No, I was strongly advised by pro-traders, when I started, that aiming for an R above 1.0 is about the single commonest reason for the failure-rate among retail traders being so close to 100%.
There were very “telling” figures published by ‘MFF’ a couple of years ago (it was the world’s biggest or second-biggest prop firm, and used to publish some really interestng and helpful statistics!). They said that the average R of the huge number people taking their evaluations was getting up towards 1:2, but the average R of the very small number of people passing them was about 1:1.
I understand that other prop firms and broker staff say the same kind of things, too.
I’ve seen a lot of people with industry/pro experience saying - here and in other places - that their R is usually a bit less than 1.0, some as low as 0.6 or 0.7.
It really makes everything much easier. Especially position sizing, which is also a lot of people’s downfall (especially people using high leverage!).
I’m normally trading, on average, with a fixed stop-loss of about 18 pips and a fixed take-profit of about 12 pips, so around 0.67, myself. But it varies a little, around that range, because I like to let the chart and support/resistance to tell me where to put them (esecially the stop-loss). I don’t even always enter a take-profit at the same time as the trade.
These are good posts on this subject, David (now that we can post links! ) -
) -