Lost my account... 14 lessons to learn from!

I don’t know what platform you are are using, but on MT4 if wanted to close half the trade, I believe all I would have to do would be to click on an open order and if size was 1.00, just change it to .50 and hit close and it would close half the value of the trade.

I’m with Oanda. We buy our lots by the unit. I can even buy a 1 unit lot! A tenth of a cent per pip!

I’ll have to check the next time I have an order open and see if I can close just half the lot.

Hey Phoneix,
You are right that you could just double your lot size instead of two orders, the only difference is that you would have to manually close half your position intead of two discrete TP levels.

Vince,

Lets say your risk is $80. You can open two position lots or maybe even 3 position lots. As long when your stoploss is hit. All add up to $80.

Yes that is correct.

Q1)Is that what you mean?

I tend to use 2% risk, and depending on the currency i trade, determine the s/l, typically never more than 50 pips.

Q2)Is it true that people who implore such management is due to the large stoploss?

No mention of a large stoploss. This is a technique of securing some profit and then giving yourself the opportunity to catch a break out, and if not it costs you nothing. How many times have you closed a trade where, it continues on for another 50-100-300 pips or what ever?

Q3)Does that put us at a slight disadvantage as we are paying the spread a few more times?

It works out the same, you dont pay any extra spread.

You can’t do a trailing stop with MT4 can u? I just realized…:eek:

I suppose it depends on the broker and how they are set up with MT4, but I can with IBFX. I don’t use it unless I’m way into profit as it seems to always fall back and hit my trailing stop and then continue in my direction. It seems ot me the trailing stop is best used when you think the profit it doing to be on the smaller side anyways, but you want to give it a chance in case of an unexpected move.

Hey all! Hope you’re doing great and making PIPS! This is a great site.

This is my first post. Guess why I’m posting in this section :slight_smile: I lost my 20K account couple of days ago, but what I can say to you is that you’ve derived too many lessons from your drawdown. I can say that 2-3 or three important are all you need to improve and make yoursel a better trader. By the way, some of your lessons repeat themselves and are reduntant. Don’t confuse yourself.

My most important lesson that I’ve learned was that BAD money management will wipe you out! That is the single most important lesson I’ve leared and for me it includes trading out of my league with too large lot sizes.

Being greedy - I didn’t want to loose couple of hundred/thousand, but I lost 20K…

Being hopeful - maybe the price will retrace? No it won’t :slight_smile: At least, not for my small and overextended account it won’t :slight_smile:

Another MAJOR component - when you are in the FOREX world DO NOT overwork yourself. It will inevitably undermine your logic, intuition and your whole being. You will start making mistakes and it will wipe you out. When you make some money in the game take some out, take a break. Enjoy LIFE. Appreciate your friends and family. Isn’t that why you go into to this game in the first place? :)) Relax. and then get back into the game.

Most importantly don’t be sorry and don’t feel down.

Happy trading!

No, I think the most people who are successful and profitable are scalpers. Im guessing you probably never scalper or you have a job where you cant scalp.

You have learned what all traders learned in the beginning. 20 thousand is a little rough, it’s many people’s annual salary. Everyone learned the importance of placing a protective stop to be safe against exactly what happened to you, break-outs that you failed to secure and protect your account against. One of the most important things at this point is to keep your head high. It is not impossible to make money in the Forex market, but the road to get there is a little rough. This is why experience is so important. Experience is a real thing. We are capable of becoming much more effective the more knowledge and the more empirical experience we have. Don’t limit yourself to Forex. This is true for any craft, not just Forex. Sometimes it is difficult to realize how great your achievements are. When you succeed at making a consistent income with Forex, you succeed at many other things. This knowledge can be applied to other areas of your life in the future.

Good luck.

This is absolutely not true. People have different personality types. How many times have I seem people say that they don’t feel that scalping is their craft? They are psychologically different from what you have become accustomed. The reasons for this? This actually has a lot to do with your childhood, whether you had siblings and the kind of parents you had. All of this contributed to the person you are today - your personality and character. You feel comfortable with scalping, and it works for you - great!

But if you do research, you will see that most successful forex traders use scalping only in situations where it is blatantly obvious. Highly successful forex traders learn everything they can about what is called in the industry as “the big money”, or “the market makers”. They get market volume indicators. Note that many if not all Forex software platforms do not give you a volume indicator, and if they do, it is for futures. So even though it is still there, it is useless. So what these people do they get indicators from multiple banks, eSignal, I believe can give you that information.

Most successful traders are not scalpers. Let me put it in a different way. Most successful traders who are scalpers are successful. That is the point you are making. But I don’t think that is true either. What are your sources?

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I still have a monumental amount of things to learn, however, i’ve learned just enough to be able to state this:

You should never force a trade. Rather, you should plan what you’re going to do, and wait for it.
When the conditions favor your plan, you should prepare to execute it. Prior to executing the plan, look for more and more confirmations, and when you are finally comfortable that the conditions are in your favor, then execute.
You should also place a stop-loss generous enough to give your plan some room to move, therefore increasing your chances of success. In the case that the trade does not go your way, do not hesitate to exit—this is a real challenge for most traders, even for me.
Also, if the trade does go your way, do not hesitate to take profit and exit as well.

With Alpari MT4 (on demo) you can set a trailing stop but it works only as long as MT4 is open… Which means that MT4 on your computer is continuously adjusting the SL according to the distance you originally set from the current price.

Other platforms/brokers have a better trailing stop, in the sense that you can set the parameters with the broker server and close your trading platform: the trailing stop order is no different than any ordinary SL order and gets executed as programmed by the broker’s server.

Most profitable, maybe. But those who swing for 200 - 500 pips is more secured and less risky IMO. But you need to have a big account.