I do not write much in this forum, just watch the articles and see what other people are writing
Today is my turn…
Well, when I was trading a demo account, the profits were rolling, and my happiness was in highs of ever! My trades were 75% profit and 25% of losses, in 1 year.
All I used in my charts was purely technical analysis using price action and trendlines.
In January I decided to open a Real account and that revealed a disaster.
Literally, all of my 10 trades in 3 months are losses. 100% of my orders are losses, and I cannot make any profit. I use nano lots to prevent this, but it reached my limits.
I have a drawdown of 1%. The stop losses are put correctly and I think I am not greedy, is the position sizing that is low.
And all of this is hard to digest… I visit some forums and literally everyone is making profits and talking about increasing the position in a currency pairs, that means they are winning.
In the last two days, I missed the Yen trades and I felt very frustrated. Also, today with the economic data being in the middle, my long trade on EUR/USD gone bad too.
The million dollar question is:
What can I do to increase my motivation?
Ps: I know that a drawdown of 1% is nothing, but is only because I use very low size position…
Who is your broker and did you use there demo? Are you still trading demo and losing on demo to?
Have you changed any part of your trading (even the smallest detail)?
Can you go a little further into detail on how you trade?
Have you backtested this method and what were the results?
What country are you trading from?
How long were you trading demo before going live?
I know these may sound like basic questions (and they are) but you actually have a real problem that needs to be pin pointed so we can fix it. Good job on keeping risk down so not to destroy your account then come crying on here as to why you lost all your money. Lets start with those basic questions and go from there. With the help from others here lets see what we can do. Only thing I can say is your mindset changes once you have real money on the table which could very well be you issue. But first things first lets use a process of elimination and see what turns up.
Understand that the past few days the market was very volatile. Market conditions were not in favor for retail traders. Your mistakes are gold. Take them and learn from them. Keep a journal and stay calm during trades.
To inspire you-
“Many of life’s failures are people who do not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”
-Thomas Edison.
I do have to agree even though the last few days were good to me as it got me back in the green I must say so far this year has been rough. Its taken everything I know to do just to stay a float. Some rough waters out there ride these waves with caution they will sink your battleship
hmm, i guess it says that trading demo even for a year doesn’t really prepare anyone for trading live. during the last year there were a bunch of lame and crazy days, so the demo would have exposed the OP to a decent range of things.
like bob said - what DID you change and what (as far as you know) are you doing EXACTLY the same?
i wouldn’t be surprised if you believe that you’re doing all the same things, with the only difference (to your knowledge) being live versus demo.
and if that’s the case, then the answer is pretty clear - you just haven’t mastered or even tackled the emotional / psychological side of trading.
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which is why i always tell newbies to go live as soon as possible and not to bother trading demo.
Spot on buddy I personally think the issue is somewhere around that. I think the OP has changed something in how they view the market even if they dont realize it. It is very easy to do. Heck I have been live for 3 years and still catch myself swaying off just due to pressures that have nothing to even do with trading the will affect the way you view the market. There is nothing wrong with it as we are all human. But the sooner we realize we are not machines the better. We must also keep in mind even after we realize this fact it will still creep back. Heck I just had to go back and answer these very same questions I asked him as I just lost my job and decided to give full time trading a go and also swapped brokers to FXCM. Since I went fulltime I also added daytrading into my plan and another pair A/J. So a lot changed and I took a nice draw down. But to pin point what was causing my draw down I had to go through this same process of elimination to figure out what exactly was the root cause. Turned out to be boredom. In the end I figured out even though I was trading exactly the same for EOD trade as I was for day trades (just smaller time frames) I was getting bored and entering trades I normally would not enter. To find this out as it is hard to be honest with yourself and admit you are the problem. You must eliminate all other causes. Hence why I started with the broker. I doubt the broker is the reason but make sure first then move on. What changed in the strat. Nothing that you can think of then start looking at trading logs. even if you dont keep a log (which I strongly recommend you do) both your demo and live account with keep record of your trades. Has the number of trades increased since going live? If so are you sure nothing changed? You just keep going on down the line and something will stand out
Learning trade with a single dollar on a live account is the actual effective beginning. To me, demo is for learning how to use tools and the various buttons on the platforms!
Also, note that demo trading for years is not the best. You don’t have the same sense of feeling when trading with your own money. There are much higher risk and psychological factors. For me, I regret trading demo for 1 year. If I could go back, I wished I could start demo trading for 3-4months and then start trading with $100 or so. Demo trading for years, you develop bad habits. Your mind becomes immune to several habits that you developed during the course of demo years. You develop this feeling that once you hit a loss, you can easily make it back. No, it is not that easy. I lost $400 my first day in a $XXXX account (And I went live not to long ago). During that losing phase, something never should have happened since it was not in my plan. It was scalping. I was so $hitfaced about the loss, I scrambled. Scalping my way to another few losses. I sucked it up. Something I thought I never would experience. Promised myself to never scalp and to religiously follow my trading plan.
