I’m trying to give my trades room to move so I generally allow them 200 - 300 pips of buffer zone but my god the most frustrating thing in the world is when I’m up like 250 pips after a week or two and then all of a sudden in 3 days all that has been wiped out and now I’m sitting at -80 pips or something.
I’m trying to do “the right thing” and allow my trades room to breath but I often give back so much unrealised profit it’s painful. But if I don’t give it room to move and close out my trades after 100 - 200 pips or something then sometimes I miss those once every few month +800 pip moves etc.
Also one of the most demoralising things ever is placing a trade and having it go -80 pips in 1 hour -_- Such bad timing xD
When try to catch 800+ pips you’ll almost inevitably have to widthstand 200+ pips corrections, since it’s natural in trading. People buy and sell. It can’t always go in just one direction.
On Weekly, and I’m assume you know since you talk about good moves about every dew months (which is a lot), corrections have even 500+ pips sometimes.
Better just take 100 - 250 pips and just if the opportunity seems too good to be true try to catch a bigger amount, like 500-1000. But this should only be exceptions. You already know how to catch 150-250 pips which is incredibly useful, a lot of people don’t know how to catch 50 pips and fear and greed comes in think about that. This is a science to know how to catch such amount of pips. Most people don’t.
Catch 100-260 and the trade is finished. Look for a further sell/buy eventually after the correction you hate occurr (if they appear). You know how to trade and catch good amount of pips. Use that. 150-250 pips it’s all you need for mid-longer term trading. Sometimes pairs move in a month 250 pips.
And you don’t need too big of a stop loss. Anything between 40-160 pips should be enough (depending on the market environments). Anything bigger than this and your trading idea gets invalidated. Is good to leave breathing room for your trades, but once your setup is invalidated you need to stop, otherwise most likely your losses will just increase, since perhaps you caught a trend or reversal against you. And if that happened you just need to close the trades.
Not always.If I was always in profit then I’d just close out every trade in the green. The key to making profits in my strategy is to let your trades run for a bit but that often results in giving back 100 - 200 pips which can be depressing.
@matty89 Losing is part of the winning game. All winners are good losers. We have to learn to take losses, build up our tolerance level, control our fears, greed and emotions first before we can become a winner trader! Cheers!
While the idea of a large trending move is nice in theory in practice beginners are not cut out for it
As you say, you can’t handle the corrections. As a newbie you need to hit the cash register regular (not with day trading but with short term end of day trading)
You won’t see your profits go up in smoke as much, you’ll get more signals and ultimately more feedback.
Both day trading and trend trading have problems for the beginner
so much misconception out there, to quote the notorious + cut your losses short and let your winners run+. imho, a simple way to deal with that is to bank some profit at 1to1 RR, stop at BE, and let the rest run. or take partial profits as the trade moves along, trail the trade above the swing highs since ur holding for weeks, do not let a green trade turn into a red 1. on another view, if u move ur stop too soon u ll get stopped out, so a bit of discretion or clear rules about this like u move stop to BE only when it broke a level, retraced to it and keeps on going etc. there are ways but u need to practice, swing and hope for the best hasn t worked well for me.i m always having an intraday target(s) and as soon as i set BE(risk free trade with already banked profits) can do what it wants.
cheers
You need to keep closer control of your long-term trades. Its not professional to take a long-term position and wait for 3 days of losses before you act on the loss.
If the trade is in a trend, close it and bank the profits when it makes a pull-back. A pull-back can be one bar. When the pull-back is ended by price resuming the trend direction, open a new trade with the trend: the new trade can be opened by an entry order set as soon as you close the first trade.
Yes and no. Each individual trade is short-term, but the overall plan remains to follow a long-term trend using repeated with-trend positions in series.
Fully agree the best way is to swing trade a long term trend, holding long term positions when you use leverage is almost as frustrating as day trading.
Personally don’t think either are suitable for beginners.
We were all beginners at one time. They take on the hardest games way before they’re ready - scalping, traded options, reversals, high leverage, averaging down, one-candle entry patterns, indicator-driven entries and exits, moving average cross-over entries and exits, one-minute time-frames. There’ll be something new next week.
You can also apply Chandelier exits or ATR stops. This is in addition to trail stops. These will help to protect your profits. ATR stops is most effective in volatile markets.
My hair is grey, the wrinkles pronounced - but I’m still very much a beginner.
Horses for courses - I ‘traded’ yesterday about 30 mins before Javid resigned, should have seen it coming but that word ‘should’ - that’s the thing about a day trade - all in a day’s work
I’m assuming you’ve been trading along time, and somehow made it through
Many newcomers just become cannon fodder for the brokers though, because they choose to trade in the hardest way at the beginning.
Success rate would be much higher for newbies if they actually took in the words of those who came before and didn’t think they were the exception to the rule.
I sympathize with newbies. When I was new to trading I was drawn to scalping simply because it provides quicker feedback. They are given conflicting information for an endeavor that is seemingly complex and confusing to begin with. They are told that a high percentage of retail traders lose money and that they need to approach trading differently than the masses do, but they are not told how to differentiate themselves. They are told that they need an edge but not how to obtain this edge.
Those who came before them follow different trading methodologies - fundamental, news trading, technical, quants, etc. Technical trading can be further broken down into indicator based, candle stick patterns, chart patterns, supply & demand, price action, etc. Which of these do they choose? It takes a significant amount of time to learn any one of these methodologies.
Charting is another area. Some platforms offer different chart types such as time based charts, tick charts, Renko, Point & Figure, Kagi, line charts, Line Break charts, Heikin-Ashi, and more. Which chart type should they use? Does picking a particular charting type matter? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each? Should they use a mix of chart types for an instrument?
Then there is the matter of the trading software. Most people use MT4/5 because it’s free. They don’t realize that the platform is sorely lacking in many ways because it is ancient and it hasn’t been updated with time. The tools of the trade are important to your success. (This is my opinion, Please don’t flame me or ask me to justify this.)
As if the above were not enough, there is so much misinformation on trading on the internet. One can easily be led astray and not realize it for months. What is an erstwhile newbie trader to do? How does he wade through all this and keep his sanity and account?
Yes that’s it in a nutshell. There are so many options open for the beginner to choose, some of which are more suitable than others.
If they choose the wrong ones (I mean less suitable) it sets them up for failure. Not only have they chosen a style that isn’t working, is hard or not suitable but then they have a whole set of psychological issues to deal with too
Which is why having a mentor works, but a real mentor who is going to be guiding them all the way, not a course or even a forum (lol).
Most institutional traders have mentors when they set out and it’s usually from this background the market wizards come.
I still maintain trading isn’t difficult, the problem lies in how we start.
Most of us can drive a car, but we all went through a structured learning process. Imagine getting on the motorway having no lessons and never driven one before.
did you make backtest? Regards Greg