Moving the 50% is not the problem. It is trading on a live account that is the problem! Blowing 50% of your account in a few hours should have been sending of alarm bells that something was not right…
I see this all the time and I write so many articles and talk in all my videos about it and the message just does not get through. Traders just want to throw their money away whilst they learn to trade. When you learn to trade there is NO need to lose any money. If you are learning to trade you should never ever lose a cent of money ever. If you don’t know if you are a consistently profitable trader or not you should not be risking real money.
EN you simply have to get off your live account!!! I say this because I care and I want to save what money you have left and also eventually help you make profits and this will not happen if you keep doing what you are. Basically though there is no way you should be risking real money.
What you should be doing is getting that money out of your Forex account. Once it is out you should open a high interest account or investment account. Your should then start scrimping and saving all your coins and spare cash. All your surplus cash should be diverted into this savings account. Instead of getting a coffee in the mornings or take out lunch that cash should also be going into this new account.
Instead of blowing what Forex money you have left, open a new demo account. In this demo account you are going to become a profitable Forex trader. Instead of fumbling and guessing your way along in a live account and blowing all your cash, you can do it in a methodical and business like manner. Remember this is a business and we are doing this to make money! Trade this demo account until you can prove that you can make money for three months profitable in a row. Not just three month random, but three months straight. Once you can do that you are profitable and you are ready to open a small live account. Instead of just opening all your account I would recommend starting with 50% of your capital and then trading for three months and then if profitable adding the further 50% capital if successful.
Obviously it is up to you but if you continue to trade your live account you are trading with the odds firmly stacked way against you and way in the markets favour. Basically that’s not what successful business’s do. You have no idea if you are a profitable trader or not. You don’t know if you have any edge on your side over a large amount of trades and this is gambling rather than trading.
There is a few reasons for this, but the main one is because August was such a killer month. Normally August is a really slow and boring month and yet this August just gone we had a heap of really awesome A+ killer setups and a lot of people posting great setups.
August was supposed to be the slow month and everyone had in the back of their mind that normally come September the markets pick up even more. July had been quiet, but unlike normal this August was great and now Sep has been just plain and this has thrown people coming off such a great August.
As we know trades come in waves. We can go a few days with nothing and then all of a sudden setups all come at once bam, bam, bam. It’s all about saving cash for the good times as we always talk about and not getting sucked in with the sucker times.
See the dashed arrow pointing up? That is what we call “the last swing high”. I drew another dashed line, at about the 50% level (or, “half of the last swing high”). As krugman said, in a really strong uptrend, price may not close at that 50% level, as we saw with the PB formation (where it closed). What I think Krugman was looking for is the zoomed in drawing I made in the corner. The PB body closing just above that KHZ (key horizontal zone), with the wick busting through it.
Don’t worry, mate. We’re all cool here. Besides, that’s the whole point of this Forum, isn’t it? So that at least someone here can make sure that ‘we do not cross the line’ with our trade, especially when usually no one else in the real life has that kind of guts to remind us about the error of our way and keep us in check?
On the plus side, I notice that lots of new traders here are rather politeliterally. Kudos for you all!
Okay, now let’s go down to business. Halloween is almost here, and usually we will see quite a lot of of trade opportunity after Halloween. I say this based on my experience from trading in stock market. If we relate this to what the Godfather has just told us about how this September is somewhat slow, I won’t be surprised at all. Lots of retail investor usually ‘Sell in May and Go Away’. Most of them will return in October, so patience is the key here. I myself am looking forward for trading this October, as I really want to compare how volatile Forex market is with the one in stock market.
I did as you said, I moved 50% of the remaining 50% to my account and I will start back with 25% that will teach me to be more focused …[/QUOTE]
I didn’t originally catch this post. I didn’t want you to just copy what I did, I just wanted to point out a personal experience on how to handle the psychological aspect of a big account draw down. I think Mr. Fox hit it on the head, you don’t even know of you are profitable or have a trading edge. So you just need to go right to a demo account and wait until you are profitable and know you have a trading edge.
