What the ^&*%% just happened?

SL or no SL, there was insane slippage.

Again I see a lot of different opinions on putting up hard stop losses and not. If playing long term then I can see why you don't need one though I suspect a lot here like myself have strategies with the smallest stop possible.

With the events that happened to OP, not much you can do, I can surely emphasize because it happened to me once --- I lost 20% of my account when my 13 pip stop loss didn't get triggered until 100 pips away. What did I do? What can you do ... bounced back and accepted this is part of the game.

In my mind and I'm sorry to be like this but can I say many of pro stop loss posters are brokers mind melding you guys in believing to put in hard stops for devious purposes!?

Well, yeah, pretty much....

1) One hundred consecutive losses at max stops and max slippage....
2) Five years of practice before going live....
3) Never risk more than 1%....

My questions were simplistic: why would you even trade if you thought 100 consecutive losses were possible? Why would you spend at least 5 years of your life practicing and learning this only to make pennies or dollars per day (because realistically most people will not start out with a $100K account...a $10K account is probably on the high side, even)?

My opinion, for what it is worth, is that this type rhetoric give people the impression that it is "normal" to be 6 years into your trading career without being profitable month after month. That 5 years of 8-hours/day learning is needed before you can become a good trader. That there are "dues" that must be paid...a "right of passage" to go through in order to become successful. That a successful trader is measured not by the money he/she makes, but just by being "consistantly profitable".

I started trading years ago with the idea to make money...lots of money. Why would I put in so much time to make less money than I can make doing something that takes less time to do? Is money management important? Absolutely!! But it seems to me that if people spent more time developing a method that works for them...that they have confidence in, then maybe they would feel better about buying a full lot with a $10K account balance than just risking $100 to make a few dollars each week.

I just look at the amount of time I am spending on something....if I can't make enough money to make it worth my while, then why do it? Why not spend my time doing something else to make money? Why would I buy a house, take 3 months to renovate, and resale it for $2500 profit? Not worth the effort unless I did it as just a hobby rather than a business. Perhaps some people are not looking for the type returns I am, but for me, trading is all about the money!!

I certainly meant no disrespect to cloggie, I just assumed everyone was in this to make as much money as they could, and just wondered why he set such stringent criteria for himself and recommended the same to others, that's all. And I was being totally serious about the cans and ebay.....I have done both over the last 40+ years....for a return higher than some of the traders here.

Yeah! 10 points for entertainment value!

morning all from uk. i dont think a person needs to study forex for 5 years its experiance they need plus remember a lot of trading ways contradict them selves ie they dont always do what the majority say lol. As for needing a big bank roll, the more you have the more you lose if you dont keep your head infocus, i use small bankroll and trade for a living. yesterday was a mega good day i caught the pips going up then got a lot coming down, happy trading happy days

Everyone reckons they're a better driver than average, but by the law of averages, most people are simply average.
So they reckon it might take the average Joe a thousands of hours to get anywhere but they're an outlier because they're smarter.

on the plus side though, that delusion keeps you in the game - possibly long enough to get profitable.

Its impossible to remove 100% the risk in trading, all you can do is minimize it.

There comes a point where it just boils down to being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

For example, you could be the best driver in the world, but this does not mean you wont meet some lunatic on the wrong side of the road on a blind corner.

This risk exists for everyone who drives a car, yet how many people dont drive because of this risk?

Its immpossible to be 100% safe in any aspect of life. There is always the unexpected.

You may never be slipped by 100 pips on a trade again, all you can do is reduce your lot size so that if you are you wont be wiped out the next time.

Thanks to all that replied to my tread, Lessons have been learnt, suggestions have been taken on board. I could be wrong but reading some comments one could get the wrong impression that some people forgot that they did crawl at one point in their lives before they leant how to walk. I'm refering to account size, I appreciate that there are a lot of traders here with accounts of >20k but surely there cant be anything wrong with having a micro or even a nano account to trade with before the farm get sold. Afterall by trading a micro/nano account since its real money a person would be alot more careful than using a demo account

There's nothing wrong with having a small account, its better to lose on a small on than a big one. Problems come when people screw hell out of a small account to try and make a lot out of a little, Im sure some claim they can do this but for most its a disaster.

I would not be happy either if I lost my account, especially this way. You may want to change brokers.

Another thing you can do is not place all your trading funds in your trading account.

Say you allocate $500 for trading next time, only pay in $100-150. It will depend on how much leverage you have available. lets say you risk 1% per trade on $500 this is $5.

Im not sure if brokers can just "take money" from your bank account if you get in trouble (maybe someone else knows) but as far as I would be concerned if you get 100 pip slippage on a stoploss and it puts your account in negative territory i would tell the broker to p%^s off.

Interesting, does anybody know how this works. They would obviously empty your account, but if for example the quoted price after slippage took you well beyond what you had funds for what would they do?

I just glanced through one of my br0kers customer agreements, I cant see any clause which says that they will take funds from your bank account should your account end up in the negative.

But they have all my bank details so I guess they could in theory.

I assume if they empty your account then they'd be pretty happy lol

that was my first day in real account trading and had already put sell and s/l.lot size .5.next day morning my account balance 1350+..guess what in next couple of days i lost same amount on same pair.what a shame...

I'm just playing with charts a bit and found that, USDCHF had massive drops at around every 40 months. Coincidence?


https://charts.mql5.com/14/872/usdchf-mn1-admiral-markets-3.png