Really shouldn’t be here having racked up some losses already. But you know the saying “a fool and his money”. In the past I’ve had runs of success but got complacent and had it all taken from me. But despite all this I’m still drawn to trying again. Have some ideas I’m working on that seem to tie in with lots of stuff on various threads here. Looking to identify my entries and most importantly having the discipline to take profits. Not taking profits has been my single most contributing factor to my losses. I always get too greedy with my targets so need to rethink this part. Now where’s the threads on stochastic hook entries, that’s where I’m starting for now.
Maybe if you start using take profit in order to control your greed will be also a good starting point.
That is very true but I do have to be in a winning position to start with. My trouble is I fear losing more profit if I close. This then quite often comes back to my entry for little or no profit. This is a psychological problem that I must replace with a technical analysis solution and accept that for what it is. I am leaning towards a fib extension target for this as suggested in some other threads I follow.
wqell your probably on the right road then. It seems u stepped backed and did self analysis and found big problem u had. Dont give up. You’ll know if this is something u want to do if u keep putting the time in.
You will find if it is something u love doing you will keep at it.
good luck.
I disagree - you need to ride those green trades as long as you can. Don’t be a slave to loss aversion (google it up) Maybe you should think about scaling out of your trades.
Scaling out was what I considered on my only trade last week. Eur/gbp, up about 65 pips, thought about taking half off (at the low it turned out to be) but held on looking for more. Got stopped out for + 3. Greed is my weakness.
What will happen now is my next winning trade I will take all profit and then it will run further and I’ll kick myself. This is a real battle for me.
I agree. Let profits run but he may be ignoring the signs to get out. Nothing worse than turning winner into loser. There comes a time to exit and take your profit. He may be getting in on end of the trend. I dont know his exit strategy. I agree scaling out is way of protecting profits but so is adding to winning trade. Maybe his entries r too late. But at least he is doing soul searching and trying to figure it out. Instead of quitting or looking for the next hot EA.
Try working on your major psychological problem so as to prevent your emotions in your trading decision when you are trading . Worse thing forex is when all your winning trades suddenly becomes losing trades.
Everyday you’re up against traders, with more money, information and resources than you, whose soul purpose is to try and make money at your expense. For any chance at long term success, you need to recognize your trading is not built on one trade, ones session, or one decision. It’s the accumulation overtime. Trade the same way you should have learned how to retail trade in the forex; Crawl, Walk, Run then Race.
Nobody ever went broke closing a trade in profit. Instead of trying to pick tops and bottoms pick profit. In my opinion, let your winners run, without adding using a trailing stop or something that protects what you’ve already made is one of the dumbest things I ever heard. I don’t think most normal traders plan a trade on if your trade goes positive just let it run. Each trade you make should be based on risk. Risk that you can measure, instead of Reward which you can’t. That’s how full time retail and institutional traders make most of their livings on traders “greed” and/or inexperience.
Again in my opinion your trading plan, should have an entry point (in my opinion better to have entry area). A fixed stop loss based on when (not if, but when) the trade doesn’t go your way, you are out of the trade based on a acceptable % of risk to your account. The tricky part is every traders should define acceptable risk based on their experience, money to trade and overall trade plan. However once you are in profit, you want to not only protect your current account balance, but you want to protect what you made so far so you can add to it. Imagine you either had a plan to protect what you earned so far, or closed your trade in profit before you decided with no plan to let your runners run. Anyway Like I said my opinion hope it helps
Gp
I (currently)don’t have an exit strategy, just a target. The target is always ambitious for what I see as max profit. I need to adjust my expectations.
Signs to get out are ignored because (a) I probably don’t recognise them or believe them and (b) I want to believe my target is correct.
All my posts seem to need approval at the mo so replies may be slow
I need to work on this definitely. It’s not really emotional. I just need to be cold and clinical in my decisions to close a trade without any thoughts to what might or might not have been after I do it. In real life I don’t tend to make snap decisions. Here I need to make a call a bit quicker.
I knew it was tough but when you said I was up against traders who’s [U]soul[/U] purpose was to relieve me of my money, I didn’t realise I was up against the devil.
In all seriousness there are lots of points you make that I find relevant and I thank you for your opinion and advice. As you say it’s all down to experience and that’s where I’m lacking. I need to developed a bit of “trading wisdom”
Everyone in Forex is an experienced loser. Anyone who has been in the forex game for a while has lost.