Do you know a system to stop over losing in the same day?

Hi traders, I need your help to find a system which will help me to avoid to loose everything in one single day.

I explain my problem (which is quite common from my readings....): I manage to day-trade and gain and loose small amounts everyday, and normally I am quite successful. Then, once I have grown my account, I start feelling more confortable and start trading without stoploss or anyway with a large stop loss, and, as it goes further against me, I continue to increase my size and hence my losses, until it's too large to cut it and I let it go until it blows the account.

Now, ideally, I would like to have a hard system which allows me to loose up to a certain percentage of the starting balance of the day and, after reaching the limit, it would block any trade, or freeze the platform, until the following day. I could code an EA for that, but I could easly remove it, so it won't work...

I don't want to withdraw money from the account because I want to compound it and reach a certain growth, then I will change my MM and withdraw the extra money regularly (hopefully)

Do you know any system that I could set up to stop overtrading, or better, to stop overloosing?

Maybe a broker who offer that functionality (which would be against his interest!)? or to set up an EA which cannot be removed? or an EA that can be removed with effect only on the following day?

PLEASE HELP ME!!!!

Thanks, Paolo

Very common indeed. Change the leverage to 1:10, usually you have to ask the broker to do that

Hi puma, what you need is discipline and not a hard system or EA to block trades or to freeze the platform.

I wish you good luck.

Lose lose lose lose. Not loose loose loose loose. Ok, now that that is out of my system... You should reduce your trade your trade size by factor of ten. I've been in your shoes a million times. I lacked discipline and traded too large. When the trades moved against me, I piled on the position waiting for the market to "do what I know is going to happen". But you will never know where price is going to go, so you'd better trade really small.

Hello Puma. Firstly I do not claim to be an expert - I am very much still on the road to finding my own way of consistently profiting from trading and I can relate to what you are saying.

From what I understand it sounds like you are cutting your winners short and letting your losses run. This is something that I have also done - closed my winners early in case they turn against me and end up as a loss....but many times if I had just let them run they would have made many more pips.

And also when trades have gone against me I have struggled to close them because I did not want to take a loss and in the end you lose your whole account by doing this. Whenever that happened I simply could not believe how stupid I had been.

I think you do need to find a good simple system (if you have not already) and stick to it. But I don't think anyone will give you a system to follow here - as you know though there are lots of free systems and advice that you can find here if you look for it and try to take what works for you.

The best trade management technique that I learned, which helps me to let my profits run, is to scale out. Maybe at the point where I used to close my winning trade in fear that it would turn against me I now close for example half the lots, move my SL to BE and then let the rest play out. Sometimes my SL is hit but so what, I still took some profit. And sometimes my profits run and get bigger.

Oh and always use a SL (or hedge order if you are that way inclined).

Good luck.

Hi,

thanks for your replies and suggestions.
I am not talking about trading systems, nor about money management. I know what I should do in that respect. in terms of leverage, I want to use high leverage and it's fine wit my MM. But even if I go with a 1:10 leverage, I will do the same mistake sooner o later.

The point is that after i.e. 30 days of discipline I get into a trade without clear ideas or with over-confidence. I am so sure that I am right, that I start adding up on loosing positions and I blow up the account. Or after taking a loss I re-enter again and again.

Just one day that I don't follow the rules and I am out. And the rule is not to lose more than x % of the balance.

How can it be enforced???

If you cannot be disciplined by yourself and want to be forced into discipline by some system or program then you are not going to go far in being a profitable trader.
Give it thought.

Puma, there are some options that will help train the mind to be more disciplined. But as others have said, no one will "force" it on you.

Regarding the options that will help, I sent you a PM...

Puma, I will share one thing here that I have learned from my "training".

The view of losing days.

Many traders view losing days as a "negative", and along with a negative mindset, comes negative thinking, and negative trading decisions, which compounds the losing, to where you have huge losing days, and maybe even many successive losing days.

It can become a vicious cycle.

But if you focus on what you NEED to accomplish on a day that is not going well, you can change your mind to view losing days as part of the process and not such negative thing.

You need to determine your maximum amount allowable to lose on any given trading day. If things don't go well on any given day, and you hit that amount, then STOP trading. TURN OFF your computer, or whatever you need to do to stop the bleeding.

If you can learn to do this, then on any given "losing day", if you follow the max-loss rule and stop trading, then you have accomplished a GREAT thing, and should be very happy about this. The goal is to build the mindset to the point where you end the trading day with the same mental/emotional state/outlook on a losing day as you do on a winning day.

Plus you need to determine what your "max-profit" will be on your winning days. Once you hit the TP target for the day, then STOP trading.

You'll need to decide what your max loss is and your max profit is according to how well you can do, for example will you win most days? Will you lose most days? You'll need to determine the values according to your trading approach and your capital.

For example, if you lose 4 days -300 each day, but one winning day is 2000, then you're still ahead. Or if you know you can win 50% of your trading days, then you'll be okay if your winning days are 600 and losing days are 300. It really depends on your skill set and you need to know what kind of success you are capable of. This takes time. For me several years to begin to figure it out...

This is not an exact science, but if you have the skills to trade, and you can apply the above general principles, you should be able to achieve success in trading. Hope this helps...

Firstly you need to ascertain why you are losing on particular days. It's not just a fluke. Is it news? Could you apply another filter? Then it's only a simple matter of avoiding those days or times. To say that you will stop after x consecutive losses is illogical. You are not increasing your expectancy; it's an emotional decision.

Don't trade until you can identify and find out for yourself why you are losing. Clue: psychology

Lol, then you may create a virus that freezes your MT4 idk...

That's exactly where I find myself in this period... I have defined what is the max loss for a day and, as long as I manage to shut down the pc and walk away for that day, everything is fine and the account grows constantly.... but after a while there it come a day when I don't stop or I come back later to the pc and blow up the account in one single day!

I am wondering if there is a way to enforce an EA that will not allow me to trade anymore for that day. Or if there is any broker which would allow to set (and enforce) rules like this one. But apparently no one knows about it?

Although the answer to your question is easy, but 'easy' rarely leads to success or the truth. The short easy answer is you can arrange something with your wife/partner/kids/office co-workers or whoever is available nearby to monitor you on a daily basis thru regular checks ( how much did you earn/lose/risk..etc?) and if this person finds that you've lost more than you you can afford for one day, he can either shut your computer down or even yell at you if necessary. As easy as it sounds, but this would defeat the purpose of successful trading...Have you ever heard that Warren Buffet for example waits till one of his investments/positions loses so much until he decides to pull the plug? He never did and never will. Trading is a business and it needs extreme mental discipline...It has to come deep from within you, no one can help you with this but YOU...In my opinion, you should focus on 2 things to be successful in this business. First, take all the time you need to find your edge (even if takes you years). Second, make sure that while you were searching for your edge you were practicing mental/emotional discipline so well that when the time finally comes and you've found your edge, you'll be ready to use it to achieve your financial freedom...I've learned these lessons the hard way thru years of trial and error...That's just my 2 cents...Best of luck to you