Pips or Profit?

The numbers in the red rectangle, those are pips aren't they? I changed it because I was only staring at the $$ at times (which can frustrating).

How does changing to term deposit help me, or should I not bother?

yeah they are most likely pips. Some people prefer to know how many pips they are up because a dollar amount is psychological. There are probably other reasons as well. (such as hiding the true value of the position)

It doesn't matter much... only to you and what you can live with.

How'd you get the profit to read in pips instead of dollars? I'd like to switch my own setup to be that way.

If you're using MT4, go right click on any of your running or pending trade. Select profit, and you have 3 options you can choose as you like.

Yes, they look like pips and you can also change it back to $, your call.

I'm one of those people, for me its purely psychological, if I see the P/L in ££££ then my mindset changes and I'm more inclined to close winners instead of leaving it on to hit its profit level. I do sometimes just change off from the Terminal tab and click on the News or Alerts tab so I can't see it.

Its rather weird but it works.

to get a different display of profit:

1. put cursor on the words profit
2. right click
3. display profit as: term currency, deposit currency, points

choose your favorite view.

Just for clarity, MT4 doesn't show "pips" in that column, but 'points'.

There's 10 points to a pip.

1 point could also be called a "pipette".

So if you select 'points' to be displayed, and you see "22" it means 2.2 pips in profit.

I always keep my terminal showing points instead of a dollar amount. Helps keep the trade in prospective.

A traders best friend is a TIMER, believe it or not, this will be the best thing to help improve your trading, let me elaborate, this is how i trade, lets assume i have a nice setup, everything looks good according to my rules etc...i calculate my risk which for the most part is 1% per trade, then i pull the trigger and enter the trade! At this point i have made my decision i am in, i CLOSE THE BALANCE BOX COMPLETELY and then i minimize mt4 and i wait for the next candle to open, two minutes before every candle close/open i have a timer set to ding, so at this time, i ask myself "stay in/get out" i answer one of them, then i close the mt4 for another WHOLE candle, and i do this until i pull out early ahead of target (with reasons of course, early reversal signals etc...) or my take profit is hit. I cannot stress this enough, FOCUS ON THE CHARTS AND THE BALANCE WILL TAKE CARE OF ITSELF, IT IS A SELF FULFILLING PROPHECY. I have found that the more people look at their balance, the more they tend to see it shrink i hope this helps, take care everyone!

It's really important for a trader to come up with their own way. Once you're successful at what you do then just keep doing what you're doing.

Realize most of what we traders deal with is fear.

I often recite (in my head) that famous american President FDR on the fear thing... "All we have to fear is fear itself."

It more often comes down to finding / figuring out what you can deal with. Find your own comfort zone. This is important because you can't be someone else and they can't be you.

I can't tell you how many supposed successful traders I've come across over the years trying to duplicate what they were doing. I could never do it. I had to find my own way.

For me I feel better knowing what my equity / profit levels are. I check them often. In the end it's just a number to show me the overall picture and in time you build confidence in knowing that "your way" works.

Obviously if what you do doesn't work, then maybe you should try to be someone else... lol. But it never ended up working for me.

Yes, its definitely healthy when trading to focus on when your method/system tells you your trade is successful or stopped out.

Looking at that number (however its displayed) i found takes you away from the price action itself.. which is what you should be using to make your entry and exit decisions!

(Trust me, i did that for a while, worked out i wasn't actually trading when looking at that, then stopped. Never looked back since )

Edit, what i do these days is have the terminal panel closed, then jab ctrl+t to see what the score is if i'm curious, then immediately turn it off again.

I also like the calculation of pips instead of dollar. It can help traders psychologically if they see that they profit more pips than loss in a particular day whatever the profit in dollar. It can help the trader to have confidence.

You have to make a good trading plan to make profit consistently from this market.

Yes I also think so. Calculation in terms of pips is good. By this we can know our capabilities of making pips. With big lot sometimes one can get a good amount but that doesn't say he has increased his earning capabilities.