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Risk Management

Candlestick Patterns (Engulfing) Part 1Engulfing (Bullish or Bearish)- on any time frame, but like most things in Forex higher time frames works better and are more profitable too. Example chart is hourly of ChfCad, which moved great on Friday. Rules: Chart bullish engulfing ( can be used for bearish engulfing too) 1) Look for small bearish candlestick 2) Look for body of next bullish candlestick to engulf (yes, bottom of this candlestick can be same as close of 1st candle)- top closes above 1st candle. 3) Confirm time, which is New York session open (great) 4) Place buy market order on 3rd candle, after bullish engulfing 5) Place stop loss 20 to 25 pips away from entry related to using hourly time frame to do trade from 6) New 4 hour candle starts at 6 am to 10 am, PST/CA time- so I would let this trade run to at least 1:1.5 to 1:2.0 Risk Reward set up. seen on chart. 7) Always, risk management, remember: Pair, Price, Session and Time. I used only hourly, 4 hour and daily to trade from. Less noise & High profits.
Education
by Anbat
So You Wanna Trade Full Time... Is it Possible? A Good Idea?I walk you through my thoughts on the dream that most traders have: doing it full-time! I give you my personal experience and how I've tried things in the past. What I'm doing now and what works for me. Key takeaways: - The trifecta: access to capital, good strategy, cost-of-living. You have to solve for 2 / 3 of these! - You can't buy peace of mind. Have other income streams to mitigate the risk from your trading not going well for periods of time.
BITFINEX:XRPUSDEducation
by ImreSG
3
Time & Price Strategy (Box Breakouts)Time & Price Strategy (Box Breakouts) rules: 1) If scalping and/or day trading 2) Use Forex pairs with high ATRs or over 90, now GBP and EUR pairs 3) Use hourly charts 4) Use Naked charts (only price action on them) 5) Add vertical lines every 4 hours from session open . Chart is 2pm, 6pm, 10pm, 2am, 6am & 10am. (Every 4 hours- from beginning of new session) Chart look at smiley faces as times you should and should not trade r/t liquidity and volatility- red not trade, yellow maybe and green trade. 6) Add horizontal lines every 12.5 pips or as follows: 000, 125, 250, 375, 500, 625, 750, 875, so EIGHT lines. Example: 1.58125 as on chart. The above will give you boxes of both 4 hour times (vertically) and 12.5 pips (horizontal). Example hourly chart of EURAUD, on Friday gave you four possible trades to enter, place stops and exit with a profit. Three bullish and one bearish trade. 1) Trade with trend, momentum, support and resistance or breakout 2) Once price action hits or breakouts a box, then enter with stop at other end of box, three bullish trades use lower end of box for stop losses. 3) one bearish trade use upper end of box for stop loss. KEEP TRADING SIMPLE- you do not need to complicate Forex trading. Focus on price action, trends, momentum, support and resistance & risk management. Best times to trade everyday is in-between Tokyo end to London end related to high liquidity and high volatility.
