so i was on Facebook and saw this picture
first off when i saw the amount the person was trading with i was like “whoa” 150 thousand dollars?! and i also saw a pic with 500thousand dollars…
is this amount a lot in terms of trading, have you seen more money on one trade?
do people trade with this amount of money all the time?
ik the person does have that much in his account cause it shows he had 80k so he is leveraging but still. say i were to start with an account with 1k how much should i leverage with? (I’m not gonna have a real account until april when i turn18). I feel like I’ve been getting a lot better at trading. when i saw those pics it really hit me on how much you can make in this business and motivated me even more. also i see that the person has different amount of money on each trade. what would drive someone to do that? every trade i have taken has been with 10k. is that a smart thing to do and trade with the same amount of money on each trade? I’m on demo by the way.
Do not look at the exact lot size but think of everything in forex in terms of percentages.
Let us assume you want to have a 2% risk on your capital in any given trade.
You will then change your position size to match where you place your stop loss.
If you had a 20 pip stop loss you would have lot size x but if you had a 40 pip stop loss your lot size would be x/2 in order to still keep the same risk of 2% of your account.
To answer your initial question then 150k is big if you trade a 500 usd account but nothing if you trade a 50k account (depending on the size of your stop loss which most likely is a result of the timeframe you trade).
Personally I trade 2% of my account and I regularly have trades of 1.5-2m usd.
1.5-2m…? wow thats insane. if you don’t mind me asking do you usually trade for small amounts pips or many ? it amazes me because i have trades open with 50 pips right now and that could easily be 5 grand instead of 50 bucks hahaha. i guess the ultimate goal is to be able to trade with a large amount of money. sounds like if you get to that level you could be VERY succesful.
I did not watch the dropbox, but 150 000 USD is 15 lots? Do not forget everybody is leveraged here. As rindoan say, the main point is to follow your management plan. If it says that you should trade 15 lots, then so be it.
At this point I really don’t have a money manga genet plan. Only really a trading plan. Price action js what I trade plus some macs and rsi. I really should get one together. I usally trade only Low risk and high reward setups. Don’t know where to start with the management plan
If you are trading mini-lots then I think your math is right. 1.0 Standard lot in the EURUSD for example would be just above $113,000 so $150K (depending on the currency pair) is 1.0 lot +/-.
now tht we got that out of the way. do you guys usally trade with same amout of every trade ? or different amounts per trade? like say you have higher confidence in one trade versus the other would you put more money on that trade?
My usual trades are between 15 - 50 pip stop loss.
My trading size is purely a factor of my stop loss size and the amount of money I want to risk on any given trade (2% is my rule).
As stated above I trade 2% of my account and my trading size ranges from 500k to 2m depending on which timeframe I trade.
As an example say I had a 25 pip stop loss and that trading size was 2m then on another trade I could have a 100 pip stop loss and the trading size could then be 500k.
That is more important than lot size and I do the same as you. Just the lost size itself is not relevant, but so many new traders are amazed by the figures and sometimes even overwhelmed. This is a good example here. 150,000 is by no means a large amount when it comes to trading forex.
Much easier said than done I’m afraid. If someone was kind enough to provide the OP a lesson on money managment, risk, lots, trade sizes that’d be helpful.
if OP stands for “orginal poster” tht would be me! haha but if not carry on hahah :18: isnt there a tool fxcm provides that calculates the risk on your charts??
Yes, there is no exact rule about lot size to use in trading because different trader has different capital to trade and different in money management. But generally, it’s better to risk not more than 1-10% in single transaction so traders can calculate to use how many lot size in one transaction with setting SL and TP. Using how many lot size will depend on trader’s setting for placing Stop Loss in which price. For easy usage, use the lowest lot size if you had small amount of capital.
Compounding into profitable long term positions can also increase the accumulated lots which have been bought or sold. In hindsight a trader could risk 100% of his account balance on a single position built trade because as they add to a position typically the stop loss is moved closer to the point of guaranteed profit. Therefore the prfot/loss account will keep increasing in value while the trade has not been closed.
Otherwise known as pyramiding a position - using a trades running profit to add more lots
Not getting exposed more than 2% is easier said than done especially when starting out. I’ve been there, most of us have been there. But you’re right, it is supposed to be extremely easy - set a SL.
Low lots and trade in one pair at a time is good decision . Much risk with high lots will put him in danger. SL and TP also important to manage capital . Using less than 1% in any lot is advised for good trading.