I don’t know how long you’ve been trading mate but trade to systems until you start feeling those trends. I’m on the 'phone as I write this, my father taught me trading, and he was a very old-fashioned man. I’ve got some bell-end from futures in one ear and a nob from the pound in the other. My father’s been screaming at me all day from behind his oak desk as I try to salvage what’s left our Belgian business. Tomorrow starts right here - and I for one am ahead of the sunrise, talking to people, checking through old pips and honing my trading skills like my father’s soup importing business depended upon it. We’ve just taken delivery of two million tins of prawn soup from the Japs - we’re going to step on it a few times and turn it into crisp flavouring destined for the North West of England.
I accept that there’s an argument that if your trading an edge, then you should take the trade when a setup occurs. However, I think this needs to be placed into a wider context.
On a trade by trade basis, in simple terms you achieve profitability by increasing win rate, increasing the size of winning trades, and decreasing size of losing trades. The same argument also applies to trading results in general. Increase the number of winning days, increase the size of your winning days, and decrease the size of your losing days.
If you analyse daily results, over a large enough sample size, you generally find that when things are going well, you very rarely experience much intra day drawdown. On the days when you suffer the greatest daily losses, things just generally tend to get worse and worse. If that’s not the case with the method you trade, then I agree that it becomes a case of continuing to apply your edge.
I’m assuming in this case that a 25% drawdown over a couple of days is due to inappropriate leverage, but I guess most of us have a predefined limits where we’d stop and question the effectiveness of our methods if and when these limits where breached.
When a struggling trader makes such comments as yours gasanvill, very often the problem is much deeper than just: “I failed to follow the rules”, it’s incompetence that often leads to a downward spiral to begin with, it’s usually an inability to read markets correctly or a psychological problem that’s the root cause. So it’s hard for me to believe that your problem is only a matter of sticking to your rules and all is merry.
Your dilemma can be much better addressed if you can give us recent examples of where you bought or sold and hopefully a kind soul will correct what it is that you’re doing wrong.
I would love to know on what source you base your statement that people who lose money on forex usually do so because of a psychological problem lol
comments made to me from a number of people, i suppose you also want proof as to who those people are, as is so often the case with those few who have nothing else to do, right? lol
Since I am a specialist remedial teacher in my own fields, I can understand the difficulties, [B]gasanvill[/B]. 
[B]If you are happy with the answers given so far, then so be it. [/B] 
I feel that the answers so far are a bit like hitting a broken lawn mower with a sledge hammer in order to try to fix it. 
The problem is that we who try to help you have very little to go on.
It is up to you, but if you are at all interested, you can give us much more detail and we can help you accurately.
Details such as…
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Method being used, lots/leverage, targets, stop loss details etc.
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Why you think demo trading for you is so different from live trading for you.
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Why [U]you think[/U] you went wrong (bit more detail than “broke rules”).
This information will help us diagnose your problem much more accurately.
The more you give us, the better we can help you.
[B]But in the end, that is your decision.[/B]
You suppose a lot of things don’t you lol.
Dont get distracted [B]SDC[/B]!! :eek:
Concentrate on answering [B]Gasanvill’s [/B]question!!
I’m not sure about analogies, you could say you need A Sledgehammer to crack a nut!
But since we are on the subject, imagine your brain is a massive computer program, and like any other program it’s got a few bugs, it just doesn’t work properly, and buggering up your trading is just because your program is not working properly.
Using NLP is like fixing those bugs, it’s not just for Forex it’s for many useful things in life, I used to to quit smoking - nearly 12 months now.
Now what does NLP stand for?? 
Neo Linguistic Programming,
I used to get nervous as heck trading, this was on demo, it was ridiculous, I’d put a trade on and my heart would be pounding and I’m all stressful and stuff, then I remembered about the NLP technique and wondered if it would work with FOREX.
What it does is it stops you reacting irrationally, say if you closed your eyes and imagine a you’re stood in the middle of the road with a big truck coming towards you, soon your heart will start thumping, why? there’s no reason is there? this is because your nervous system reacts to reality and your imagination in just the same way, with NLP you break this connection, absolutely great for trading yes?
Ohh yes I also used it to help me go up ladders, used to be dizzy standing on a chair.
There are 2 methods I use, the tapping technique and the spinning wheel.
Wow that sounds fancy, I just use reverse psychology. When I open a trade I’ll set a stop loss and immediately start wishing and hoping the trade will get stopped out, the sooner the better. Every day the trade doesn’t hit my stop, I get terribly mad, I freak out and hold the trade open in the desparate hope that the market will reverse and hit my stop.
When I just can’t bear the pain anymore, I’ll close the trade out and cry over my profits 
Hmmmmm.
I know [B]Gasanvill[/B].
He is a very practical trader. (like me)
I am sure he is looking for a direct answer if we can give it.
At this point, he has not given any further details of his predicament.
Until he does, there is little more we can do.
Your style sound even more fancy, lol. Be careful what you wish for. You might get it.