In the event of last week and this week, keeping to my words, I was able to make up for more of my losses.
Slowly but, surely.
My broker is OANDA Europe with live. I tried Demo with XTB Portugal for 3 months but I was risking a lot because of their minimum lots (mini-lots). The next 9 months in demo I used Oanda with the charts of XTB Portugal (They use metatrader and I prefer that than the charts of FX Trade).
I do not trade Demo since January.
Well, since January that I have some fear of being wrong, so I always open a fresh chart to draw the trendlines again, to make sure there are not another trend that I would not know about. (Don’t know if this is bad or good);
My trading system is very simple. I trade on a timeframe of 4H or 1D. I notice a trend and I keep the chart open till the candle closes on the lower trendline, then I open a long order. If the channel is downwards, then I go short when the candle closes on the higher trendline. I DO NOT use any indicators, so Is purely technical analysis.
Yes, and there were very good. I was making steady profits on 1 year of demo. Almost 75% of my trades were positive (I think that this results are very good). My ratio were about 2,5:1;
I trade from Portugal;
Well, I started to scalp to, but that revealed a disaster. Like the member @elephant. 4 of my trades were from scalping since last week, and the losses proved that I can’t scalp, so I will not scalp again
But the other 6 trades with losses were done following my trading plan… And that didn’t work.
Am I unlucky?
Member @elephant: Very good for you for recovering your losses
Are you using metatrader with Oanda now?
What pairs are you trading?
About what time of day have you been entering trades? Any difference here than when with demo?
A 6 trade loosing streak is not uncommon at all. The other 4 is a wash since you didnt follow your plan.
Yes, but only to watch the graphics and draw trendlines. To put orders I use Fxtrade.
I normally trade EUR/USD, EUR/CHF and EUR/AUD. As I said, I do not trade the same pairs all of the time. I just watch the trendlines on the major pairs and, when I discover an opportunity, I put an order
I open the metatrader in the later afternoon to watch the graphics. I try to put an order in Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday, to not be exposed to news during the weekend. (Is not usual for me to put order Thursday neither Friday, because of the weekend).
Alright I will looking into it a little further but for now I am going fishing. Sounds to me though you just hit a 6 loss streak which is very common. Especially in these markets right now. You scalped that will account for the other losses which was just some emotional trading transitioning to live. It happens just nip it in the butt now or pay for it later. You still new to this game you will quickly find 6 losses in a row happens there is nothing you can do. All you can do is cut risk which was not your issue here. Lets see what next week holds. You have a fairly simple strat (always keep it simple) I think your going to be ok.
You could always opt to go back to school, figure out where you went wrong and start with the demo again…on a side note, scalping requires experience, and lots of it. Either way, good luck!
If what you were doing on demo was working I say stack to it till you have enough trades for accurate data 6 losses is not anything out of the ordinary. Keep your demo up if you want to try something out thats not what you are used to (try scalping or a different strategy or adding something into your plan or you just get plan bored and want to trade ;)). Keep your risk down and keep up here to see what happens. I dont want you to lose your account or go into deep drawdown but I also want to keep that fact of the demo was the problem out of the picture at lest another week or 2 to rule out there was a difference between a demo account to live (as I doubt thats the problem with oanda). I think it is psychological (hence the scalping) but lets rule all other aspects out before we jump to conclusions.
This is what happens so many times with retail traders. They waste their time in demo accounts until they feel comfortable and they think they actually learned how to trade. Once they go live they go bust, because they were not prepared for the real market. While it is true that the last few days were a bit more volatile, even without it I have read so many stories just like yours.
I will tell you what I told everyone else. Open a live account with $100 (more or less, depends on you) and trade only 0.01 lots until you will be able to achieve weekly profits for 12 weeks straight. Then you can increase your lot size if you want. While we all record losses in trades which is normal, there is no reason for you to record a weekly loss.
As long as you are unable to earn weekly profits your strategy needs adjustments.
Well, I opened the account with oanda with 50€ (euros) and I trade using 100 units (nano lots).
Yes, I think my problem is about that! I think that I overtrade…
With my trading plan, I feel bored and frustrated because I let almost all of the opportunities go, and I want to catch more opportunities (that led to a disaster with scalping though).
In demo, in 1 year, my trading strategy made only few trades (less than 100), is this normal?
I want to trade more, but my trading plan do not let me…
For example, I spotted a few minutes ago a trend in AUDUSD (on a daily timeframe). If everything go according to my plan, I will enter long/short (depends on the japanese candles and the news). But the problem is that this trade is going to be made (or not) in the next week or so…
Believe me that I do not want to loose my account too
Another problem is that I cannot update this everyday because my system does not let me trade, so I do not have any news to add to this topic