Education
by Anbat
TRADING HIERARCHY | KNOW WHAT MATTERS THE MOST ⚠️❗ Hey traders, I vividly remember how I started to trade 8 years ago, how I was learning, and the things that I was doing. Contemplating my old self, I notice a dramatic shift in my mindset in regards to trading. Staring at the charts and desiring to make money on price action, I wanted to become a consistently profitable trader. Making the priorities, I decided to sacrifice my time on studying technical analysis totally neglecting trading psychology and risk management. Learning different trading strategies I always came to the same result: the account went blown and nothing seemed to work. Strategies of fancy traders on YouTube, strategies from best-selling books on Amazon, nothing could produce any penny. Not giving up and pursuing my ultimate goal I came to the conclusion that I set my priorities absolutely incorrectly. To be honest, I always thought that trading psychology (like psychology in general) is s*cks. Moreover, I considered risk management to be kind of obvious, banal topic not deserving much attention. Learning risk management techniques, applying them in day trading I finally saw a glimmer of hope. Reading dozen of books on trading psychology, contemplating my mistakes, and observing my behavior I noticed so many wrong, incorrect things that I did on a daily basis. With time and practice, my mindset shifted. I realized that most of the strategies that I applied and that seemed losing to me, in fact, were decent. It turned out that mastery of technical analysis is not enough for profitable trading. Instead, that is just a tiny part of what must be learned. Now, when my students ask me about the most important things to learn & study in trading, I always say: trading psychology and risk management go first, technical analysis is the secondary. ❗ Do not neglect these topics and give them due attention. They are an essential part of your success in trading. 🤔 Do you agree with the pyramid that I drew? ❤️Please, support this idea with like and comment!❤️
COINBASE:BTCUSDEducation
by VasilyTrader
44
Performance distribution of retail investors and hedge fundsMy thoughts about performance. This kind of info is not very available so I have to do some guesswork. We that spend all day in front of the computer expect to get better returns than 10% a year. But we have no idea what is possible and where we "rank" compared to others. All academics look at ever is day traders, yes 99% of day traders lose money and 1% earn peanuts while taking huge risk, we get it. And sometimes they look at passive investors. Cool. But no one ever says anything about active investors or Forex speculators, just that "on average active retail investors outperform", how wonderful, the average, yes I'd call myself the average normie definitely LOL! And regulators are even worse, all they care about is protecting dumb money and scaring people away from day trading. The french "market authority" on television was literally screaming "flee Forex it is dangerous, you should fleeeeeee!", I kid you not. First we look at retail investors. So the french "market authority" (AMF) looked at FX & CFD brokers representing about half of the individual FX & CFD investor population. 14799 persons in the 2009-2013 period. They found that over 4 years close to 90% of traders lost money. This is another of their deceptive tricks. It's just as with science these days, the data says something, the abstract says the opposite. So according to the extremely biased french AMF OWN DATA: - 30% of traders are in the "0" column, and according to their own data there aren't that many traders with tiny accounts, so ~30% breakeven. - They refuse to give any % result, some may be recalculated by overall we do not know, therefore I will assume it does not look as bad (or they'd show) - 5% of all investors make 2/3 of the losses, or at least half - 1% of all investors only are actually making significant returns (and 2/3 of the total) - As always day traders that destroy the stats are mixed with the rest - Most "winning" traders are barely above 0, making just a few hundreds to thousands a year www.amf-france.org From other sources and the AMF sort of confirms this, we know that: - Losers (especially big losers) that stick to investing, the ones that never give up never surrender in the face of adversity, the courageous ones with "heart", ye these guys, their losses get bigger and bigger actually. - Most winners continue to win and their profits get bigger. Here page 19, this is for stocks, we can see the net monthly market-adjusted returns of 62,439 households a large discount brokerage firm from January 1991 to December 1996: - On average, as they keep hammering us with, they underperform the market by 0.14% (each month!) - The average individual investor gross returns are slightly above the S&P 500 index returns (page 3) - The average individual investor net returns are slightly below the S&P index returns (about 91% of the S&P) - The S&P returns a bit less than 1.5% monthly - The worst of the worst managed to return -20.85% below index monthly, probably a permabear day trader or something - The 1st percentile is at -4.86% below market, 5th at -2.45%, and 25th -0.73% - The 99th percentile is at +4.44%, 