Which of these two situation is best when it comes to Pinbar forming at key level ? Is it just a question of better entry or is one setup stronger than the other in terms of edge ?
Thanks as usual very much for all the great comments and information sharing ! I hope I sometimes contribute to someone’s improvement with my questions.
Which of these two situation is best when it comes to Pinbar forming at key level ? Is it just a question of better entry and smaller SL thing or is one setup stronger than the other in terms of edge ?
Thanks as usual very much for all the great comments and information sharing ! I hope I sometimes contribute to someone’s improvement with my questions.
That’s a great question. I prefer the first setup in your picture. For me it is mainly 2 things. There is more room for profit between your entry and your first TP. But what I like most is that it puts your stop loss in a position that is farther below the Support level. Then the SR line acts as a good buffer between price and your stop loss.
Your stop distance from entry point should be the same in both cases.
Thanks Krugman, It makes complete sense to me in terms of better TP distance and you made me aware of the SL away from the support level which I think is a great advantage. Now, when purely thinking about probability for a reversal is one of the two a better signal ?
Yves
By the way, I just realised that my pinbars just look like poor setup pinbars But it was with the idea to make the drawing clearer !
I really appreciate your concern and the time you took to write me this however I don’t believe in tradind demo accounts the psychology is totally different when it is real money so I started with a very small live account of 300 made 200 USD profit over my first 4 weeks and lost 250 in a few hours. So saying I lost 50% of my equity is correct but made it sound much worse than it is
Yes I was risking too much and yes I got greedy and that’s a lesson learned for me
That’s not really “money” as you might call it but the pain was on me totally different that it would have been on a demo account
I agree with you that forex is a business and one I am taking very seriously and I won’t add money back until I prove self discipline. I guess that any forex course would cost me more that my 300 initial investment so even if I lost it all I would have at least learned in the real world.
Weirdly enough I am the kind of guy who actually take courses AFTER having had a first hand experience or else things never sink in too deep for me. So I am fully aware that I will probably go for a course by the end of year.
I am not a quitter and I will do what it takes to learn and get better and you guys sharing your knowledge and experience make it all much easier and for that I will be grateful for long
Please know that I am by no means setback by your words I deeply appreciate the concern and the time each senior member spend here coaching newbies like myself
Cheers and thanks again
Yes, yes this is the reasoning I get given all the time. “Traders have to trade with real money in a live account for the experience”
Now here is my point; If your trading with a small account and small amounts you are not getting any psychological benefits. You are not experiencing any real market fear or greed. The only time you experience those “real” market emotions is when you trade with amounts that actually means something to you. Do you really think you would have blown 50% of your account if you were trading with a real sized account and not just a couple hundred bucks? no way. It is because you are trading with a small account. Your saying it is a good thing your trading with money and I am saying it is a bad thing. You let yourself do what you did because you ONLY had a small account and because of it.
The only time the real market factors and real fear and real greed come in is when you risk an amount that mean something to you and this is different to everybody.
Agree for most of your statement, but not necessarily for the SL distance, krug. If you guys watch the very first video from Coach J himself in this forum, you will see the elegance on having the first setup in your trade.
Piping Hot, have you read the first 50 - 100 pages on this thread? Believe me, that’s really the fastest way to jumpstart your Forex success rate.
I reached page 71. Reason I am not really far is that I keep on reading again and again as there is a lot of information. Also I sometimes get aware of things by reading the recent pages or with an article on FSO so I go back to the beginning and then notice small details that hadn’t jumped to my mind at first. I will watch that first video again.
This was the same pair I was watching on the 4hr on Friday when a nice pin formed which I didn’t take in the end due to some great advice on here. I too noticed that nice pin piercing through RS on the daily at the end of play. It looks to me as though this pair is currently ranging and so I would be looking to go short here but as it formed on Friday I wondered how seriously this pin bar should be taken?
Hi Kasravi.
Thanks for your welcome.
I’m trying to watch the very first videos posted by Johnathon Fox in his posts nr. #7 and #8 of this thread.
At the moment, I don’t know exactly how I can include the link about these videos in this message.
But it was with the idea to make the drawing clearer !