so i've lost half my capital

thats the spirit

Greedy -

I really cannot think of a better way of putting the paradox of trading than Mr. Green did in the above line. I know you are fairly new to trading, and I can feel your anguish. I have been there.

The truly surprising thing about trading that most people don't expect is simply this: It's not you against the market.....it's you against YOU. Any idiot can read a chart. Any idiot can figure out a way to get into profitable trades. After all, price can go in three directions.....up, down, and sideways - and sideways ain't gonna be for long. So essentially, you have a 50% chance of being "correct" on every trade.

Take one of the most ridiculous "systems" out there. (I mean this with great respect, as I really like this guy.) Jacko bought Euros for something like 3 years. Exciting? No. Profitable? Most of the time. That's the goal....be profitable more than losing. That's it.

I know this is blasphemy, but I will say it anyway:

Trading is one of the simplest things a person can do. I don't care how "manly" CNBC tries to make it sound with the music and quick motion graphics.....cult of personality (Wall Street) crap.....trading isn't hard. Anyone who hangs off a ladder all day for $8 an hour has more guts than some suburban dipshit pressing a few buttons. There's nothing manly or brave about trading.....but washing the windows of a skyscraper is some manly business.

Or maybe being a decent father?

The point is, don't get so hung up on emotion. It's what can get you whacked in this game.

It's the "inner demons" that is difficult. Truthfully, if you were hanging out at my place for a few hours, I could probably show you most of what you need to know about trading to at least have a decent shot at it. But the rest is up to you.

Your problem my friend.....is you. I am not knocking you, only pointing it out because I have been there. I can think of many things that I have gone through since trading that has helped in real life. In fact, I am always going to be a profitable trader, no matter what my account says. Why? Because I have learned so much about myself since starting, and there's no price you can place on that.

Cheers,
Chris

Nothing and everything...

You trade with a wrong focus. It's normal, but unprofitable.

Seems to me you cannot trade if you focus on the money. When you see your dollar grew or shrink, somehow it boggles and paralyzes your mind. Ever try to focus on the pip instead? See, losing 10 pips at $0.1/pip means only $1 loss. But when pip value rise to $10/pip, the same 10 pip loss now means $100 loss. Focusing on the pip keep you in 10 pip loss, but focusing on the money makes you think, "sh**, I loss $100."

On the other hand, so far you never mention about a game plan. What to do when something happens. Sorry, doesn't mean I want to know how you trade step by step. Keep this to yourself. It's just an example.

Say, when price reverse after it crosses 50% gain out of your intended take profit, what will you do? Will you let the price moves, see if it reach your stop loss or reverse again and hit your take profit? Or will you close your position right away?

What if price reverse right after you open a position?

When will you place a reverse order? After your first trade hit stop loss? Or when price reverse after crossing, say, 25% treshold of your profit target?

Things like that...

Still, another thing, maybe you're too smart for your own good. You do the thinking all the way through a trade. Try to do the thinking before and after the trade, and trade by the plan in the between.

Keep the faith Greedy PIPS. Like you I am also a 'newbee'. I have traded on a demo account for 10 months and only recently opened a live account. Fortunately I made 360 pips in my first week on this live account. I have read many articles and purchased many books on forex trading and they all allude to the same thing. Develop your trading plan and stick to it. Eat little and live long. Keep the discipline and ensure that your losses are a very small % of your account balance. Do not keep a trade going with the hope that it may turn around. Cheers.

Here this might help... its a risk calculator. Enter your values in the RED boxes and it will give you your total risk per trader, as well as your $ risk per pip based on a 25,50,75,or 100 pip stop loss.


