Bad luck or Bad Trading?

I have been having a really bad run of late and it just seems to continue. I trade on the daily (4h for entries) and have a swing trade style. I prefer the more set it and forget it instead of sitting in front of my computer all day. This most recent trade was on NZDJPY. This pair has been in a downtrend since January 2015. The pair rose to .75000 round number and rejected yesterday. The daily 200 SMA is at the very same level and the Stoch (8, 3, 3) is overbought. The confluence was a perfect entry, so I entered short just below .75000. Today the price looks to close above the round number AND is closing above the 200 SMA for the first time since December 4, 2015. This seems to be happening A LOT to me in the last month. Every indication that the price should be going one way and it is doing the exact opposite. Is my thinking flawed or should I just chalk this up as bad luck?

This isn’t a question that anyone can answer confidently from a description of one trade, [I]but[/I] …

It sounds to me like you’ve done a perfectly reasonable trade (if this is a method that normally works for you, which of course I’m assuming) and been unlucky in this instance.

Well, in such circumstances one needs to decide either that it’s a foreseeable “bad run” (i.e. within expected results-variance), or that the methodology may be flawed, or that the markets may have changed (either temporarily or for a longer term) in such a way that what was once a profitable method no longer is.

But to start drawing even any tentative conclusions about those questions is clearly going to need an analysis of quite a lot of statistics.

The kind of question that springs to mind is “What’s the profit factor of the last 50 trades been, and how significantly different is it from the profit factor of the 300 trades before that?” (That’s only one parameter, of course, and not necessarily the exact one you’d want to apply, but it’s the [I][U]kind of question[/U][/I] from which indications can follow, which can help you decide what to do, I think?).

Meanwhile, hoping it turns round for you, for you … and welcome to the forum. :slight_smile:

august specifically is a bad month for trading.

the big guys are on their yachts with their wifes and kids.

the volumes are very low.

the mivememts are controled by the dump money.

if your trading systen was successfull for 8 months then just wait till september kicks in and youll be set again.

over all if you are sucessfull 7 months andc1 month not then this isa clear indicator that your system works. just not in every market conditions. no system works perfect in every market conditions.

yeah i have to agree with turbo, if the systems does good 7 months straight then its just the market playing here, could be august, could be sept, but ateast you have more than 50% chances of doing good with a system doing 7 months out 12 better than most. stay positive, luck has nothing to do with it really. the market is just one heck of an opponent

There is nothing like a bad luck or bad trade. You lose because of your lack of knowledge and experience, you need to practice trading if you want to become successful in Forex Trading.

Hey.

What is your usual win rate on these trades? If your win rate is 50% I can garuantee that you will have 9 or 10 losers in a row eventually…

Is not bad luck, just selling on Jpy while stocks in US are buoyed, the trade is stalled while risk remains on, so the techs take a back seat for a while.

Others are correct, Its not about winning all the time. Remember about the risk too and so you have to be more analytical . I don’t see it as bad luck perhaps you only have to learn more about forex trading and the forex market before getting back to trading.

Yeah…! Forex Trading is not always winning, you need to be calm after lose and then you turn it up into profits in the next trade.

People blame luck for their losses they do not think that they need to improve their trading. They feel they were right market did bad with them or their bad luck was there when loss happened.

Luck has nothing to do with the Forex Trading, the only thing you lose is because of your decision that you make, it is the only thing that lead you to your losses.

It may bad luck when you not easily find your target. But I give much credit to trader’s skill which which he can some how change his bad luck to good trading results. Bad trading is much responsible than Bad luck when some one is in loss.

If you followed your trading plan precisely, then you lost for one of two reasons - either 1). the plan is flawed or 2). this was just one of the losing trades that you are absolutely bound to have statistically.

1). Is your plan good? Have you back-tested it and demo-tested it live and run it for real live? Have you shared it with anyone who could find problems with it?

2). No plan is 100% perfect. so even if you follow it precisely, sometimes the market will do a very unlikely thing and you will have a loser. Just make sure that your potential loss is only a small fraction of your account so you can get back into the game. There are many ways to win but the only way to lose is to have to stop playing for lack of money.

I feel sometimes things just happen that even we can’t control. This is reality many don’t know in the market, don’t blame yourself all the time for any bad trade, you were just unfortunate!

There is nothing like Bad Luck, the only thing that is the reason for your failure is the wrong trade. It would be the only thing that would matter.

This game is not so simple as you make out.

You can open and run a good trade but the market does something that was not probable but nevertheless possible, and you are stopped out.

Or, you can open a good trade but then run it badly so it becomes a loser.

Neither is down to bad luck I agree - but neither were the wrong trades.

Indeed … and a neat example of why the concept of “wrong trades” is a good deal more complicated than many forum conversations typically disclose. (Not a subject to discuss with people who imagine that “a good trade” and “a good entry” are much the same thing! :slight_smile: ).

Nothing is like there as bad luck and the trading cannot be bad, as it is non living, the only thing bad here is your decision. You need to learn that whatever you lose, you lose it because of your decision.

Are you really saying that all trades that lead to a loss are because of poor execution by the trader?

I am saying that whether you gain or loss, and even when you do it with broker, and if you lose, the only responsible person for that would be you.