in spot forex, for example:

in spot forex, if you bought EUR/USD you would be automatically buying Euro while selling US Dollars;

in currency futures, you could buy Euros but also buy US Dollars, or buy Euros and buy US Dollars at the same time…

This may be more successful (if managed well) than buying and selling Euros at the same time, for example…

Again, we as retail traders must not get too wacky with our accounts or the markets will just tears us apart!

Its not strange if some one is going to wards short and long at the same time. Market moves all the time we can make profit in any position. We can do this with same pair or in different pairs. Some pairs move opposite some are same in direction . It is up to a trader which pair he chooses for trading.

hedging your position is not recommended at all, you can come out with serious injuries lol

I would say if you get caught in a position thats going against you its best to cut your losses short rather than hedge.

The only way you will get out with little or no damage is if you have a powerful confirmation technique to determine when the reversal in you original bias is confirmed to close the positive leg and watch the negative leg pull out of negative to positive.

If only it were this easy. :stuck_out_tongue:

By all means, experiment with the idea. You might find something that can work. I’ve backtested similar strategies in the past and they didn’t work.

What type of indicators do you like to use. What is your opinion on the John Carter Squeeze?