High Risk earns me great rewards - but i don't like it

There are some things we each can do and some things we each cannot do. I cannot pick tops and bottoms. You’ve demonstrated that although you have good TA you cannot pick tops and bottoms either. You didn’t pick the top to enter, you didn’t pyramid your short at the top and you exited the short before the bottom. I’m not saying you made any errors in entering and holding and exiting where you did, I have to wonder whether anyone else could have done better other than by sheer good luck.

Keep doing what you’re good at.

I’m reading a book that interview many successful traders and have read a few times something along the lines of “where will you enter? - Here (picks a point), and what are you aiming for? - the moon.” saying that they intend to stay in the trade forever, the only time they leave is when they have to. Something i’m learning, I’m still developing my skills of knowing how to tell when a trend is ending, for me, seeing something like a double tops or reversal in price would be it, but this shows i don’t have a good understanding yet, because i don’t know how to tell the difference between a trend end and a pull back - whether you use other tools such as those provided by Market Milk combined with economics news or whatever? I need more time in the game to learn and understand this.

I can’t tell the difference between the end of a trend and a pull-back either. In real-time they start out looking the same. So I treat each pull-back as if it was a trend end. By the time you know which it is, its over. Trading’s an art not a science.

Beware of people who say they stay in a trade for months at a time. Beware of what great Wall Street traders and market wizards say about how to run a trade. Don’t take any of it literally. I’m not convinced much of it makes much sense for a private retail forex trader.

Thanks for the feedback, it’s great for me to read things like what you say, as an inexperienced trader i don’t fully know what’s right or wrong, and more importantly what even counts as something that can be considered right or wrong. For eg, i’ve learned from your message that i shouldn’t one day expect to know when a move against your trade is a pullback or the end of a trend, so should consider an exit regardless - depending on the unique circumtances of the situation at the time of course.

I agree with what you say about running a trade, i take it with a pinch of salt now, the old saying “let your profits run” has bitten me on the USD/JPY about a month ago because i ignored a double tops thinking “it’s ok i need to let my profits run it’s just a pull back, that’s what they say” and turned my £20 profit into a £20 loss, it was because of Trump tweeting about the US-China trade deal which then swung the trend against me. All these bad experiences are just lessons for future trades, but it doens’t hurt any less.

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@nick533a this is how my usdchf 4hr chart looks like
Screenshot by Lightshot
i enter on 5m or 15, sometimes even on 1hr, depends, but i always do a top down aproach analysis, meaning i start with weekly, daily, support, resistance, trendlines, a general direction if any, then drop down to 4hr and 1hr and do same. but i want intraday action cos i ain t got patience for swing trading, unless i manage to make an intraday scalp turn into a swing trade meaning i take m profits, set BE and let rest run if i think there s potential. i use volume spread analysis to enter trades or analise but i keep into account previous day high and low, daily, weekly, monthly pivots, round numbers and have 2 emas on my chart (mostly for support and resist and tests). i use the fibs to create a battle zone( say i expect price to move lower, then i ll wait for the retrace to 50%>61.8% fib and look for an entry there etc). if my bias and analysis is corect then i have a nice trade and my stop is set above or bellow the 618 fib for example, and i always go for atleast twice my risk, and ussually i take some profit off and set BE as soon as possible, let s say at 1 to 1.i m telling u this just to give u an idea on how u could try and have a beter entry, with a tigher stop and a nice RR. there are ofc more ways, but do not ever risk more to make less, just cos u don t want to admit u are wrong and the market is right!!!
Screenshot by Lightshot
so u entered around there and took 60 pips of DD for about a week, that s insane specially cos it broke out of that 1hr range and retrace to it and was showing signs it might go higher, u should have cut ur losses there and then. ofc this is hindsight for me right now and all this is different when it s happening live, but without even looking at volume, just draw simple support and resistance, and a simple trendline, and u can also trade succesfully based on that. u knew is top of ur channell, right? u see it ranging? having support drawn and that trendline, u wait, and if and when that support is broken and ur trendline u can enter on the break or switch to a lower timeframe, wait for a pullback yp that support or the respective trendline, and if it rejects u go short with a stop few pips above accounting also for the spread. this is just a simple example but do urself a favor and try what i said on demo or whatever, simple support and resustance, trendlines and buy the dips in an uptrend and when the TL breaks look only for retests and short etc… and u ll be amased of the results, same with ranges etc. hope this helps and if u got anymore questions feel freee to ask, happy to help if i can ofc.


lol, just out of curiosity i looked, set 1hr fib from high to that recent low before the fall and price retraced to 50 and 61.8 fib hahahah on my chart that s intraday pivot(50%) and intraday long(61.8%). very tight stop at a reasonable place and nice RR. just as an example

@1odi
Hi, thanks for the reply, how to you take in to account volume? i didn’t know you could see trade volume of the markets?

