Do you agree with me that leverage is the killer?

Well i met a lot of new traders who blasted their accounts in 2-3 Months time. Often i notice these new traders trade big lots relative to their account size and that’s often the reason of failure. So I call it leverage the killer.

Do you agree with me using bigger lot size is often reason for failure for most of the traders ? Please share your story and feedback

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No, because if you are risking a certain % of your account, lets say 2% on all active trades then you can’t over leverage yourself. The problem with new traders is that they don’t understand and know what are they doing, so the solution is in educating themselves. They often think in big numbers and don’t know that to trade big they must have big capital. On the other hand if you are risking 2% you can use every ounce of leverage you can to gain maximum profit, and that’s why it’s good :slight_smile:

It all comes down to the risk, newbies often forget to leverage their risk effectively and the rest…well, we know how it goes.

The killer is not leverage.
The killer is the self.
No one but the trader him/herself can click the mouse button to execute a trade.
The mind is the single-most biggest challenge / obstacle when it comes to trading- yet, is the least talked about on forums IMO.

Jake

Yep, I agree! It is the most important aspect in trading but yet it is the most ignored or neglected…

I agree with what PipnRoll and FOREXUnlimited are saying. The mind is the one obstacle that the individual has to overcome.

The fear, greed, emotion, mentality and all those other thoughts and states of mind influence trading ability.

Being “neutral” is one of the key thing to avoid those emotions. With enough experience, in due time, you will develop to trust your own instinct and have a better judgement in which it will help your confidence to grow. Also, whatever you can get no matter how much of a pip or percentage it is, take it… It is better to have [B]something[/B] than walking away with nothing or worse at a lose…

You set the rules. You follow your own rules and then you reap the reward eventually…

No, Greed is the real killer. Look at most newbies questions on this site and others, you will soon find questions along the lines of “How do I make a lot of money as quickly as possible? Which strategy never looses?”

Come on, would you allow a guy or gal to operate on you who has only read some book on “how to preform surgey 101?” Of course not!

Newbies don’t understand, people in this industry have spent many years and money sharping their skills. To think you will be on the same level or beat us is very foolish.

I do agree that using bigger lot size is one of the reasons why so many traders fail, but I don’t think that leverage is the killer. It’s working in our favor if we have good risk management.

True… That is another reasons newbies or even the one who have been doing this for a little. Another thing that they do not focus on is how to learn to survive in early years of learning. Like what you said most questions ask around here is how to turn their capital in X amount of dollars in a short period of time so they can quit their job tomorrow.

Instead it should be “How can I survived my live account in 6 months to a year” something like that…Focus on survival and the process not on the money. By doing this, you will learn not to be greedy and practicing being neutral along with risk management because you cannot survived if you cannot apply any of those…

+1 It’s one thing to read " To be successful you need to put the balance of probabilities on your side, by having a trading method that over the long term will deliver more positive results than negative, using a money management plan that will protect your capital, while at the same time adding to it, and working your trading method and money management plan with patience and discipline." It’s quite another thing do apply it every day when trading as well as out side of trading.

Depends on trader itself. Leverage can help trader to trade with small amount. but if we use leverage for trading with big lot size without consider our margin, it will make us get bad result. I have experienced it. So i prefer trade with small leverage, maximize 1:500 from TenkoFx.

Yep, that about sums it up…getting a handle on the emotions is no easy task and one that all newbies have to learn…and one of the key things that a newbie can learn is figure out when to walk away from the table…

Yes, leverage is the killer. You use it to kill everyone else in the market. If you kill them all and there is a bullet left in the end, you must kill yourself. This is the first rule of leverage.

Going to second the above post, thanks for the laughs…

yes, leveraged can kill our trading. the greater leverage we use the greater the risk. For that we have to choose the leverage that is appropriate to the needs of our trading. we could try to trade using small leverage for beginners because the risk is smaller

For newbies leverage is the killer, but for veterans I think it’s the most powerful weapon to blow their account cause they know when to execute position according to their analysis from their past bad and good experience.

the first time i blew an account, was when i started trading with hotforex about 2 years back, I had a very small account and traded a big lot, that taught me a lesson, but i dont think its the lots size I guess yeah its more of the state of mind that you were in, and the greed of earning fast and big

when I first started trading I used to look at my take profit to see how much I was going to make, now the first thing I do is work out how much im going to loose if the trade goes bad. Everyone is going to loose trades and if you trade with a massive stop loss sooner of later you are going to hit it and blow your account. For me its about being able to take loosing trades and still come out ahead. So my best advice to anyone starting trading would be to work out what you can loose and then decide if its a worthwhile trade

No. After my opinion is the action the killer. "Must trade! ". Many useless trades that are not worth the money. Beginners tend to overtrade, cause the exciting.