95th +2.15%, 75th +0.50% - The best individual investor got 48.35% above market MONTHLY - The best individual investor difference between net and gross is minuscule, obviously it is not a day trader, probably some lucky investments - The gross median return is at -0.01%! faculty.haas.berkeley.edu So it seems this is how it goes, a normal distribution: We do not have that much info, and what little there is is rather hard to find, and hidden behind mountains of trashy scams "how much money can I make day trading join my course". I really only care about my own performance but it's always interesting to see how it's all distributed, what is possible, etc. For some reason I am interested in patterns and statistics. Funny. The info does not get shared a lot. Based on research and what gets exchange it seems most "traders" are VERY interested in money and "lambos" and very few are interested in stats, patterns, numbers. Ye I mean what do stats and figures have to do with investing right? It's not about some numbers it's about how much money you can make trading on a phone and what you will do with all of that money right? Honestly if we eliminate day traders that already make up at least 2/3 of FX investors, and all the lambo trolls that hate numbers but "it's ok I manage my emotions", it's not 10% making money but 30% at least I am sure, and 10% making decent money (enough to start a real career). Would be nice if they could just once separate day traders and look at FX investors with a time horizon greater than 1 day. All we can do is guess more or less, obviously more than 10% of these make money, but has to be less than 50% very probably. 10 to 50%, that's pretty wide. Probably in the 20-40 range, that's all I can say with high certainty. Hedge funds next. Hedge funds were doing great in the 90s and Morgan Stanley has a doc about them here: www.morganstanley.com Page 6 we can see discretionary funds making 18% a year with a max drawdown of only 5%. For all strategies except perma-bear the max drawdown is smaller than the annual returns. With all the regulations and harder market (and little fixed income) the results today are probably not as good but I do not think they are extremely different either. My guess on how hedge funds fulfill their max drawdown obligations is they place most the money somewhere safe (92% of the whole in case of an 8% drawdown) and then they risk the entire 8%, they might give a bit of it to each of their traders that go aggressive, and if they return 100% on the 8% that's an 8% return overall. I'm pretty sure that's the idea. But they might not freeze the entire capital and go 10X leverage, maybe they do something more complicated, with 50% in cash/bonds, 30% in "safe enough" investments, and 20% in high risk active trading with a max drawdown of 25% on these 20% (so 5% overall). The definitely do something like this, have to. The serious ones at least. The S&P returned 17.2% with a max drawdown of 15.4%, and page 4 we can see again a normal distribution: - The median directional return yearly was 16.3% (0.9% below market!) and median max drawdown 28.5% - The 75% percentile made 20.5% (3.3% above market), remember retail 75ers were 0.50% above mkt monthly - The 25% bottom only make 11.1% which is 6.1% below market for the year - Stock selection has similar drawdown and the returns of the 25, 50, 75 are 12, 17.2, 20.9 - There are no giant losers or giant winners but there aren't 66000 funds, and they have restrictions - In particular So actually pretty similar thing. The major difference is around 15% of the retail stock investors lost money in a raging bull market and no hedge funds did (except the few bears I guess). Otherwise, same normal distribution but with less extremes for hedge funds, they're more compact around the center (market).
Education
by MrRenev
1
[Advanced] How to aggressively grow a small (10k) account?Most of the time growing an account is a very slow grind. Make some, lose some, hope to make a little bit more than you lose. For example, with an average risk to reward of 1 to 5, and a win ratio of 21% (not counting once a year outliers), which is pretty good, breakeven being at 16.67%, after 100 trades the result will be - with a risk of 1% (flat) each time: - Profits = 21*5 = 105% - Loses = 78*1 = - 79% Net result = 26% Finding 100 good trades might take more than 1 year. With a theoritical compounding of 1% each trade the max profit would be: - Net = (1.05)^21 * (0.99)^79 = 25.94% Compounding is not always the magic trick. You might be looking at something like 20% a year. But once in a while, often in September-October, and sometimes at specific times such as March-April 2020, we get these monsters that go way further than usual. Often from a boring tight period, an explosion that grows exponentially, this pushes the reward dramatically. So we can end with a few winners at 10, 15R, rather than the usual ~5. So you can "easily" get the regular barely above breakeven 20% (for the example) with on top of that an occasional 10, 20, or even more, percent. On our small accounts these extras feel good, and they give a nice boost, but nothing dramatic. Growing a 10k account into 100k even with 50% a year will take 6 years. With 30% a year that would take 9 years. With 