I was just curious. I’ve been trading for about 6 months and I am still trading with 1 lot.
How much do you all trade?
Any tips/benefits on trading more than one lot?
The benefit of trading more than one lot is that you can cut down your position once certain profit targets are hit. That way you can create risk free trades and possibly capture more profits.
You lot size should really depend on your risk tolerance though. If you have $300 in a forex account trading 200:1 margin. You should definitely only trade one lot at most.
In my opinion you shouldn’t even be trading unless you have at least 5k for a mini lot…
save up and learn to trade right first before you use real money
No offense, but if you’re still asking this question, then stick with 1 lot. It sounds you have much to learns in regards to money management. Once you master money management you’ll learn advanced techniques, like trading with multiple lots, scaling in, scaling out, pyramiding, etc.
I’d recommend you read Trading for Living" and “Come Into My Trading Room” both written by Alexandar Elder. Once you finish, read them one more time. Do this and you’ll be closer to profitability my friend.
I agree with oooogglemoogle, we, beginners must strart trading with only one lot, read and experience first, learn everything One way to learn is to post in this kind of forum, and when we finally believe that we have learned the tricks, then you start trading with more lots…
I believe it all matters on how long you want to keep the trade opened.
you mean 0.01 lots right - 10 cent a pip
my normal trade per $500 is 0.01 to 0.05 and aim to make/risk at least 50 pips = $5 win or lose
I AIM TO make 500 pips a month :33:
i have traded 0.10 to 0.50 but it make me have a heart attack when i look at my account balance every time a pip move
This depends on your account size and risk levels. May be needing some experience as well.
Normally I trade lot sizes btw 0.20 - 1 lot.
I think you should have a risk/ reward per $X
So for me every $500 I trade 0.05 . So when you get to $1k you should increase it only 0.10
I always trade with 0.02 - 0.10 lots. Never go above 0.10 lot with my 5K account.
So always trade with low lots. That will save you from Margin call. May be you can reduce leverage.
From an experienced trader’s view,
Depends on the current risk exposure.
Max risk at any time: 2%
Reasonable SL: 100 pips for a H4 trader; 60 pips for a H1 trader and so on…
For a 60K account, 2%= 1200
For Standard lots pip value= 10; so we make sure that regardless of the number of trades, the maximum lot
size for all trades should have a max exposure of 1200.
So an example of this:
Trade 1: 0.5 lot; SL= 100pips; exposure= 500
Trade 2: 0.7 lot; SL= 100 pips; exposure= 700
Once the SL is moved to BE for any of the trades, then a new equivalent lot size can be opened.
If the winning trades has 100 pips already locked in, then a newer lot of equivalent size can be opened.
The rest is quite complicated.
Bottom line: We have maintained the 2%, calculated lot sizes according to the exposure and the rest is up to the trading team.
I think lot sizes depend on account size, account type and the system
In micro account - 1 lot means trading with $200 and 1% risk and 20 pip stop loss in micro account
In mini account - 1 lot means trading with $20 loss if use 20 pip stop loss
I totally depends on your account size and trading system. Scalpers who are holding a position less than 1 second can open a larger amount of lots than long term traders. My average lot size is 1 - 2 lots.
is it hard stop? how you determine your SL? is it based on Daily ATR?
You can trade as much as you want if you have these funds in your account. It is this that my broker explained previously. If you have the finances, trade as large as you desire.
1+ Grix, Agree with you.
Ditto. Agree with Grix.
Grix has a great example there.
My risk per trade is 0.25%, and 2% exposed in the market at any one time, but that’s very rare
Lot size calculated by the SL I am using on the trade type
it depends on your balance and you risky. how much you can lose. you can know about it clearly
you have to figure in pip cost when deciding how many lots and do you mean you are trading one standard lot? To my knowledge thats 100k , I’m thinking you are trading one mini. the more you trade the more it will cost you. I go by the max. of 5% of my acct. in any one trade (not 5% each on a number of trades) you can get the pip cost from the Simple Dealing Rates schedule when you are placing a trade. For instance, for a one lot trade and a 100 pip stop loss it can could cost $1.10 per pip equalling a total loss of $110.00. Hope that helped. Good luck trading
You have to be more especific when you say one lot, because normally when trader say 1 lot, they reffer to one standard lot, which is 100,000 units. Then you have mini lots, micro lots and nano lots. So, I guess what you mean is a mini lot of 10,000 units.