Look at your first screen shot again - do you see the lower trend line on your first screenshot and how the price went under there and seemed to use it as resistance?

on my 4h graph where i drew fib lines, the pullback that’s showing now is just at the 618 fib retractment, so i consider this to be a part of it’s upward journey. Here’s my 4h screenshot - it paints the movement in a different light. What do you think?

dude, u didn t drew the fibs corectly first of all. i see u have macd on ur chart, well, where u entered the macd hasn t even crossed yet and is above the 0 line. 4hr chart trumps 1hr as daily tramps 4hr. the volume i use is standard in mt4 indicators and it s tick volume as were in forex. it stands for activity, when volume increases means the activity increased in both buying and selling. if u d have respected ur support and resist from this chart and sold at that spike u would ve done better. it s just my opinion, ofc u are free to trade how u choose, but make sure atleast that ur using corectly those tools. i last thing i wanna add, when u see candles like that, that leave a big wick and close in the lower part that s selling pressure comin in and at that moment in time the bears are winning. specially when u have a range or a clear resistance and u see something like that, should draw ur attention. that alone could give u better stops and rewards for ur bucks.
cheers

Please how do you detect pull backs? @nick533a I trade the trend, but use the lower time frame price action to detect early pullback still, I lose some profit money using this method. Is there any indicators you use to detect much more early pullback signal? Or you just wait for the pullback to happen naturally before you TP? Thanks

Hi nick,

Thanks for the reply and clear explanation. To be transparent I did not use trendlines to become successful in trading. I’ve seen videos of people saying they are profitable so it can be done but i find it to be very subjective. From my experience, this is how I see your chart:

Red lines are resistance and support lines from recent highs and lows.
Purple line is the channel made as we’ve had 2 touches on the top and 2 on the bottom.

So if for whatever reason you enter short at the top then your stoploss should be at the resistance red lines or just above the top channel line. When it breaks the channel then you should be stopped out. Moving the SL is a massive mistake and I can tell you from experience you should not do that at all… even if you are 110% sure it will fall. Now you are looking for a reason to go short again but it broke the top channel so you need another reason to get short. See below chart:

I have drawn another trendline below the consolidation. Then you get a bearish pin bar to the top resistance red line which is a reason to go short. Otherwise wait for a breakout of the consolidation and have your stoploss anywhere above: furthest would be top red line, nearest is the consolidation trendline.

That’s how I see the 4hr chart.
Adding to the sell with another position is a brilliant technique but make sure you move the 1st position SL to breakeven then open the second sell. This way you havent doubled your risk. Hope it made sense. Good luck :+1:

@Regan64 Hi, Well a pullback is something you can see happening on the chart. In my opinion you never actually know when you’ll get a pullback, but there are clues. As the price is trending, look back at recent history on the same timeframe for any smaller levels of support or resistance, along your trend journey it’s possible the movement will use these as steps up or down to the next major level.
Something that you’ll commonly see with trends is drawing a fib retractment graph from the top of the recent high to the bottom of the recent low, these 618, 50 etc levels can hold clues depending on the market you’re looking at.
Another way to speculate would be using instruments such as bollinger bands or maybe an RSI, these are an easy way to see if a market is overbought/sold, typically when price breaks the highs or lows of these bands, you can expect to see a pullback, not always of course but it’s a good technique. I don’t really use lower time frames to detect an upcoming pullback, for me, there’s a lot of noise on the lower time frames and with that comes a lot of false signals.

@tradeforex077 thanks for the feedback, yeah Id say it’s always bad to enter trades where risk is more than reward. I dont even like entering trades where risk is 1:2 really, so i always try not to have this happen and i’m not quite sure how i got myself into it, it certainly didn’t start that way. i suppose it was worth the risk since i took the profit, it paid off - but i shouldn’t have let that happen. I think i also remember at the time reading that the price rising further would break a 1:1 currency value, which would be a major psychological barrier to break, which contributed to my increased risk appetite in this situation.

I’m currently in a trade on the same pair, this time going long. I waited until it had seen the bottom and started to rise, I jumped in in the pullback that happened just before the markets closed and i’m sitting on the current price, with the view that the upward momentum has begun.
What are your thoughts on this?
Thanks

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Firstly, its difficult to analyse a chart in hindsight without having bias so you should take this with a pinch of salt. And use what I see as fuel for the next trade.