20% a year, 13 years. An experienced but poor investor, that spent years working on entries, exits, and so on, will need do something rather "dramatic" to grow his account. Doesn't have to be a complete gamble. An idea is after one of these "boost" periods, the investor could put all of that profit at risk. Say he made 32%, losing it all would be a major drawdown of 25%, but if the investor sees it as extra it is not the same as a crippling drawdown. Having a great period is nice (within years of moderate consistency), but it is not life changing. It might be a good idea to use that as some sort of springboard (or launchpad): - Losing that profit is a return to last step it is disapointing and the grind continues but even with an extra 30% the grind would still continue it wasn't going to be life changing. Maybe 6 months - 1 year worth of profit lost (but it was "extra" anyway). - Not losing it all (winning or even a period of breakeven) is great because it will allow the account to leap up suddenly, you quickly end up years ahead. So how does this work? Going to use an example. The investor gets 100 trades a year because why not (that's 2 a week or a little over 8 a month), has a reward 5 times the risk and a winrate of 21% (PF = 1.33). Account size = $10,000. Risk per trade = $100. The investor was able to grow 4000 into 10,000 over 4 years "slowly" (not that slow) but surely. The biggest drawdown ever was 20%. The yearly return is 26%. Over September to November he made $4000. He would "normally" make $1000 over 3 active months like this, but as is often the case, that period was violent with fear moves, winners just kept going and our investor that was able to add early ended up with 2 winners at 9+7 R each. So 32R. It can go very fast. 32%, on top of 8% on other grindy trades (over 3 months). Trying to catch whole trends and hold forever in my opinion is not realistic, but adding once or twice to winners is (talking about FX here), and winners (especially in March 2020 or September-October) going vertical does happen. So now how does the 10K investor scale up? Well $100 was 1%. 1% of 14,000 would be $140. but how about he more than doubles the risk?! So investor's profit in Sept-Nov was $4000 ("regular" $800 + "extra" $3200) and he/she decides to put it all at risk. He pushes the risk up to $280 which is now 2% of the new account size. After 12 loss in a row (down 3360) all the "extra" will be gone with only $640 profit left, the risk will then be reduced progressively, first down to 200 and if losses continue, 150 and finally back to 100. To attempt this our investor must have several years of results. From these years, taking out the handful of outliers, we know average RR & WR. The important question is what are the odds of 12 losses in a row? (With 21% WR) ==> First the probability of 12 losses in a row (if it was a random coinflip) are 6%. The odds are rather low. ==> Second the odds of exactly 11 losses out of 12 are 19%. In that case investor lost 1680/3360 -> Half. Still 6 lives left. ==> Once investor has 6 lives left the odds of losing all 6 times are 24%. Risking 280 rather than 140 means in 1 year rather than grow by 3640 (26%) the account will grow by 7280 (52%). Basically fast forward 1 year. In a way this is risking 1 year of profits to make 2. With something like 80% odds of making it. Aiming for much less than 12 lives is really gambling. An investor could also go for 20 or more lives but the higher the number the slower the grind. With 6 lives there is 1 chance in 4 to lose it all. But it would be a $560 risk, a huge increase from $100. Is there really a need to increase size by that much at once? It would not even accelerate growth that much. Our little investor can always make another jump after that first one. Because yes, that snowball can keep getting bigger. It is a terrible idea to keep going double or nothing, eventually it will be nothing, but we could find a compromise between being very careful and careless. We might not accept a 30% drawdown, or losing 3 years of very difficult very slow profit but if we can separate that say slow grindy 15% a year and go "I won't risk this" but the once a year or two monsters that provide 20%-40% at once (arbitrary numbers) we can see it as "extra", we got our account with 10k in in and the 4000 we just made well losing the 4000 technically would be a 30% drawdown on 14k but we can perhaps separate this, it was unexpected, and we put all of this capital at risk, without hurting our "main" capital. Might be a great way to boost growth without risking to blow up or being set back years. And if it works out. As I said the example investor (which is already at least in the top 5% by the way) made 7280 rather than 3640. An extra $3640. Actually since his account was $10,000 and he was supposed to make about 3600 in 1.25 year, but instead made 7280 + 4000 = 11,280, well that's an extra of about $7500. Last time investor risked 3400/4000 in 12 trades (6% odds of losing all 12 and perhaps ~15% odds of losing all that money over a longer time), maybe this time investor wants to risk 6000/7500 in 12 trades ($500 each!). 