Dislikedit's these tough weeks or months that will test the trader more than his system! can you hold your own after running up a string of losses?
being in the market, waiting for big moves means you're gonna have to ride out these tough patches and hold your discipline. that's why there is no substitute for live trading - even small accounts like yours!
not that you don't know any of this already - i still think you can win with this approach if you've done your back-testing right.
btw, is your max risk 10% at any time since you always trade 5 pairs together? i think you mentioned one time you were hit for a 5% loss and recovered.
also you said you back-tested each pair independently, since you essentially hold a USD portfolio did you have days when you hit your uncle point (max loss), when you put all the trades together?
i might be misunderstanding your money management here, so it could be my bad!!!
just remembered> on a big report day like today could you be running additional risk of all your stops being hit on your portfolio - ie your uncle point being reached?Ignored
I don't think I've had a live day yet where initial stoplosses at more than 10% over the five pairs and unless stopped out the first day, this % risk is soon reduced dramatically. Setting the s/l at 10 pips from high/low of previous day as with backtesting, it's extremely rare for the market to go 100 pips one way then reverse the very next day. When this does happen, it also tends to be at the end of a run, where I'll be already in a trade and in profit anyhow.
Looking back to Jan 2006, there are many similarities in EU and then suddenly it found a direction early Feb.
You will notice that although I've had a string of losses, they have all been small losses - frustrating but not really having much effect long term. Those losses will soon be wiped out and some by a nice trending week which will happen
NFP days have been interesting so far. I've traded 3 since going live - the first one just brushed my stop losses for a small loss before going the way of my trades lol. Second one again I had fairly tight stop losses but NFP data was with me (see post #279 page 19) and I ended the day with over 160 pips locked in and over 500 pips in profit. Today, tight s/l & all but one stopped out.
I'm sure it'll even itself out over time and I just need to keep the discipline and wait for my trends. That's my payback time
Kind Regards
Steve