My first live trading results are in, and they are awesome. I got the touch! Wohoo!
Starting amount: 1335 $
Profit on EUR/USD pair (after commission): 111.61 $
Total trades: 40 (from 2 to 10 pips, average 3 pips)
Amount of time from first till last trade I made today: cca 8 hours
Trading on 15 minute charts with 0.1 lots exclusively (1:100 leverage)
Commission paid: 38.39 €
Two negative trades (13 pips).
Two 0 pips trades (negative after commission).
And the day is not over. What to say? I don’t know. I’m scared. If my “strategy” keeps bringing similar results…I’ll be rich soon. Could it be possible? It worked on a demo over 40 days with even less success, although I placed less trades per day on my demo account gaining more pips per trade. Increased carefulness cannot be avoided during the first few days, so when live trading I seem to be more inclined to close my trades as soon as possible, but on the end it brings more pips overall.
Anyway, will keep you in touch on weekly basis now.
not bad at all, congrats, but don’t become too optimistic by thinking you will get rich soon. Trade carefuly and focus on having losses as small as possible. I asssume you trade with very tight stops since you are scalping for a few pips / trade.
Yeah, very tight take profit levels, no stop loss levels. To be honest, I’m trying to restrain my optimisim, but real results are making this difficult. I aimed at 400 € the first month, but it seems I’ll have over that amount within a week already. Nevertheless, I think the first month will be the first real representative result of my strategy.
400 EUR target / month on a $1335 account means you overleverage or overtrade (or both, right?) like crazy. Not using stops is also increasing the odds that you will get seriously burned.
Realistic targets can’t be hundreds % / year.
I stated everything in my first post. Leverage is moderate. 1:100
Not sure what you mean by overtrading. I never have more than two opened trades at once, and to get burned, I would have to miss a 400 pips drop. I never leave the market with opened trades more than 30 minutes.
This is not true.
A 30% gain in a month is is doable and can be done with good MM. Dont let people tell you what you can’t do when the evidence in front of you says you are doing it. It will not always be easy and some days you will lose. The overall long term profit will be determined by how big those really bad days are.
I would suggest a stop at least be used at least to protect your account in the case of slippage, internet problems and all the little things that can go wrong, they will.
did you really win on 38/40 trades? That is an amazing win rate of 95%. Those type of systems usually get new traders excited, until the “large, unexpected” move comes and wipes out many days or weeks of profit.
That’s just my experience from reading forums for a few years, but winning is winning and I can’t deny you had an excellent trading day today!
Hrm…I wasn’t sure if I should report the crazy day I had yesterday, because I broke many of my trading rules and now I’m looking at completely nullifying my Friday profit. I’m currently 191.6 $ in profit, but with two opened negative trades over weekend of -78.02 $. I will watch the market when it opens on Monday and prolly close these trades if GPB moves up on USD (those are sell trades in GBP/USD pair on 1.512 and 1.509).
The complete summary of yesterday would be:
Starting amount: 1437.1 $ (with profit from Thursday of 102 $)
Profit in EUR/USD and GBP/USD pair for Friday (after commission): 89.61 $
Total trades: 63 (from 2 to 10 pips, average 2.5 pips)
Amount of time from first till last trade I made today: cca 16 hours
Trading on 15 minute charts with 0.1 lots exclusively (1:100 leverage)
Commission paid: 63.66 $
There were several mistakes I made after last report. First one, when I got home on Thursday and installed fresh MT4 platform on my personal computer, I opened one trade with a lot of 1.00, because that lot is default and I was careless. The trade went 1.5 pips in minus and I closed it immediately. With commission it was -25 $. I traded some more that day and got back on some 102 $ of profit, which is the profit I stared with on Friday.
The market was terribly stagnating for USD pairs from morning till 14 o’clock on Friday, but I still made about 60 pips till around 14:40 GMT when the market start spiking on EUR/USD and GBP/USD pair. That kind of situation is both bliss and hell for scalpers, as I learned it yesterday. I was able to make 40 pips in like 10 minutes, but few sell trades too low and I had to close them, pretty much losing the amount I earned in those 10 minutes. Before making I break for the evening trade I made some extra 10 pips, ending up on cca 170 $ of profit (Thursday and Friday combined). I got home and around 17 o’clock GBP started moving up on USD and I made some additional 20 pips. Unfortunately, one really negative sell trade (and one moderately negative) was left hanging there for me until the market closed. What is even worse, it increased in negative because of overnight swap (that came as a surprise :P). So yeah, not really a good day, but all in all, I will be able to contain my Friday loss with the profit made in the same day…in worst case scenario. Like I said, I’ll give the market few minutes when it opens on Monday. So…lessons learned…losses minimized.
My goal for the next week: 300 $ of profit. That’s 60 $ per day. The only question here is if I’ll be able to contain my aggression and satisfy myself with such daily profit.
