My 100 trades, please tell me how to improve

Beginner Questions
1

Hello everyone,
The objective of my post is to show you my strategy to see how it could be improved.

I’m the noobest noob, but really willing to learn, and on this last part, not the last one at school ;).
So I’ve almost complete the School of Pipsology (undergraduate lol), and bought 2 books really good in understanding all this.

Anyway, I took 1 week off to try the strategy I’ve been shaping the past month. I’ve been learning since end of September.

Here we go:
I’ve only performed technical analysys based on:
[ul]
[li]RSI (short signal if >70 ; long signal if <30)
[/li][li]Stochastic oscillator (short signal if >80 ; long signal if <20)
[/li][/ul]
Timeframe 1: 4 hours for feeling
Timeframe 2: 1 hour for idea of the trend
Timeframe 3: 15 minutes for immediate view
Timeframe 4: 1 minute for active trading based on indicators

I went through the online documentation from saxobank which I think is one of the best ones I’ve seen (babypips dudes are of course on the top of everything :)).

And this guy proposed the coin game, which did really attract my atention. Try this game and you will be interested as well by the results. Only one rule, whatever happens, stick with your strategy :wink:

Anyway, this is the reason why I did in 1 week 100 trades, sticking for any single one of those to the strategy above.

I did a first assessment at 30 trades, and I had 75% positives results.
I’ve just did my 100 trade, and guess what… 75 % positives results :wink:
Here they are attached: (L for Long, S for Scarlett Johansson)
Quiz.pdf (93.1 KB)

So, here we go, please let me know what you think.

Total trades: 100
Total positive trades: 75
Total earned on positive trades: 6983.5 £
Total loss on negative trends: 4914.5
Average gain per trade: 20.69 £
Average time in a trade: 25min41
Plateform: GFT spread betting
15 £ per lot each time
stop loss: -250£
Take profit: from a trailling stop at 2 pips as soon as I’m + 50£

2

I’ll be using this first post to update what I’m doing, which is why I’m posting just after.

I’ve realised in the process that I could maybe enhance my ration by having a Short strategy. I went Long on my 33 first trades just because I didn’t know I could go short. I’ve always read this, but never took enough time to think about it.

The second thing which I’ve been discovering through the process is the notion of patience :slight_smile:
I tend to wait for confirmation rather than the entry signal only. I’ve been doing this a bit better towards the end, but still, I’m still having problems taking enough time waiting for the confirmation of the reversal.

The third thing is the fundamental analysys, and I came through couple of sites, and I have to say the one from daily fx is really nice, so I’ve sticked with it, they gave me couple of good pairs to focus on, together with rather good trend feelings even though all weren’t correct. But that’s the game.

I’ve tested GFT and FXCM, and both are good. But even if I prefer FXCM, their spread is just a bit of a robbery if you ask me. See here the difference from this morning 8:50 GMT

EUR/USD FXCM proposes a spread of 2.4, GFT 1.0
USD/CAD FXCM proposes a spread of 3.0, GFT 2.0
USD/JPY FXCM proposes a spread of 2.4, GFT 1.2

Basicaly, FXCM spread is double the spread of GFT… But FXCM live trading station looks amazing with built in signals.
Anyone with experience on FXCM or GFT ?I would be interested in your opinion please !

3

Personally I don’t use oscillators but having 2 in general usually causes confusion or very late entries. I see you have had a 75% win rate which is great. I commend you on that. your orders list doesn’t help me at all because i am not going to track down where you took each one of those trades. Honestly if your system can constantly give you 75% winners then you may have found your own personally holy grail. I have not used FXCM or GFT but i use oanda for my live trading its not bad.

4

Hi MeiHua,
thanks for your answer.
I just put the document online if anyone wanted to have a look, but I think the principal is written in the first post.

The Stochastric oscilator is the main one, the one triggering the action. I use RSI only to have a feeling of overbought/sold but that’s all about it, I’m not waiting for both of those to indicators to be aligned, but when they are I feel pretty much safe.
But I had a short trade -250 with RSI 69 and stoch 76 so I was a bit upset their lol.
However toward the end, I realised that paying more attention on the actual value of the pair, like reaching support/resistance or psychological level could help a lot as well.

5

I see you have had a 75% win rate which is great.

Yes, but risk:reward is 5:1. I’d say this strategy is effective in flat market, but stops will be often kicked out on trendy moves.

6

Let me make sure I’ve got your trade management understood?

Correct me if I’m wrong but 25 loosing trades with a stop loss of £250 is £6250, which is more than you’ve won. But you said you’re net loss was £4914, which works out at £196 over 25 losses.

If you are only moving your stop loss up once you reach £50 then most of your trades are seeing positive returns but then some of them are slipping back nearly all the way to the SL. So some of your trades must be slipping from +£50 back to -£200 for example, which is not very good at all. If you’re trading M1 you have to bag all the profits you can for as little risk as you can. Your results mean that you’re seeing a positive return well over 75% of the time but not bagging that profit.

