When you have so much of your monies committed to trades, if they all turn against you, you will be broke in short order. Risk management should be your top priority and why trade the forex markets when you have such a small capital? My guess is you are trying to take advantage of the leverage, which could be as high as 100:1? For new traders, they suggest not risking more than 1% per trade. Also, for my rules, I do not commit to more than 5 trades or 10% maximum risk at any one time. That protects your capital if you lose all 5 trades. On a worst case scenario, you limit your exposure and risk to 10%. With stop losses, you will lose less than that 2%
Is this what trading is like?
- Thread starter farmerjohn1324
- Start date
When you have so much of your monies committed to trades, if they all turn against you, you will be broke in short order. Risk management should be your top priority and why trade the forex markets when you have such a small capital? My guess is you are trying to take advantage of the leverage, which could be as high as 100:1? For new traders, they suggest not risking more than 1% per trade. Also, for my rules, I do not commit to more than 5 trades or 10% maximum risk at any one time. That protects your capital if you lose all 5 trades. On a worst case scenario, you limit your exposure and risk to 10%. With stop losses, you will lose less than that 2%
I don't think 1% SL's can work for swing trades.
And I sized my account based on an amount that I could "afford to lose." It's not like my Fx account is 100% of my net worth. And it's 50:1.
Forex because I find them most interesting as opposed to indices or commodities.
Isn't it obvious? You had a 20 % drawdown on one single trade.
Is that your idea of successful trading? Is so - press on.
It was 2 trades that I could sell parts of without selling the whole trade. And it's currently up over 9% now.
The more I limit the drawdown... The more I also limit the upside.
If I'm making an educated guess of 1.16 by October... It's not going to go down in a straight line. There will be bad days. Putting SL's at 1% won't help me here.
Unless there's something that I'm missing? Cause I think "position trading" like this you just have to watch closely. I'll listen to any input you or anyone else has.
Attachments
If you're total account balance is swinging from up 10% to down 20%, then you're doing it wrong and will be knocked out of this game soon
Learn how to manage risk!
Try this series of blogposts:
https://qoppac.blogspot.com/2020/02/what-is-right-way-to-set-stop-losses.html
https://qoppac.blogspot.com/2020/03/how-much-risk-should-we-take.html
https://qoppac.blogspot.com/2020/04/how-fast-should-we-trade.html
GAT
Last edited:
Just to be clear, not referring to the stop loss when I say risk no more than 2% or 1%. I am referring to the position size. That is the only way you cap your losses is by limiting the amount at risk per trade. Your stop loss could be further out since, you are trading a small amount relative to your capital. So, you are never going to lose more than the 2% or 1% you risk per trade. With stop losses in place, your losses probably, will be much, much less.