the thing that change it all for me was white candle sticks to take away the psychological pain, trading with the trend, test, retest, and breaks of market structure, and 1:1 risk reward ratio. And now im consistently profitable, simplification is king.
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Simple objective TA will always win the game. You should please post more about what you’re doing.
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I shall, the reason i started using 1:1 was because i used to be greedy and always wanted to use a 1:2 to a 1:3 ratio to try and squeeze out every last dollar the markets would give me. then i learned how the banks trade and how they do stop hunts and it made sense because price will sometimes whipsaw before making a breakout higher or lower, so i said your not hitting my stops anymore and another part of it is sometimes i would enter and price would go in my direction at first and then go against me and hit my stop over and over again and then continue in my desired direction. and the candlesticks come from my habit of watching the charts pip by pip hour by hour, if i went long and saw a fat red candle id almost have a panic attack, now they all look the same and i just trade with the trend
I assume you must have a very high win ratio to pull out a 1:1 ratio
Personally I cannot understand why anyone would shoot for such a measly figure even 2:1 seems poor
I take on board what you say about the banks and I know your trading intra day - but I was always led to believe the way to make money in the markets was cutting losses and letting profits run
It’s interesting you can trade this and if it’s successful I respect you for it.
But deep down I think it can only lead to a negative P&L over the long run. In the short run it may workout but that is deception.
Hope it does work for you thou
Yes, I am as sceptical as @Johnscott31 about r:r of 1:1. Pus I don’t believe the huge banks make huge profits by pushing the huge forex markets about to capture the tiny stop-loss risks of private retail traders with tiny tiny accounts.
But I’m always interested in strategies that just use price in candlestick form etc. and that work simply and objectively. You might want to do some commentary on price progress on your favourite pair?
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Let’s wait till time test your system, i.e. when you have a history of 100-200 trades. You can’t make conclusions about a trading system based on 5-10 trades, because it can be easily confused with luck. Non-random patterns in performance start to appear on distance, and the more trades you make the more you can say about stability of your edge (if it exists, of course).
Interesting post @sybrrr!
You make an interesting comment about the colour of candles! I also find that it is easy to become mesmerised by the action on the latest candles and lose sight of the bigger picture. Even though we all know and expect candles to oscillate up and down as the trade progresses, inevitably one or other is negative = “painful” and the other is positive= “hopeful”. So there is a psychological pressure here if one is intently watching candles. Therefore using the same colour for all candles is maybe an unusual, but effective means of reducing this!
But this, together with the 1:1 risk/reward, are perhaps issues mainly related to short term trading. E.g. a trader watching daily charts would be more focused on the closing values than the colour of the candle. Also, a longer term trader, using higher timeframe charts, usually places stops further away from the current price and does not suffer these kinds of accidental stop-outs during the initial stages of their trades that you describe.
Regarding the appropriate R/R level, this is not a simple, one-rule-fits-all, issue. It should be related to the type of trading and the time frame one is using. Again, a longer term trader, by definition, is looking for moves that last longer in the direction of the trade, so their R/R is more likely to be in the 2-5:1 range.
But the key issue (in my opinion) is to remember that R:R is a ratio - and that means you have to look at both sides of the ratio and check that both make sense with respect to the type of trade you are looking at. I.e. If I am looking at a 15min chart for an intraday trade then I might be looking for a typical target of, say 50 pips from that particular market on that particular time frame (e.g. based on ATR). But if I then automatically apply a 2:1 R/R then my stop is 25 pips. This might be too close for the normal intraday “noise” with this instrument and would lead to excessive accidental stop hits. In this instance, 1:1 is not limiting your profit target, which remains at 50 pips, it is only securing a better chance of avoiding stop hits,
However, by increasing the stop distance, I am also increasing the need for a higher trade win rate in order to achieve a viable longer term worthwhile profitability.
The R:R is also determined by the type of stop one is using. For example, in my short term trading off an hourly chart I want to base my stop-out area on the hourly close but not to get stopped out on a spike during the hour. So my stop is actually a mental one and based on the situation at the close of each hour. However, I do not leave it entirely unprotected and place a “safety net” hard stop well below/above the market that is well outside the normal hourly range but limits the damage from a very unlikely event such as a major price crash, systems collapse or even personal illness, etc. But the R:R for this type stop looks on paper to be totally absurd! 
So, what I think I am saying in my typical long-winded and unnecessary manner, is that R:R is a compromise of multiple factors which relate very much to your trading style, time frames, method win rate, market characteristics, and so on. And that R:R is only one factor in the overall assessment of the quality of each trade set-up. Both targets and stops should be individually and independently sensible, and fine-tuned in terms of the chart structure. But if, after that assessment, the resulting R:R does not make trading sense, then simply ignore the trade and wait for the next.
Naturally, though, if one trades a mechanical system then this is all rather irrelevant!
Especially, since the banks’ trades are in the interbank market and the bulk of retail trades are against their broker - different markets.