Making profit is easy, keeping it is not

You will definitely agree with the thread title but my concern is to know those reasons why this happens most of the time.

Yes, I do. :slight_smile:

In my opinion, there are 5 main reasons for it, all of which - directly or indirectly - could be said to boil down to “a collective failure to recognise that long-term, successful trading is all about risk-management rather than profit-maximisation”. In a sense, to word the same thing differently, it’s all about not quite appreciating that [I]net expectancy[/I] (rather than win-rate) is what matters. And understanding the significance of that requires some specialist statistical/probabilistic knowledge which comparatively few retail traders bother to acquire.

Here are the 5 individual reasons.

That’s one of the classic amateur mistakes I’d definitely [U]avoid[/U], for all these reasons.

Dont trail stop loss go break even only

Really, consistently is very rare! Basically, knowledgeable traders can do so! But low skilled Forex traders can make sudden profit but they can’t continue it because of their limited knowledge! To be honest, there is nothing like 100% in Forex business, so professional Forex traders also face SL in their trading but the fact is, they are able to recover their loses smartly.

Its not entirely lack of knowledge, its failure to apply sensible money management criteria that kills so many accounts. There are dozens of threads in here were OP’s boast about their fantastic trading system, ea, news trading success, etc. Inevitably, after a few months the posts stop, presumably because the OP has either blown their account or, I hope, they have realised their error and changed their style of trading to protect their funds

Exactly so.

In the paragraph above Eddie highlights one of the regularly recurring [I]leitmotifs[/I] of trading forums.

In general, it pays instinctively to look askance at any and all trading forum threads which have either an income-claim or a dramatic success-claim in their titles: either something’s being promoted, or something’s going to be promoted, or something pretty naive, temporary and risky is being presented which isn’t based on sound underlying principles and/or position-sizing.

Apologies if this perception sounds like something of a “negative attitude” but I’m convinced it’s a very realistic one, and I think that “the course of history” overwhelmingly attests to its validity. :wink:

Seems this not wise decision, keep discipline with plan and typed journal trading might will giving valuable lesson if we make evaluation trades, forex trading in my opinion is about how to manage money in uncertainty market condition and this need risk management

Thanks Lexys.

Would you please tell us more about the special statistical probabilistic knowledge ? Recommended books, lessons…?

I have a degree in Math and I’d like to know more about what exactly should I learn more about to get better at Trading using Math.

I am asking this because I know that Probability and Statistics are a vast subject. I’d like to know the specific things…

Thanks again :slight_smile:

You don’t need any forum recommendations for “statistics for trading”, if you have a degree in math! I normally recommend Michael Harris’s [I]Profitability and Systematic Trading[/I] to people here, but [I]you[/I] don’t need it (there’s a PDF version of it available somewhere online anyway).

With a math degree, I’m sure the financial/trading math books by Ralph Vince will [I]interest[/I] you plenty - but I really don’t think you [I]need[/I] them.

Nothing you don’t already know and take for granted, honestly: you’re [U]way[/U] ahead of most beginning traders, on that score - familiarity with the limitations and wrinkles of the “Black-Scholes model of option-pricing” is [I]not[/I] needed to trade forex! :wink:

Thank You Lexys.

I’ll look into Ralph’s books…

By the way, I’m relatively new to Forex. Just started learning about it 3 months ago. I still feel like i’m in the dark !

After studying the school of Pipsology extensively, I was somewhat still lost…and after I learned to program an EA and do backtests and tried systems, I still can’t really see the big picture of how this all works. The market behavior seems so random…at least most of the time !!

And Now every book I read says that the system isn’t that important. But Risk Management IS… along with Psychology.

“Black-Scholes model of option-pricing” is an interesting concept (model)…Thanks for letting me know about it Lexys :wink:

Well, it is random-[U]ish[/U] - [I]most of the time[/I]. But we don’t need to trade most of the time, to do pretty well out of it. (It’s only one person’s anecdotal, specific example, of course, but I probably have a trade “open” less than 10% of the time that I’m sitting in front of my charts.)

Sounds like you’re reading the right books anyway, then. :cool:

The “average beginner” thinks the opposite, and imagines that (a) an entry-method is a trading-system, and (b) if he can just find the right one, everything else will sort itself out.

When people have these beliefs, it’s really [B][U]extremely[/U][/B] difficult to help them without getting them to re-appraise their entire belief-set, and that’s not something that can realistically be achieved through forum posts.

So well done on thinking the opposite, which clearly gives you good chances. :slight_smile:

For most aspiring traders, most of the time, I think trading is something like 60% risk-management, 30% “psychology” (whatever that is), 8% exits and stop-losses, and 2% entries.