With regards to going long. You can see the 4hr went straight through the trendline and gave a bullish pin bar near the first support red line but your SL could be at the 2nd just below 9840.

However if you use the 1 hr then you could wait for a double bottom and could have gone long on the 2nd pin bar. The SL in this case wouldve been just below 9850. Reason being if it was going to be broken it shouldve done so on the 2nd move down.
With either trade you would be in profit.

However this is all hindsight analysis. And I’m sure everyones a professional analyst then, lol; just have a look on instagram! :blush:
For full transparency, I have circled a 1hr bullish pin bar right on the trendline which I think you couldve taken. If your SL was below trendline then that would be a loss.

Hope that’s helpful. It would be great to join you next time as you’re looking at a trade setting up. That way you can get a few different peoples views and if we all marry up you’ll have more conviction and risk management on the trade. :+1:

@tradeforex077 Great idea! would love that, I do have a couple of trade ideas actually that i’m interested in getting in on… if you like i can share my thoughts on them, it’s all potential at the minute but my inexperienced eyes do see opportunity! The question for me will be making sure i enter at the best time.

Anyway. Yes, about your comment here:

If you’re talking about your second screenshot with the 2 arrows to the double bottom lows, yeah, i watched that come and go and felt conflicted. hindsight says jump in, but the reason i waited was because of my last experience on the short where it almost went wrong. I saw a double tops then and jumped in and spent the next 5 days with price hovering around there slowly moving up before finally dropping - my take out from that was i wasn’t patient enough and jumped in too early without waiting for the right price. So on this occasion, my thinking was wait for some bullish momentum so i can get in with more confidence that it is going up, again this might not be the best approach either since price now sits further from the last support and profits are a little less since the price has already moved part way to the next resistance - but it’s truly hard knowing what to do at the time.

Thanks a lot for your views and insights, very useful for me to read and consider what you say, since i don’t know much better at this point, though i’m doing my best!

So heres a little trading psychology feedback.
Reading between the lines from what you are saying. I think you are risking too much on each trade so you are hesitant to take a loss.

Losers are a part of trading. If I gave you 10 shots to put a basketball in the hoop: you’ll miss most but get a few right, just like that some trades will not work out. Therefore you will have some losing trades. It’s easy for me and others to say this but for you to understand it will take time.

Once you accept no matter what the system you’ll have losses then you have to to think if I have 1 or 2 losses how much will I have in my account and how will they affect me? The answer is taking a small % risk so losses dont affect you or your next trade. There is nothing wrong with your trading if you stay consistent. Because sometimes it’ll work out and others it wont but when it does work out you’ll make more than you lose.

Only analyse each trade by itself. So if you analyse that double bottom and you shouldve taken the trade then you should take it regardless of what happened before. At present you’re taking too much risk so you’re emotion is getting the better of you. Lower the % risk and you’ll feel better about taking a trade. Hope it makes sense. It’s a very complicated subject and took me a while to get on top of it.

You realize that almost every strategy has its own peculiarities, which can be called risky, and you never know how it will turn out for you. So I would look at the situations in a philosophical way. You have made a normal profit, if you estimate the percentage of your capital. This is very good. If you feel that this approach takes too much effort from you and you’re very nervous, then you really need to change something. But if it’s okay for you, then you don’t work much in the market, but you use larger amounts, why not? Although I don’t think I can give any unambiguous recommendations on this issue. But I am familiar with traiders that trade riskyly and earn well.

Thanks for the feedback guys.
Just as a reminder i posted this because it was a one off - none of my other trades have been like this one and overall i am profitable at the end of each week, I’m attributing all mistakes and losses to inexperienced trading or just bad luck,

Sunday night i left that trade with a small profit. Which was great since it fell after.

@Doubar Thanks for the info, I did figure that once support has been broken then usually the market will re-test the previous level - but hearing this from you is great confirmation for me to learn.

Lower your risk then bro!

This is the type of discipline I am working towards. My thought is a pip is worth pip no matter how many pips you have. They increase negligibly in value but primarily in number.

I’m trying to say is there’s minimal difference in collecting 100 pips in 10 pip increments or trying to ride a single trend for 100 pips.

Some may argue screen time but if you use stop / limit orders and TPs, that can be reduced dramatically.

KC

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Its said that the higher the risk the higher the amount is, but is it worth the cost ?

When you get into trading everything is risky but it depends on how risky it is and can manage after the loss and what would you do if you profit, take another risk or play it safe ?

i understand that without taking some risks nothing will come easy, but will it be always a risk factor or just for a certain period of time.