that would still be a brilliant result!
going great guns, here 
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That’s fare. Can you tell us what you’re trading? Spot forex?
I only trade Forex and I generally stick to just four pairs:
- EUR/USD
- GBP/JPY
- GBP/USD
- AUD/USD
I have a number of different strategies that I use across these pairs but, for the small account challenge, I am sticking with my two highest-performing strategies.
As a general rule, I never enter more than one trade at a time, albeit sometimes across multiple accounts.
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Oh cool. Also, why just 12 trades? Any reason for that?
i don’t trade GBP/JPY and hardly ever did
i was interested to see recently that one of the leading prop-shops said that people taking their evaluations who trade this pair tend to do badly with it, when they make profits from it they’re traders who give those profits back to the market within their next 5 trades, overall, on average
do you find it significantly different from the other three you mentioned (all of which i trade regularly in their futures form)?
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As I have said above, the more trades you take, the more risk you absorb regardless of the individual results.
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Interesting to hear the prop-shops’ opinions on GJ, it’s probably the pair I do best with! Ultimately, a certain strategy either works with a given pair or it doesn’t.
The only significant difference I find between GJ and the other three pairs I trade is the range of movement perhaps.
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14th April 2023
18:30 London
So far, so good . . .
I did mess up a little bit though . . .
I closed the last two trades early at around a 1:1 RRR. I did it in order to protect the significant gains that I had made but both trades actually went on to achieve the full Take Profit.
Had I let them both run, my balance would now be almost double what it is. Such is the power of compounding returns!
In hindsight, it would have been fine to move my stop loss to breakeven on both occasions but closing the trades early ended up costing me money and, ultimately, increasing my risk of failing this challenge.
Trust me, it won’t happen again.
Lesson learned!
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Dan, what charts times are you using in your strategy, and what % of your account and leverage are you trading on each trade?
I use both 30M and 1H charts depending on the particular strategy that I am using.
For this small account challenge I am using insane amounts of leverage and risking around 30% of my account per trade.
To be clear, I do not recommend following my approach and risking such high percentages of your account per trade. Nor do I recommend using high leverage.
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That’s really interesting, and I don’t think I would ever go so risky unless it was a scientific experiment!
I think I read further up that your only running one trade at a time, so that is countering some of the risk. What kind of take profit levels are you using? Are you just jumping out as soon as the profit is palatable?
And great disclaimer at the end!
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17th April 2023
15:00 London
My first trade of the week, around a hundred bucks profit, so just over 12% up for the day.
Still early and some nice set-ups emerging so there might even be another trade today. If not, I feel confident there will be at least a couple at some point this week.
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Ideally, I stick to a minimum risk to reward ratio of 1:1 but usually target 1:1.5 or 1:2, again depending on the strategy that I am using.
My risk to reward was lower on this morning’s trade because I just didn’t trust the strength of the position. I don’t like settling for less than my minimum risk to reward of 1:1 but preservation of capital is my primary concern, especially when risking such large percentages of the account and using the absolutely insane amounts of leverage that I am using!
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that’s Mondays for you! 
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Yeah, that’s true!
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mate - if you can 50x that A/C by Xmas - nobody here will say you failed ! - if that’s what you mean - or if you are talking about an increased risk of “ruin” - please expand !
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Thanks for the kind comments. I’m hoping to 50x it way before Christmas though!
Risk of ruin is exactly what I’m talking about. When you’re trying to grow a small account fast, as I’m doing with this challenge, it’s no good increasing the amount you risk per trade by just a few percent. That would actually increase your risk of ruin because you would have to take more trades and it would take a longer time to achieve the challenge.
My win rate with the strategies that I am using for this challenge usually average anywhere between 70% and 90% and I’m typically targeting anywhere between a 1:1.5 and a 1:2 risk to reward for each trade. Hence, they are nicely profitable strategies that I am using but, more importantly, that means there is a good chance I can complete this challenge if I try to keep the amount of trades I have to take to a bare minimum.
As you can see from myfxbook, I have so far taken six trades and won all six. It’s a good start but I doubt I can maintain a 100% win rate, though that would be nice!
18th April 2023
13:25 London
I was long on the Euro but it was a trade going nowhere and the US Building Permits data is about to hit so I closed out just over break even.
Could have worked out in my favour had I stayed in the trade, we’ll see . . .
18th April 2023
13:40 London
Oops, this might be a mistake in the making.
I thought I might have acted too quickly in closing my long Euro trade in anticipation of the Building Permits data, the Euro seemed to be still heading nicely upwards at first so I decided to re-enter, my set-up is still valid after all.
Literally, as soon as I re-entered the Euro dived south.
It’s recovering a bit now but I hate starting a trade with a big and almost instant drawdown like this. I’m already halfway down to my stop loss!!!
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18th April 2023
14:10 London
Ouch!
I decided to re-enter the trade because my set-up was still valid and the price still seemed to be heading in the right direction a few minutes after the news release. Besides, the news didn’t seem that bad unless I’m missing something perhaps . . .
Bad decision!
It ended up costing me 17% of my account.
Lesson learnt!