The older I get and the longer I do this for, and the more I read through forums (which is the nearest thing I have to a “social life” because I don’t go out very much) and chat with people, and see huge numbers of aspiring traders passing through and (mostly) gradually disappearing, the more convinced I am about a few specific things … these are personal opinion, rather than fact, but they’re increasingly strongly held opinions as I gain experience: (i) EA’s are a waste of time and represent hugely misguided effort; (ii) trade entries don’t matter all that much (and people who think and tell others that they’re the most important thing are speaking from either huge gullibility or an incentivized agenda, to put it bluntly); (iii) it’s all about risk-management; (iv) people who don’t know how to assess/analyze realistically and patiently from statistically valid sample sizes aren’t going to manage to learn what they need to learn; (v) to make consistent profits, you don’t need to be able to do anything terribly difficult: you just need to do relatively simple things [I][U]very[/U][/I] well and [I][U]very[/U][/I] consistently (it’s learning to identify those things in the first place that’s the difficult part!); (vi) it’s very easy both to overestimate what you can achieve quickly and to underestimate what you can achieve gradually.

My posts here become increasingly scattered with this same handful of observations, in various different guises, so at least I’m consistent, even if I’m not actually helping anyone. :8:

Thank You Lexys.

Well… If you’re not helping anyone, then know that you’re helping at least one person: Me! (and Thousands of other people reading your posts, and other thousands of people who will read your helpful posts).

Your thoughts and opinions are consistent with what I’ve learned from experts…It’s all about Risk Management.

I also don’t believe that there is a “perfect system”. Trading has more to do with understanding Price Action (something I’m trying to discover more about) than it has to do with indicators or systems.

Thank you again Lexys. I am Looking forward to have another conversation with you about Price Action and Risk Management Once I learn more about them :slight_smile:

I agree unreservedly.

On [I]that[/I] subject (having been down that path myself over a long period, and making many mistakes along the way) I [I]can[/I] recommend books to you … like many people making our livings this way, my own trading became steadily profitable when I abandoned indicators and learned how to trade from “price action”.

The authors I found most useful for this were Bob Volman and Al Brooks.

Warning: Al Brooks’ set of three textbooks is kind of badly written and pretty badly edited (especially considering who the publisher is), and pretty difficult to plough through, but their content’s excellent, so those are a kind of “mixed recommendation”: his online course is much, much better and more helpful and more approachable, but it’s also much more expensive. Although he’s strictly speaking a “vendor” in the sense that he sells a course as well as trading himself, Al Brooks is very much “the real thing” and gave up a very successful career - a while back - as an eye surgeon, to trade, because he was doing better from trading than as a successful surgeon. (This is not just “marketing talk”: through ophthalmology, which is my mother’s business, I know non-trading people who know Dr Brooks, and it’s all true.)

I also found several older books by Joe Ross [I][U]very[/U][/I] helpful indeed, but they’re also expensive and maybe not even so easy to find other than on his own website, which has really high prices.

Lance Beggs is quite a good price action writer, too (if you like “free” and “learning on-screen from PDF’s”, there’s a huge thing he calls his “lost blog posts” which is available from one of his websites as a very big download.)

That’s some very valuable advice Lexys. Thank you very much :slight_smile:

You have saved me a lot of time and gave me a good direction. I know so because I also didn’t buy into this idea of “Holy Grail”, “systems”, and “indicators” although I still think that they are useful for a newbie, in order to familiarize one self with chart patterns, candles, and technical words…

I will read Al Brooks books first and check out the other material you recommended. I’ve watched some videos on Youtube of Al Brooks, I am a little bit familiar with his background and ideas…He seems kind of different than the others though. According to his ideas and method he appears to get “it” !

I can’t thank you enough for your advice Lexys. And I don’t even know the words that best describe my gratitude for your help (English isn’t my first language) …I was feeling kind of lost with all the things I’ve read and learned. I’ve been looking for a direction, and found many… Yet I was still kind of not sure of what to do next…But your ideas resonated with me more. Thanks again !

Good Luck :slight_smile:

I would never have guessed. (It isn’t mine either, but evidently we both do ok :wink: ). Good luck - looking forward to hearing more from you in due course.

I never would have guessed too. You’re right we’re both doing Ok. But Your English is Perfect !!

Yeah I’m sure You’ll hear more from me soon…Thanks :wink:

Good Luck.

By no means do I state that this will work for everyone but it was one of my turning points in trading in relation to retaining profit…

I trade full time now and am trying to make a regular income. I have a certain amount of capital in my my account and my intention was never to compound but to withdraw my profits on a monthly basis. I found that I would have a great week and would see an extra 10% in my account for example. Psychologically this made me feel that I could achieve the same the following week, only to end up risking more and losing more.

The moment I changed this and began to withdraw my profits weekly I became more consistent. I am not seeing my account grow but am rewarding myself on a regular basis which keeps me in check with my risk management. It can be very monotonous but is working well for me!

I agree with most of the replies but main reason for losing profit is that traders consider that as market’s money. They only try to save their real deposit and risk all the profit in one trade hoping to double it.

It is difficult to keep the profit. Many traders don’t realize that profit made is their own money now, they can withdraw that but instead they increase their lot size and then regret after losing a major portion of their profit.