Can I make it as a trader?

why not drop down to 30min TFs' said:
Whilst doing back testing of different systems, I found that that my edge is affected by reducing the stoploss. I may be doing the maths all wrong and I would welcome some discussion on it. But if you have a 2 pip spread and a 100pip stoploss and a 100pip take profit, then I work out that you need to be right 52% of the time just to breakeven and overcome the spread. Whereas if you have a 2pip spread and a 40pip stop and target you have to be right 55% of the time to breakeven.

What do you think?
 
Whilst doing back testing of different systems, I found that that my edge is affected by reducing the stoploss. I may be doing the maths all wrong and I would welcome some discussion on it. But if you have a 2 pip spread and a 100pip stoploss and a 100pip take profit, then I work out that you need to be right 52% of the time just to breakeven and overcome the spread. Whereas if you have a 2pip spread and a 40pip stop and target you have to be right 55% of the time to breakeven.

What do you think?

Not sure what to say tbh...so I'll add nothing...good luck...
 
Please don't fall into the trap of obsessing about win rate. It's really not that important. If, for example, your average winning trade makes 3 units and the average loser costs 1 unit, then you only need be right a quarter of the time to breakeven.

Forget win rate and focus on developing a system which has positive expectancy (this is all in the Van Tharp book ----- please read it before trading any more cash in the market).

The trend in EUR/USD is clearly down right now, you're not putting the odds on your side by going against it, and you only have a limited number of chips. Look for rallies to sell, not dips to buy.
 
Another suggestion is to look at your stoploss levels, are they based on any backtesting or are you hoping that 100 pips will 'give it room to breath' as I hear people say?

Earlier I mentioned that if you really wanted to go long (and I didnt) then there were two possibilities. Firstly there was a 1 hour PIN which closed at 1.2197ish, the logical stoploss being a couple of ticks below the low so say 1.2174ish, that would have given you a stop of 23 pips.

The second possible entry was on a 4 hour PIN (not a very nice one) at 1.2204 with a stop at 1.2173, again a 30 pip stop.

I'm not saying you should necessarily have taken these trades given the trend, my point is that these were perfectly logical stop levels which were way less than your 100 pips.
 
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We've all been here... believe us!
I would listen carefully to some of the comments here, especially since you lost 10% of your account on your first trade. It's not unusual to get 10 losers in a row for some profitable strategies.

Good luck!
 
But I was intrigued at how the price came crashing down but stopped short of the previous low on the 19th,

no mystery, it just hit the daily S3 Pivot level, which is a VERY tough nut to crack

edit: sorry for the typo, this should of course say S2 not S3, otherwise we'd probably be at war .... :eek:
 
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for FTP, my figure is 1.2219,
sorry, I meant Daily S2, apologies for the typo

but still a tough nut to crack .........
 
R_E

Weekly S1 held the ES, Eurostoxx and CAC by the way.

yep, I have it squashed between weekly S3 & S4 (Cam), so no action yet
but you're 100% correct about the FTP WS1 holding the ES

and some people still don't believe in Pivots,
and a greater number still don't understand they're all you need to trade, stick yer OSMAs etc up an erse .....:smart:
 
There have been plenty of opportunities in the european session to trade the WS1s today. 5 and 15 minute charts gave some good entries on eurostoxx and CAC in particular. I'm guessing your timezone doesnt let you trade those.
 
and some people still don't believe in Pivots,

Wow rathcoole_exile, I had'nt really done much with pivots before. But after adding them to my chart they fell close to where I was planning to take action. Have a look, on the first chart I had drawn some red boxes where I was going to consider taking my profit (If the trade continues going the right way) Then after your post I tried adding the pivots to see what you were talking about. Have a look at the second chart they fit into my action areas. Do you find them to always be relible market turning points?
 

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Todays trade is going well, up around 100pips so far! (see chart below) I am going to let it roll over at 8.00pm (I will post the after roll over chart later, it takes a while to update) I have also moved the stop up to 100pips behind the roll over price.

Still undecided about where to take profits, expecting a pull back at 1.2410 will see how it acts to decide wether too hang in for 1.2580 as originaly planned.

Cheers for all the feedback so far.
 

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Black Swan, thanks for your advice. Which pairs do you suggest ? all the main pairs with low spreads seem to be very correlated at the moment. When you say take 5 pairs and use 5% for those do you mean 5 X 1% or 5 X 5%. I assume you mean 5 X 1 so I don't end up with 25% of my account in the market.

cheers

Yep I mean 5% across 5 pairs (1% per pair) check out mataf.net for the correlation table I've posted up a few times. IMO you should only trade the 5 most liquid/traded pairs, plenty out there on the t'interweb as to which ones, why, and the best times etc...nice work on the trade btw...now you have the pleasure of the taking profits issue...;)
 
here's what the trade looks like post roll over.
 

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