Which strong employment change figures came out? Are you sure you checked the part of the calendar about these two currencies?
As for your questions:
At GMT 00:30 today; Australia beat employment change figures
1 You climb out of the hole slowly or you might just make the hole deeper.
2 You use stop losses, that is what their primary used for, to protect from unexpected events.
Without SL the journey is too risky; so please don’t avoid this tool in your trading.
Will definitely use SL from now on and focus on more realistic goals, 3-5% gains per month. Currently at $500 in my account and will look to deposit an additional $100 each month
The main thing here is not to even call it a “hole”. If you start to become obsessed with regaining your loss you will lose your focus and end up losing even more.
You need to put this one down to experience and learn what there is to be learnt from it, and move on.
You will find people here who will argue that it is not worth using stops but in your situation and at this stage I would certainly recommend that you ALWAYS use a stoploss no matter how short a trading horizon you have. Markets can move fast and unexpectedly. You only need to look back to January to see a so-called “flash crash” and “black swan” events can happen any time, although they are very rare.
Your stop loss should at least be at the level which represents the maximum loss that you are prepared to take in order to preserve your tradeable equity. Once you have grown your account then you can start to ponder the relative benefits/hindrances of stoplosses. But an “air bag” type loss should always be there.
Regarding rebuilding your account, I think the only appropriate approach is to continue with your existing methods, albeit with a smaller position size if this loss so requires that, and, if your method is productive, then the balance will gradually rebuild itself.
Losses are part of the game and we must learn to live with them, learn from them, and move on.
But the overriding concern is that you still have something left in your account to move on with…
You’re setting a wrong goal. You don’t have to take it out. You have to work calmly on without worrying about how to get your money back. Worrying will ruin your trading account.
The first thing you should do is to make a pause in your trading to get back to the comfort zone. Then, you can try to trade on demo on for several days to check your skills.
Trading without SL but with taking small profits is quite common practice among newbie traders. At the same time, it can cause poor risk-reward ratio, as your profits would be relatively small while you have a great chance to get huge loss. So, as it was just mentioned before, always trade with stops.
And again, if the results of that trade were substancial for you, it can influence your trading performance in future. There is an interesting article on fears in trading. It is very important to deal with negative emotions to avoid futher losses.
Hello matt34,
I’ve been trading currencies for the past 2 years. I was running break even/slight loser at the beginning and at that time I had the same issues as you’ve experienced.
Not using stop losses? You gotta be kidding me! This is just lazy, and unprofessional. I’ve seen pairs climb over 100 Pips for 10 minutes and dip 150 pips the next 5 minutes.
In your case you had positive employment numbers from Australia, but China didn’t care and banned coal importing from Australia nearly at the same time the employment report was published. And of course, as it usually happens, you’re never the first one to hear about it. Coal is one of the main sources of export income in Australia and, as the charts show, Aussie suffered from this ban.
Now don’t bang your head against the wall, because despite the fact that you lost a big portion of your account balance, this is one of your lucky days. The market taught you something. So embrace this loss and turn it into a valuable lesson. First - Nothing in the market is certain. And second - protect your account with stop losses even if you’re holding positions for 5 minutes on average. You are lucky because you get to learn this lesson at the beginning of your trading journey and not when you get to the point where you are trading with a huge account and your mortgage payment depends on your trading. (Although I don’t think you can ever get to that point if you don’t use Stop Losses)
If you learn this valuable lesson and your risk per trade is as suggested by BabyPips.com (and nearly everywhere else you look) there’s a good chance you won’t be posting question number one anymore. But in case you need to post it again, I think the best you can do is to review your trading. See what happened and just think of solutions on how you can improve. Replay every trade and don’t just get satisfied with a trade if it was a winner. Think about what you could do to get more from your winners and what you could to do cut your losers or to make them smaller. Every single trade should be a lesson to you. I think if you start doing this daily or weekly (I do it weekly) two months from now you’ll be surprised how much you have improved. And don’t run away… don’t take pauses. If you have an issue you need to find a solution and not run away. If you want to stay in your comfort zone, forget about trading and find another enterprise.
Happy Trading!
Ivan
that’s it - good luck
if you realised this in 1 or 3 trades i will say you did a good strategy
but if you realised this with more than 5 trades and with no stop losses being set than your strategy needs some tune up
also after the one year demo you need to give yourself an other 3 or 6 months with real money and with a couple 100 dollars account to feel the market and its tricks
just a pov
Hi
I’m busy recovering from such. I’m also a few weeks old and have demo traded more than 2yrs.
DO not worry…take this as a VERY VALUABLE LESSON…
worth 20% of your initial capital.
Take a BREAK this weekend TO REFLECT.
Most of us NOOBIES NEGLECT PSYCHOLOGY…
e.g.i don’t trade if I’m fighting with my Wife
Get your mind right…
LIKE QUICK SAND…THE QUICKER AND AGGRESSIVE WAY TO GET OUT WILL TAKE YOU AND YOUR ACCOUNT INTO SHEOL.
-less 2% Risk always
-forget the Rewards to Risk ratios…
-take the low lying fruits
-Yen pairs have higher Volatility and THUS YOU CAN’T HAVE THE SAME RISK ACROSS BOARD…
-PIP Value for Yen Pairs is THE HIGHEST AND IT FOLLOWS THEN THAT you can loose and gain the same value.
MY ACCOUNT IS RECOVERING…
NOTE:
MY Account is recovering faster because I’m BUILDING SLOW.
NB: Follow the method you developed for that whole year. If you trusted it enough to lead you to decide to Trade Live…then DO NOT TRADE A METHOD THAT WAS NOT MEANT FOR TRADING ACROSS BOARD.
I LOVE YOU.
Take care
שלום 
Oh…WHAT DOES YOUR JOURNAL SAY ABOUT THIS?
MY JOURNAL IS TAKING ME OUT.
IT HELPS ME NOT TO REPEAT SILLY MISTAKES.
OK i think I’m done
stop trading for a while. take a trading holiday. come back fresh and rethink.
If you find yourself going through hell, keep going. That is the only way out to the other side.
You cant control unexpected events but you can control how much you are willing to lose per trade.
Your predicament suggest to me that you are risking too much if a 100 pip adverse price move can erase 20% of your account.
what your strategy to win trading? I’m so curious to know.
Go back to basics.
Exactly my point…
Stop taking positions based on what you think the market ought to do. They do not take positions based on your analysis of news events
I see this as typical beginner’s mistake. Don’t worry about it as you have just learned something new. Always use SL and try to move from trading on significant fundamental announcements. Pursue with your strategy, if you are making continuous profits and don’t forget to apply RM and MM techniques
Is this the correct ratio