My Noob Mistakes. Dont Make These Mistakes

Hmmm… I must have a persecution complex? :smiley:

EDIT: All fun aside… when your next in London, come visit with me at the worlds fourth largest bank trading floor. Well count the traders with a 15m chart open. Would that convince you? :wink:

Don’t you guys know the only way to succeed at trading is to stare at a tick chart with one eye over your left shoulder. To be really good you need to do this for at least 14 hrs every day.:smiley:

2 Likes

Well, whatever complex it is, at least it includes a sense of humour, or at least down to earth…lol…something I find your equivalents to be a bit lacking in :wink:

So what is the worlds fourth largest bank called anyways?

:smiley:

It’s a good post due to your transparent thoughts on your experiences and I am sure some readers either clinched or smiled to themselves having their mind transport them back to what they themselves have experienced like what you have. Well spotted, well expressed & all the best. Some articles are my site forexillo dot com.

Don’t know how long you’ve been knocking around forex sites Mr Forexillo but if you’ve never seen a ‘my time frames bigger than yours’ argument stick around… it happens a lot :slight_smile:

…anyone want to scalp ticks with me :wink:

Not setting stops and limits. There were countless times that I was up 50 pips and felt that since I was watching the charts actively, i didn’t need stops and limits. Boy was I wrong. A 50+ pip position would turn into a 150- position for me. The importance of S/L when you are actively watching charts is not to catch your trades before they lose or locking in profits. The importance is that it provides you with targets to stick by, removes the emotion out of your trade, and forces you to adhere to a risk management technique.
Dont trade only one timeframe. When i first started, I thought I had a solid technique and would see it in one timeframe and trade it on the spot. WRONG! You can see a setup in one timeframe, but expand out into a broader timeframe and notice your trade might go against a greater trend or movement. Make sure your entries hold consistent over different time frames or at least make sense on different time frames
Dont be greedy. Just as you manage your risk, you have to manage your profit. If your goal is 50 pips, take your 50 pips and move on. Don’t sit around saying “I think it might go to 60 pips” if you have no solid proof. Rule of thumb, don’t hold on to a trade hoping for it to move if you wouldn’t open a trade at that moment with the same outlook of movement.

Back to this. Good points.
Point one
you need a stop loss! Even if you have the self control to close a bad trade every time. What happens when your internet goes down or your brokers price server locks up. It happens.

Point two
You can trade from a single TF chart. You need to make sure if its a short one your goals and risk are scaled down. Trading takes more work and the odds get worse with smaller pip trades. This has to do with the spread. Can it be done? sure it can. But why make it hard on your self. This is from someone that likes to scalp and has made some profit at it. Me:D

Point three
Being greedy is a good thing If its done [B]after[/B] some profit is locked down. It is really depressing to see a trade go from better then expected to a big loser.

It doesnt matter what time frame chart you look at you’re all just looking at the same history, the large timeframe chart is just the small time frames compressed into less bars the only differnce between trading small and large timeframes is the amount of risk.
For example, trade the daily or weekly chart with a 30 pip stop loss and see what happens.
Sure the big banks trade the large timeframes, why wouldnt they ? They are trading million dollar accounts they use large stop losses to play those big daily price bars.
Those of us with smaller accounts may not be able to afford a 500 pip stop loss to allow our trades to ride some of those 200 pip bars.

sharing your mistakes will help us not to do the same things, thank you!

Interesting thought process you have there. :slight_smile: Because banks trade larger accounts their willing to risk a larger pip SL? Its not the pips their thinking of risking but the trade size re account balance. 500 is way off by the way on the daily… more like 150 and 250 on the weekly. And thats if your only looking to one TF and not multi charting.

Theres nothing stopping a retail trader from trading the daily or weekly except psychology. Take your 500 pip example. Say you have a $1k account to keep the math simple. A trade size of 0.1% of balance would mean for every 100 pip drawdown you would be down $10… $50 on your 500 pip SL or 5% of your account. Trading the daily with a 150 SL its 1.5% and 250 SL for the weekly, 2.5%.

Good advice