How much did you lose?
I am bored of small wins. Would it be dumb to risk more to make it rich?
- Thread starter Steven W
- Start date
How much did you lose?
if you have a consistency in your winning trades it's time to add up
Intraday, setup system to work for STRONG market, lose a little when wrong, make a lot when right, currently it's lose a little or make a lot, but not enough so over stay welcome and end up hitting SL.
Could of banked $250 area profit, but instead all 3 trades got left to SL and -260 sucky life!! Last Trade hit SL on the money and dropped 50pts
Your problem is focusing on one-two-three trades. It does not matter, this is a longer term game. I've had 20-30 losses straight although some concurrently, it's part of this profession.
Bigger risks? Does not compute. You need to focus on trading a percentage of your account, not upping trade size just for the sake of going after more money.
People get confused about this and ultimately this is a big part of money management. If you risk say 1% of your total account per trade (you can risk up to 2% possibly 2.5% (absolute top) (be sure to include commissions if applicable (I trade Forex so the spread is my cost) ) then you are compounding your money.
Too many people focus on a trade size (amount of lots, etc) instead of focusing on risking a percentage per trade, and this is how and why it gets boring if you are on a winning streak. If you risk a certain percentage, then your payoffs will increase with your account size, but yet you're still only risking a certain percentage.
If you focus on a particular lot size, then what happens is your wins will be less than they should when you make money consistently, but if you risk the same lot size on a string of losses, you are actually losing a larger percentage of your account, so you are essentially shooting yourself in the foot because your making less than you could and loosing more than you should.
Focus on risk percentage per trade NOT lot size and you will see a major improvement. You can find plenty of calculators online to figure out how many lots to trade (you enter your stop loss, commissions and fees if applicable, and then the percentage of risk for that trade (say 1.5%) and the calculator will give you the number of lots you can trade for that trade.
Hope that helps.
Ever thought of moving the stops up? Trailing stops also work wonders... remove the t/p and let it ride till it reverses.
My sympathies that you're only grinding out 1k a day.
Me and about a million other people would love to know what strategy you're using to consistently do that. You only mentioned that you're shorting and longing stocks with the most volatility. Can you go into a little more depth?
Trend trading when the market is at highs has limited upside (as you mentioned), picking former losers that had a reversible reason to become losers is the only chance to see appreciation sufficient to warrant the trade. Entering a trade into the names following the trend usually results in dead money or losses (although might be a good strategy for long term investing). When a market is at a high, I will place limit orders to catch a dip then stop watching that market and move to one that isn't at a high yet. Diversification allows you not to force trades that have limited upside potential. Trading a market that is at a high is usally the most difficult environment to master.... buying high to sell higher requires specialization.
Last edited:
Thankfully I don't do stocks any more, when I did I used to look for a stock down 50% on SEC news for instance, follow it, pick a bottom and average in, eventually shorts take profit and up she pops.
Got used to 100pt runs, made it hard to take 8pts, if you hold too long the market will always find your SL, why a run of losers.
US30 defo near highs which is what I was trading, good job switched back to dax