Ive decided to withdraw this thread.
Mick
Ive decided to withdraw this thread.
Mick
Cut your losses and let your profits run is such an old saying it’s almost become a clique but it’s no less true today and necessary for success.
You seem to have done this pretty well on the demo, only one loss is big.
Greed and fear make this harder to do on a live account because you want to grab a profit before you lose it and avoid taking a loss by holding on to it hoping it will turn around. So if you can control this you’re nearly there.
But watch out. With $100 account your trades have to be very small. Control the greed and the fear will take care of it’s self. Way to do this is not use a lot of leverage.
Good luck 
The only opinion that matters is yours. Look at your profit/loss column. Listen to what it is telling you.
Also, would you be so kind as to post your trading system?
Ive decided to withdraw this thread.
Mick
Willing to share your strategy?
If you have a good win/loss ratio, where the winning trades easily make up the losses, ( and turn a profit) then you have no problem.
With your win/loss ratio, say you are risking 3% per trade or making 3% per trade then it will work fine as long as the method is based on something that is repeatable and actually an edge and not just luck from jumping in obvious to everyone trends.
Like others have said the main thing is to make sure your winning trades beat the drawdown the losers cause. This has to be done with either a high win rate, a high reward/risk ratio or a combination of both. A high combination of both is the closest to the holy grail anyone gets.
Defind what you max pip loss is and try to make all the winners equal at least that and find way to lock that in and give it a chance to run further.
Well the thing that has surprised me is that so far (when I stick only to my strategy) the win rate is pretty high. As you can see from yesterdays live action there were no losses at all, and roughly 15% increase which I think is really great. The problem is that Ive read a lot on the forums.
One place said that a pro broker with $50,000 account would only trade 1 Lot. I have $100 and I was trading 0.05 Lot which proportionately is very high. Another place said to aim for a 2% increase per WEEK, and so again these results I am getting consistently are much higher than this but I seem to have some level of certainty with it - I am not guessing or jumping into strong trends (though I can catch them early).
Another consideration is complexity. I had read loads of stuff online and in ebooks and my system is relatively very simple, though I am trying to write it down so I can post it and that is actually more difficult than I thought, but I certainly dont use half the complex stuff I see other people doing.
0.05 would mean that on your micro account you are trading 5 micro lots per trade. With a balance of 100 dollars that means you are leveraging your account at 1:50 each trade. I think I have the figures right here somebody correct me if I am wrong??
1:50 could be slightly worrying if you dont have the correct stop loss in place, what are your stops like?
I cannot formulate an opinion on your trading, as you have not disclosed how you trade.
I checked with my broker. The leverage (he says) is 100:1. Im still not sure of the maths though.
I have 10-15 pip stop loss, trailing to -5 and then 0. I have been taking upto 10 pips, though three times last week i could have let it run and tripled my money but I am trying to keep the whole discipline thing in check, which to be honest is the hardest part.
I am using the take profit EA to close my trades according to my strategy as I just dont seem to manage it, but it seems to be working for me. The decision next is if, when and how to let it run on after 10 pips, or continue what is working which is to take 10 as soon as I can.
Im happy to stick with what is working.
So do you just flip a coin to determine your trades? At this point you have only mentioned money management which is crucial to trading, but not the only part of trading.
Alot of people would be interested in your trading strategy if it returns what you say it does long term! Posting it means we all can rip holes in it and impove it for all our wallets.
Ive decided to withdraw this thread.
Mick
Well the skeptic in me believes that you want to only tout results so you can later peddle the system around.
Ive decided to withdraw this thread.
Mick
What leverage your broker ALLOWS, is not what you are really using. The lot size you are using, compared to your account, is your TRUE leverage, the 100:1, is your FULL allowed leverage.
With that said, it’s important to realize neither one of those are important if you decide your risk and stick to it on every trade.
So, if you have a 10 pip SL and want to risk 3% per trade. You find 3% of your total account and divide that by 10, that is your lot size.
Like I said if you have a good win/loss, risk/reward ratio, and the winners eclipse the losers AND make money, AND it’s repeatable, then you have no problems, just keep doing what you are doing.
P.S. 2% a week for a day trader is not bad…if you just started and really dont know a thing. But, it really isn’t somthing to aim for and stop at, I risk 3% per trade or make 3% per trade and regulary win several per week past any losses. I think that figure of 2% probably comes from some trader with a huge account, which would mean 2% would be quite considerable, so no reason to risk more. Those of us who aren’t already millionaires need to make more than 2% a week to have it be meaningful money.
Ive decided to withdraw this thread.
Mick
Yep, same happened to me time and time again. The emotions get you and you just have to close that trade that would have been a big winner NOW to lock in those profits, and you just feel the need to give that loser a little bit longer to turn around, you know that losers are a part of the course but, well, it just feels that THIS particular trade shouldn’t be one of the losers… And so it goes.
Then, before you know it, the losers are way bigger than the winners, so much bigger your win to loss ratio doesn’t really matter and your account is getting trashed. We’ve all been there.
On your demo trading, with the exception of just one losers all your losers were tiny, some of the winners were over ten times bigger than the next biggest loser. With this success is almost certain.
My advice is keep those emotions in check by stick small with low leverage. You can add to the size (slowly) later. Stick in a few grand and your emotions will be all over the shop, I can guarantee it. The first time I ever started winning was when I was using spread betting with 10p per pip on some IGIndex trial that let you trade for 10p per pip in the first weeks - when the stakes were increased the emotions came in and the game plan went out the window.