Now I’m not critisising your results, if you’re winning 75% of your trades then great (if you can keep it up), but in my opinion it is a ballsy strategy to risk double your average gain.
[I][B]
edit:[/B][/I] ok I had a look at your results and actually most of your losses came from straight £250 SL hits, so forget part of what I said. I still think the risk reward is bad, do you get much in the way of draw down before you see a profit? If so then you would work on timing your entried better to either get you in closer to the bottom or to wait for a pullback. :slight_smile:

7

Yes the stop loss is -250, but when I saw my trades wouldn’t be positive, I’ve exit the trade.
But as you can see, that was at the really beginning, since then I was thinking that I had to find a balance and let the trade go a bit longer.

The risk is bad which is why I’m concerned about the strategy.
For sure, all the time I enter trades too early. Definitely, so any idea is good.

8

Hi quiz,

Congrats on the success with your system so far.

Regarding FXCM spreads, FXCM receives pricing from 10+ liquidity providers and then streams the best bid/ask price onto the platform with a pip mark-up. This differs from most other brokers running a dealing desk, since they have direct control over the price regardless of what their bank relationships might be quoting them. I’ve put together a thread in the FXCM broker aid section that goes over examples of how FXCM’s spreads are determined and how our execution works 301 Moved Permanently . I hope this helps give a better idea of how our NDD forex execution differs from most other brokers that operate a dealing desk. Feel free to post any questions on the thread.

-Jason

9

Ok, I’ve just put the screen shot here attached from this morning regarding fxcm and gft.
Let me know what you think.

Basicaly, I’m okay to pay more for a better service, but to some extent. As you’ve seen, I did 100 trades in couple of days, so the spread is really important to me.

Thanks fxcm gouru !

gft-fxcn.jpg700×479 17.2 KB

10

Winning percentage is important in sports not in trading. A while ago I did some experimenting with an EA that had about 50% winning rate with a 1:1 R:R. I changed the R:R to 2:1 and reran the back test over the same period and my winning rate went to around 65%. Then I increased it to 10:1 and the winning rate was over 90%. Guess what - in every test the net loss was about the same.

There is no point in focusing on the win rate. Psychologically, it might make you feel good, but it is meaningless. The net profit / loss is what really matters.

11

Really?

I just cant grasp that concept, that lossing Is OK…

I do understand that profit/loss matters, and everything MIGHT put you ahead, But Lossing is lossing… Its the impact of the trade if negative.

To each His own. I perfer to Not lose 1 single trade.

Its stinkin thinkin, once you train the brain its ok to Lose, then next thing you know, you will be doing just that, and sitting on the sidelines drinkin gatorade.

YOU MUST BE SURE your going to win before entering a trade, and thinking otherwise, is setting yourself up for failure in the long run.

BUT, thats just me. I get sooooooooooo annoyed from losing a trade, that I practice, to NOT Lose a trade.

Perfection --BUILDS-- Consistancy

But like many of you are aware of probably, Im not the average trader,LOL…

I trade 75% of my available Units per trade, but I also trade High Probabilty of the outcome in my favor,

Thats the object, NO?

Remember this, MORE then 95% of traders Lose at this Biz, and I bet cha, a majority thought losing was OK…

String together 10-12 of those in a row, and I will put money on the line, that your strat stinks.

WOOOOOOWWWW, Im out there,LOL…

Hey, folks, pay no attention to me, Im in my own world,

12

I have listened to several professional traders (not trainers) who have offered their opinion on this matter. Their advice was to forget about the winning percentage and focus on the profits. They said that anything from 40 to 60% was OK for them as long as they were booking steady profits.

Winning is good for the ego, but once you can handle losses, it is meaningless.

13

Don’t know if Jason Rogers (FXCM) below will back me up on this but one of his traders (no names, no pack drills) averages around 40% wins but at 1:3 RR or better! :60: Everyone takes a hit MoneyNVRsleeps… get over it! LOL

14

That sounds a little OCDish to me…lol :wink:

15

Hi everyone,
Me again, and ready to take on my second week of full test trading in couple of weeks.

So I’ve been trying to get better, and I’ve came up with something that looks good.
The big miustake I did for my first week of test wa that I only based my trading on my indicators, and didn’t value the actual price action.

Couple of months after my first try, I’m ready to take on another crazy week of test, but I have one question for you guys.

Did anyone tried fxknight.com trading training ? I’ve seen couple of videos on Youtube from Andrei Knight, and I’m trying to apply his strategy based on envelopes, fibo, couple of indicators etc (yeah…Real Christmas tree my charts…).

I would like to attend their pro stuff, I’m just asking if anyone has the experience of this, good or bad, that would be really helpful.

Thanks for your help everyone.