It’s been about a month since i opened my first live trading account with 350 USD, and its been a great experience so far live trading Forex.
The Basics
Swing trader (hold trades an average of 2.5 days)
RR is 1:1.5 or 1:2
trading in nano lots (to avoid blowing out my account early on)
pairs traded: CAD/JPY, GBP/JPY, GBP/AUD, EUR/USD, USD/SEK (not gonna trade that anymore)
P&L: 11:50
What i’ve noticed about my trades (and could use advice on!)
1.) Alot of my winning trades hit my TP and continue on moving higher (to the tune of 100+ pips. Whats the best way of altering my trading to not lose out on these types of potential benefits (or book more losses)?
2.) Using limit orders to place trade setups at slightly better pricing than whatever the current market order is. Does this generally work well or does it have some terrible drawback that i am unaware of?
3.) trading instruments that move thousands of pips are very strange and probably are not worth trading. (is this true or am i just being biased cause it impacted my P/L negatively?)
And my general questions
1.) Got the app on my phone, but is it better for beginners to not even bother with trying to trade on their cell phones?
2.) I already got a trade journal where i hand write all my trade ideas out, but do other traders here find it largely beneficial to post them online ?
3.) Exotics move more, but is it safer to just stick to the Majors?
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Hi @JosephJoeBarren, welcome to the BP Forums… to answer some of your questions…
You could employ a Trailing Stop Loss to follow price up or down and not use a TP at all…The position will close when price finally reverses and hits the TSL. This way you are not limited by a TP when price moves in your favour bigtime…
You could also manually follow price up with a stop. Once price has moved say 10 pips in your favour you move your stop to say 2-5 pips inside your position and as price moves up you move the TP up 10 pips and follow it up by moving your stop up 10 pips and so on and so on etc… Reverse applies for a Short obviously…
It’s a good way to open positions, more accurate than at market position opens because you can enter the market at a more calculated price level if your strategy includes Fibo, S & R levels, Structures etc…
XAUUSD is the only instrument that I trade that can move 1000’s of pips per week and it’s no different to trading any of the common pairs with a bit more volatility… I find the XAU crosses more profitable…
Some traders here in BP post their trade journals live, giving other members the opportunity to offer help or advice on the trading methods you utilise… Most platforms collate all trading activity via a digital statement… I print these out when required and make notes on situations or positive and negative developments…
The exotics is a personal preference strategy… I find the spreads (wide) make these difficult to profit from and they can very unpredictable… I don’t like surprises while my funds are at risk…
The Majors generally have more predictable movements due to the sheer volume of traders, Institutions etc. trading them… spreads are also much lower on the Majors, making them a better instrument from which to profit.
Hope this goes some way to answering your questions… and is of help… Cheers
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I pretty much will sell half my position when my target is reached and move my stop loss on the balance to break even. If price is running into support/resistence on that balance, I may make the stop tighter.