Regards,

Will

This is my first post ever at Fx Factory forum.
Yes DO NOT let your yesterday bad day get to you.
Here is my encouragement for you. I may be relatively new trader (like you) but not so new to Forex in general and I know the pitfalls of trading well.
Yesterday has already name in my books - "the day of cutting throats" or how about this one - "the day I screwed up capitally"!!
Here it goes. Time I am writing in is EST (-5GMT). Size of trade 1full lot. Tuesday evening I entered WAY TOO EARLY a short on GBP/USD. This was based on 4H chart and my deduction market will go that direction. Later that evening I realized my mistake so I have cut my losses there and then. Moderate lose, no biggie. But expecting the bear to come out from his cave I did watch the market on and of. Sometime later that evening I entered Short again. And again too early but this time my greed kicked in and I've decided to hedge this. That is when my trouble started. Not the hedge... it was the price I have put my hedge order in. At approximately 1.6053 level I was about 20 pips minus. So put the Long at 1.6084. Well my greed decided that level. MAJOR mistake. Although it was well above previous S/R level it turned out to be not hi enough. So I did get entered in my hedge, which worked well for a bit. At one time I was about ONLY 10 pips in lose... should have cut it there and wait for new clear signal.
Now where did I screw up ... when price started coming down! I forgot what time was (time for report) and I looked at some other currency chart. Another mistake... stay with your trade. When I switched back to GBP I was in plus on my original 'short' order and a bit in minus on my 'long / hedge' order. Now THE BIGEST mistake, I for some reason got confused on which trade is which and I closed the SHORT order!! For a bit I did not realize what I did and went to see EUR chart if it is doing the same action. After few minutes it was too late. Did not double-check my actions and now I was 50pips in minus. To compile (my damned greed again) I did not cut the loses there. Did not close it until platform showed a message "close to margin call". Lose was USD 1600 + change. A few pips later there was a turn around and market went up.
Felt like a beat up dog for the rest of the day. Then my son called me and said... "Walk away, take a hot bath, get something to eat and go to bed early. Tomorrow is another day". And that is what I did. Slept 12 hours.
Today I analyzed what I (I the trader) did wrong. Did not jump back into trading.... do not want to trade with "angry determination" to get back what I lost. Besides now I have to trade mini lots only, not enough capital for anything beyond 5mini lots.
Back to studies of money management. In yester trade there was none!!
Not sure if this will help to anyone... but take my advice:
Stay concentrated never forget your money management, keep learning.
But never loose believe in your ability, I know I didn’t.
Have a successful trading everyone.

Every trader deals with this...the successful traders overcome it. Sorry to hear about the trading thus far. If you think it would help to bounce ideas off of our instructors as well, I can send over a free enrollment to the FX Powercourse.

I like walb99 and navin2007's advice, and it looks like you're doing a good job stepping back to identify what's going wrong.

Best,

Jason

Is solicitation allowed in this area of the forum?

Jason Rogers (I suspect) is part of the administration here or perhaps has a status here that allows him to do so. I got his post in my e-mail which is set to administrators only.

Sound advice for an FX newb with a retail account: Trade 1 micro-lot for every 1,000 dollars of equity in your account. It is not mandatory to trade with leverage. With no leverage the gains will be tiny, losses will be even smaller, and your trading will become boring. Trading should be nice and boring.

Some may think "I might as well be trading a demo". A demo is useless - beginners need simulation. I will compare learning to trade to learning to drive:
- Learning to drive playing a video game is a demo
- Learning to drive in a 150 hp used Honda Accord is sensible
- Learning to drive in a 500 hp Dodge Viper is fun
Beginners don't need demo or fun. Newb traders are better off with boring and sensible practice until they can afford the risk of a supercar.

Trading for such minuscule profits will divert attention away from dollar P/L. You wont feel like a hero when you win. You wont feel like a loser when you lose. Remain humble, realize your thousand dollar account wont grow into a monstrous 7+ figures any time soon.

Be greedy with your pips, but not with your equity

buddy i have faced 3 margin calls before and it is a bad feeling.. but hey !

most important is we learn our mistakes and move on.. for me, i feel in forex, the NO1 best tip is PROPER MONEY MANAGEMENT !!

serious!.. only so can you survive long enough to refine and learn the markets and styles..

you can read my article on proper money management over at my blog.. i hope you can gain something from it... feel free to post more qns..

http://www.thegeekknows.com/2009/07/...grail-for.html

Trading is not about working hard. Working smart is more important, use your head. It is the quality that counts. It is 1 of major difference between regular 9-5 job and day trading. 5min chart can give you stress, then you lose your discipline, then you confused, then you start to lose your trade, then snowball effect starts. You can try 1 trade per day for now then when you are ready, go for 2 trades per day. 1 open position at a time. Most important thing is to realize that some days there are no profitable opportunity so you should not trade at all. If you are already making money on another time frame then stick with that time frame. You should try other time frame on demo account first. Different time frame sometimes needs different trading planning.

Well, it has been quite a while since my "incident" which after putting alot of thought in it, I would attribute it to my mania of trying to break even every day, instead of taking a loss and calling it a day.

For some reason it is easier for me to be honest on this board about what i did or still am doing wrong...

So let me take things from the start.

I started with a $400 micro account. I used a 10 pip SL, gambling on swing moves, which proved bad for my account. 10 pip SL is too small, even for a 5 min TF, and since i usually try to swing trade, i should have allowed more room for the SL.
I had no exit strategy, and no target for a profit.
Since losing more than $350, I was left with around $100 in my account.

Out of egoism, or perhaps stubbornness, i decided not to blow the account, nor add more money in it, but rather gain some experience.

