Please help a beginner trader

Hi,

Can someone please help me?

my leverage is set to 1:100. today I bought 1 lot and then lost the trade, and I lost £360. my account balance originally was £3000. can someone please advise me what leverage I should use and the amount of lots to buy or sell, because it only takes a few pips to go against me and I lose a lot of money and I would like to risk only 1% of my account size, while at same time wanting to make a good amount of profit when winning for example 20 pips. before I bought 0.5 lots and when I win 20 pips it comes to tiny amount like £5 or £7 profit. thank you very much.

Leverage (and all the other things) is no magic number which makes you rich quick. If you increase leverage, you increase risk and profit the same amount. If you are new to trading, I suggest trading with a demo or/and the lowest lotsize your broker allows. It is not about making money if you trade. Particular if you are new. It is about [U]keeping[/U] money. Then I suggest to going through the bp school before you’d file the next order.

Hi Steve, I’m going to refer you to a discussion we just had earlier: 301 Moved Permanently

If you have more questions feel free to contact me via private message.

If I’m thinking correctly, your 0.5 lot size is equivalent to 5 mini lots? $5 a pip, that would only allow you room for a 10 pip sl. Not much room for play with 1% risk. You might want to dial your lot size down a bit, something more like 0.2 lot size? That would give you some breathing room on your stop loss around 25 pips.

Immediately take your cash of the market. If you have basic questions like this, you are only throwng your money away. This is a business of education and skill, not luck and ignorance.

Can you imagine going under for surgery and the last thing you hear the doctor say is, “Hey guys, which one is the scalpel?”

I agree 100%,

OP, he’s not flamin you, but he is correct. First trade, you lost, and didnt even have a general idea of the size lots you SHOULD be using.

Im not saying rock the demo, because, honestly, Demos ruin you as a trader. Maybe good for getting a strat in line, but practice with real cash, just mini, on the pennies…

Do baseball players practice with tennis balls?

Im not a forex master or anything like that, and Im dumbed down on a few things, but the whole thing is make money, and not knowing the first step is not the way to go.

Do some more reading, google direct questions, check out Youtube, at least you asked and didnt keep rollin with it.

Great profits to ya buddy

MoneyNVRSleeps,

Why do you say that practice accounts ruin traders? Based on my reading and research, I figured it would be beneficial for me to use practice accounts for at least 4-6 months before committing funds. I just finished reading the School of Pipsychology and have been practice trading for a month.

I would appreciate hearing more about the approach you would recommend for a newbie to get started in the markets.

Thanks!

Creating an ideal practise account is somewhat decent. In a practise account, you can create the habits of overleveraging, and large risk %'s. Most demo accounts advertising allow you to start with 50 000 to 100 000 play money, with 100:1 or 400:1 leverage. These are not ideal conditions, as I highly doubt you will be trading live like that to start. Also, demo accounts have hardly, if any, slippage. Emotionally, if you lose 100 000 play money, would you care? I doubt it; in live trading you face emotions such as fear and greed, something you won’t experience demo trading. Your demo records will be completely different from when you trade live. You will hesitate to take valid entries and take blind trades just for the sake of it, some which you may win.

Personally, I’d open a small live account, somewhere around $20-$200 to practise. That’ll give you the best experience. Think of it as your tuition fee for forex. =P

Hope that helps tealaftrader.

Regards,
Clark.