Tips on how to prevent the most frequent way that I lose money?

Look at the chart below… I went long, got stopped out but if my SL would have been 17 pips lower I would have made over 200 pips, instead I lost over 4k. This drove me insane this morning so I was thinking maybe someone here has a tip to help me stop these things from happening.

Thanks


I cant really see on your chart where you entered your trade.

What was your originanl S/L set to? Why did you enter the trade when you did?

I entered at 1.4368 because I saw a clear ascending triangle with the resistance at 1.4372 and the bottoms converging. When Frankfurt opened I noticed a bullish attempt thus I figured London would break the resistance by a mile (which it did, an hour after opening). My SL was 1.4295, more of a psychological reason.

Thanks

Always winning is not possible. I’m sure you heard it thousands of times, but you must manage your losses, not worry about them and keep on with your system. If you’re disciplined enough to not break your rules, you’ll make consistent money in the long term.

I am just trying to adjust my system in a way that makes my SL better and allow market swings (but not allow too much in case the trend reverses). That trade had a 1:3 risk:reward ratio, is that too high in you eyes?

Thanks

No, i think it’s good. Maybe you need to lower your extremes. Like if your stop is if you lose 60 pips and you’re out of the trade if you win 180 pips, lower it to like 30 pips stop and 90 pips limit win… although i don’t like using limits for profits, i’d rather use some trailing stop technique. Let the profits run, you know :slight_smile:

But it’s up to you of course.

You could exit 3/4 of your trade or 1/2 of your trade at your normal SL and then a little bit further exit the rest for a final exit. you have to play with the numbers to get it to work right and to see if it would help you but atleast you would still be in the market.

Your could also cut your orders in half, one with a larger SL, or one with a very close TP… there are several variations… but I’m sure you get the idea.

If you do use one of these make sure your overall risk is still the same!
Another trick that I’ve taken a liking to is lets say cut your original entry to 3/4 of what it would normally be, or 4/5, somewhere around there, that would give you a larger SL, then when the price gets up lets say 40-50 pips, get in the rest which will throw your break even point up just slightly, which will probibly be still well below price action, and overall your at the same point – however this dosnt ALWAYS work right, again, you have to play with the numbers find out whats best for your system, on mine I add about 1/2 to 1/5 of my original entery size about every time the market has paid for it again – usually 20-50 pips depending on what I’m trading, every 20-50 pips if its what I call a ‘runner’ if its a real nice long run (over an hour, day, or week) it can be like investing a time and a half, and once, was almost double!! but that was a very very odd spike :wink:

Again play with the numbers, remember every upside has a downside, and it takes some profit away short term, but longterm it can pay off… it just depends on how it works with your stragie, if I trake based off of peaks and troughts, I’ll put more in at the next step, knowing that if I get to the next peak or trough that I just put more money in my pocket, and even if you keep going overall I tend to end up ahead – when I follow the stragie to the letter…