So i redefined my strategy.

I now trade only 1 micro lot, with a max SL of 20 pips, but judging from previous support zones, magnet zones, etc, it might be 15 pips, or even 10 pips. My target is usually 50-60 pips, moves i have found to be just enough for a session when trending, assuming I catch the trend from the begging.

So basically I am risking 1% - 1,5% , maximum %2 per trade, with a maximum of %6 of equity per day (that's when i call it a day).

I go ONLY with trend, and rarely with reversals when i see a clear double bottom or double top. I only trade EURUSD, AUDUSD and USDJPY. I am starting to learn the tendencies and moves of those pairs, so I am feeling more confident.

I always consider the daily TF, but trade the 5 min TF and try to catch the with trend swings that occur during London and US sessions. If i have to leave a position open during Asian session i trail profit it with 10 pips.

Lately I've refined my method even more, by placing orders only, standardized orders which i believe give me better odds against slippage, stop hunting, and most important give me some peace of mind. So basically i've learned to keep my self from jumping in a trade too soon.

I will take a profit regardless of my target when i see big breakout moves, because so far, i've seen prices reverse after such breakout moves, otherwise i will go for the 50-60 pip profit, move my SL to break even, and then secure a profit.

I will cut a loss short, if i see a familiar pattern which implies i will lose more money than i am currently losing.

So, i would like to believe that i am making progress. Money magamenet wise, strategy wise.

However numbers speak otherwise. Since i lost more than half my capital, i've been struggling around $100. It might go $110, $120, $130, but somehow i will end back to $100. Somedays i will go under $100, and yet manage to go back to $100. There is a psychological value to the $100 mark, which I cannot explain. Furthermore, i got my report from FXCM, plotted a chart using my Total Account $ on a time-frame, and basically got a chart of my performance. And my performance shows that the money i make, i lose it, and the money i lose, i make it back. Or, that i have a %50 chance to make money and a %50 chance to lose money. And i do not like those odds at all. i feel like struggling to make a profit...

Apparently I am making some progress, but not enough progress to make a small constant profit.

I do not gamble, I do not expect to get rich quick. In fact i am happy with 50 pips per day (which I believe is doable). All i want is a stable way to make small profits.

I have learned to stay out of the market when it moves sideways, never to take counter-trend trades. I do not use indicators, only an EMA, so I believe (according to the many books i read) that i am trading as simply and safely as possible.
I avoid news releases and stay out of wedges, and triangles.

Whoever said that the biggest problem in trading is one's self is absolutely right. I also agree that demo trading doesn't help newbies. I demo traded for months, and it did not help a bit as did trading with real money.

So at this point, I am assuming that my problem is my luck of experience on cherry picking the trades that have a high probability on being profitable, while entering alot of trades which turn unprofitable.

I realize that most traders have lost money when learning, and it makes sense that even good traders still lose money from time to time. I am not giving up, nor attributing this failure to anything else other than my self.

I just hope that some other new guy might learn a few things from what I had been told about, and read about, but sadly had to go through in order to learn.

Same story as 95% of people.

I hope the money you lost was not part of your current job income or money to pay your bills.

Everyone take care with Forex. And take care with guys that try to look like to do money.

95% of people who answered or that will answer to this THREAD, LOSE MONEY WITH FOREX...

Experience, Persistance, and Will. I made 17% return on my first month only to lose 8% or so the next month. Don't get discouraged, you get better and better day by day and you'll feel it too! I believe the key is not to wipe out your account or take such heavy losses early on as you'll get discouraged and give up, before you make money consistantly.

Is there any way to track how individual traders are doing statistically?

You say 95%, and I've seen some forex site that purports to give advice to n00bs throw a 70%/30% percentage, which seems suspiciously optimistic.

I understand the odds are stacked against individual traders by design in this wonderful negative-sum game, so I'm not questioning the validity of your numbers in itself. I would however much appreciate a fact-based justification for it.

i guess 95% is the de facto standard of loss .. i heard it as that too

I cannot believe that 95% lost their money and 5% made money on FX, nor can I believe that there is out there a 5% who never lost money on FX.

I am assuming that 95% is the portion of those who gave up, did not discipline themselves accordingly, etc... etc...

So a new week starts, lets see how this one goes...

At one point in time, the fivers were losers. Trust me on that. All you have to do is take the steps needed in order to understand YOUR skill set and YOUR weaknesses. Once you have, you act on those. BTW, your name says a lot. Maybe you should look into that aspect or look for another career because greedy people either change or wash out.

That is still 9% (17- 8 = 9 ) return over 2 months. Thats is not a bad result. And hopefully you have learned from your 8% loss so you don't repeat it again.