Risk Management advice wanted

Your trade was pretty good being that you’re a very new trader. I could not have made this trade at your level of experience. So, congratulations! However, the trade could just as easily have gone the other way and you may have lost a large % of your account. I suggest that you take some time to learn price action analysis and trade on a demo account until you get the hang of it.

Here’s a little something to get you started on it. It is very difficult to convey this information in any appreciable detail in a single forum post so I’m going to merely whet your appetite and let you explore price action analysis for yourself later. You will undoubtedly have many questions and I’m not sure how much time I will have to respond or elaborate; but a little info is better than no info. :slight_smile:

Basic Price Movement
Price reaches for previous highs and lows. These could be significant pivot points in the middle of long runs (not referring to the daily pivot points, etc). S/Rs form at these points (highs & lows). Consider S/Rs as being regions and not exact price points. To demarcate an S/R region, consider the bearish or bullish candle that forms just before a high or low occurs. So, for instance, the bullish candle just before price falls off a high will form the S/R region that you need to target. Conversely, the bearish candle just before price rises from a low will form the S/R region that you will target.

Price will come back to these S/R regions as it moves up and down toward previous highs and lows. It is at these regions that you will see price react and turn as it reverses its direction.

Determining a Trend Change
For an uptrend, when price makes a lower high and violates a previous low, we have a high probability of a trend reversal. For a downtrend when price makes a higher low and takes out a previous high we have a high probability of a trend reversal.

Given the above basic information, here’s one way that you could have traded this pair with a little less risk than you had to bear.

Trade Execution
Entry: Consider the low at 0.9982. If price prints below this low then we have a high probability of the trend changing. Therefore, I would place a limit short order to enter the market at 0.9982 once it is clear that price has made that low.

You could have moved your entry order up higher when new lows formed above but those entry points would have carried too much risk because the bearish candle just before the impulse upward from the 0.9982 low would represent an S/R region and therefore it was necessary for price to take out that low before we could ascertain a high probability of a trend change.

Stop: For the stop, in this case, once the low is taken out, price could not have exceeded 0.9986 but just to be ultra safe I would put the SL at 1.0011, which is 2 pips above a previous high.

For now, until you get a handle on price action, I would suggest that you place your stop above or below the high or low that price reached for as it changes trend (look left). If you were to do that for this trade then your SL would be at a few pips above 1.0028.

Take Profit: Your TP Limit Buy Order will take into account the S/R region at the low that price is reaching for. The high on the bearish candle (highlighted in yellow) before price moves from the low at the left comes in at 0.9881. Therefore, given say a 2 pip spread, your TP order will be at 0.9883. You may get more conservative than that and set it at 0.9885 or higher if you expect TP to be reached when spreads are wider. This gives you almost 100 pips profit.

I’ve attached a screen shot of a marked up 1H chart. In addition to the Entry, SL & TP, I have also marked up opportunities to add to your short position at various lows along the left side to gain the maximum from this trade. You could choose to keep your risk low at the entry point and stack larger shorts as you go along.

As price continues to move in your favor, you can adjust your SL to move it to the next short opportunity point, keeping a gap of one opportunity point. For example, when price takes out the low at 0.9967, you can move your stop to your entry point. Subsequently, when price takes out 0.9960, you can move your SL to 0.9974 and so on and so forth.

If the above makes sense to you then practice this method in a demo account and you will certainly gain a much better understanding within a few weeks.

2 Likes