It is doable in excel with theoretical MM. A single day result is not indicative of long run results. Overleveraging+overtrading+not using stops is the fastest way to get an account to 0. It’s just a matter of time: not years, not months, but days and weeks. While good institutional funds performance is between 30% to 50% / year, common sense logic tells 30% / month on the long run is pure gambling results (in the beginning, not on the long run) or marketing figures(read: lies) provided by snake oil investment funds and [I]gurus[/I]’ advisory services.
My advice to LachieD is, again, to be careful on what he’s doing. We’ve all been victims of first profitable days enthusiasm. That’s not the right path. Focus on what may happen if you’re on the wrong side before thinking you’ll become a millionaire by trading 1k EUR with 100:1 leverage.
If we are talking Excel sheets I can do much better than 30%
Most of what you say here is true.
I am not saying that a new trader thats gambling like the OP is will ever make a high return. I would suggest he take the small profit he has made and use it to fund a much smaller account until he stops breaking his own rules. that is a sure way to get to zero fast.
I am saying if you are clear to yourself about your goals, the time you can afford to stare at a chart everyday, and your own risk tolerance you can come up with a method that will consistently produce much higher returns than that 30% a year figure. It takes time and work to make money how ever you make it. This is not easy money.
Expect to lose money as you learn keep it a small loss. Right now you have the opportunity to get some free education with the profit you have made with some lucky trades. I am not talking about the trades you have won I am talking about the big losers you have been lucky not to have;)
Have a clear goal and a clear plan stick to it. Your long term profit will be determined by how good your plan is, how well you stick to it, and the amount of time you put into trading it.
I don’t think I made few lucky trades. The first day live trading I made 38 positive trades, second day I made 59 positive trades. I can’t make 97 positive trades in 2 days by luck. And I’m not talking here at least about 1000 positive trades I made on demo. The only question here is how I’ll be able to minimize my negative trades. So far I can contain them EASILY by the profit during the same day. I’m convinced only stupidity can make enter a losing streak.
But anyway, I’ll have better arguments after the next working week ends.
I don’t think I made few lucky trades. The first day live trading I made 38 positive trades, second day I made 59 positive trades. I can’t make 97 positive trades in 2 days by luck.
Totally agree with that it sounds like you can make some money:D
I am not talking about the trades you have won I am talking about the big losers you have been lucky not to have
What are you going to do if you open a trade and 45 seconds into the trade you are -60 pips? My guess is you will hold it chances are it will come back. Most of the time it will. Its the time you forgot to look for news releases or look at a daily or weekly chart and see that price has not been at this level for 16 months and it may be another 16 months before it comes back. Or E/U is moving slow so you decide to try a new pair and you pick GBP/JPY and you enter with your regular lot size.
That’s the luck I am talking about you are lucky none of that stuff has happened to you. [B]It will happen!![/B] How you deal with those kinds of trades is what is going to determine your long term profit. My suggestion is to take your profit fund an account and trade it the same way you are now. Learn how to handle the bad trades and make sure they don’t get real bad. Once you have a solid plan in place that you are using that prevents the above account wrecking scenarios then fund your account with the rest of your money.
Making money is easy why do you think every broker offers a free demo? Keeping the real money you make in your account can be hard that is the real important skill I think you still need to learn. I am not trying to be negative. I trade in way similar to you I am telling you how to make it work.
Ok, market opened, and I was able to minimize my negative trades to -40 $. The second negative trade was closed with + 1 pip, but after comission and overnight swap it was - 0.5 $. So, after closing all trades from the last week I’m up by 150 $.
Anyway, market nicely volatile at this point. Got some 18 pips so far. Gonna watch for a entry for few pips before going to sleep.
Gah, dodged a bullet today with the dropping Euro. Thank God it swung back up. Not doing so well, but I’m afloat. Unfortunately, I realized I need to drastically minimize my plans, somewhere around 30-40 pips per day would be “realistic”…
Got back from -30 $ on Monday to + 22 $ (don’t want to talk why I got -30 $), and today I earned 39 $ after all…61 $ in profit…
Ok, I’m being a man here and must admit that I’m ending my first full week of live trading with -100 $ (starting amount was 1335 $).
My “strategy” really turned against me this week over and over, and despite being able to make small recoveries, it was so way far away from trading profitable.
I my defense, I should say that the experience on my demo account and during the first two days of live trading really gave me solid reasons to be super optimistic. I was expecting average profits of 80 pips per day, so my style of trading could even handle negative trades of over 50 pips and allow me to end up in profit for that day…but it was all pipe dreams, and maybe it’s for the better I got the wake up call so soon and that the damage is minimal.
Anyway, pulling the live plug for a while now and searching for a new strategy to test on demo.