26R = $13,000. If it works out in 2 years investor's account went from $10,000 to $34,000 rather than $16,000. $24,000 profit rather than $6000 (or $10000 with the big winners). With what? 1 in 4 odds of only making 6000? It is still going to take years anyway, but it is possible to take ponctual big risks to try and jump up a few steps, without playing russian roulette either. Another quick example... I think this example is within the good compromise area. It would be possible to go "I will risk $1200 over the next 3 ($400 each)" but just 3 trades that gets rather random so it becomes gambling. Over several years risking "1200" (12% base account) over the next 3, well the randomness would even out but seems bad, better to have some sort of certainty. 4% and 6% odds to immediately fail means 94/96% odds of success, unless really bad luck that should rarely happen, this should work. Just not with rent money. And even if it fails the "base account" is still here, simply some unexpected profit evaporated. If it fails, can always re-try next time, after another while of grinding, making sure we are still actually profitable and it was just bad luck. On top of this whole concept of putting profit at risk for a boost, there are the very rare "generational" trades (George Soros versus BoE 1992), where risk is known to be limited (so no swiss tsunami), the odds are really high (way more than 21%), and the reward will be even better than 5R. Also more generally when having a great winning period, great conditions, but I would not trust anyone to be objective about that. Our eager investor that made 4000 could out 3000 at risk over 12 trades with $250 each, and leave the remaining 1000 for the "great ones" where maybe $300 can be risked at once (and if it works out a one time 1500-3000 boost), 300 being "only" 2% of 14000 so it's still fine, not completely crazy (we are talking about a serious investor that has been doing well for a few years not a retail day trader with a gambling addiction). Just like with trade selection strategies, there is no secret magic trick. This scaling strategy is honestly the best I can do. Maybe 1 last example... And finally, this can be tweaked. Rather than rambo the risk from $100 to $280 in the example I choose, still putting all or most of the 4000 at risk, an investor could first increase the risk to $190 (takes 20 losses to lose most of the 4000 rather than 12), and if that goes well, which if it's a profitable investor is more likely than not, then once at +5R (+$950) or so investor could then increase it $280 which overall is safer, and much more likely to work out. With $280 from the start 5R would be 1400 so investor left 450 on the table, not that big of a deal. From that point the next 12 will have a 280 risk, if unlucky then there is still profits left and we can drop to 190 before returning to only 100 which hopefully won't be the case, at least most of the time. Then stay at 280 a while (if it works out) and next time big profits appear, risk that + a part of the 4000, without touching the rest of the profit made in the meantime. Risking profits is really not the same as risking the "bulk" or "base" capital, that's a slippery slope... Rule number 1 = protect your capital Rule number 2 = do not lose money
Education
by MrRenev
99
Forex Trading System (Three Basics)Forex Trading System- All great systems have these basics in them: Entry rules, Exit rules & Money Management rules Anyone who is serious about trading needs to have a Forex Trading System that is tailored to them, but there is no reason to start constructing Forex trading system from scratch.There are some good Forex trading systems out there for you to work with. Some of them are free and some are very expensive, but the price tags don't always reflect the actual value of the Forex trading systems. Many of these systems won't work for you, and I am not talking about out-right dishonesty here, which can be a big problem when trading. Your ability to effectively trade with system you may be considering using or buying. You need to use a system that matches your life style and personality. Once you know what sort of Forex Trading System will work best for you, look at the components that make it work. Face it; if you are a new, or even a fairly serious, trader how likely are you to come up with a totally new concept? There are some very smart and wealthy traders out there. Why not use their ideas. All great Forex trading systems have these three basics: 1) Entry Rules- Based on choosing levels/level picking. Confirmation signals. Momentum entries. More mechanical the less emotions when trading. 2) Exit Rules- Based on risk to reward ratio. Can vary if you scalp, day trade, position or swing trade. take trades where risk-to-reward ratio is at least 2:1. 3) Money Management Rules- Proper position size for your account, most time 1% to 2% maximum risk. The idea of risk tolerance. This is how much a trader is ready to put to risk with one trade or during some period of time. It is often unrelated to a particular trading set-up, but can depend on trader's perception of probability for the current trade. Examples: 1% of account balance per trade; $100 per trade; 10% per week, etc.
Education
by Anbat
How to Backtest a Trading StrategyBacktesting is a manual or systematic method of determining whether a trading strategy or trading setup has been profitable in the past. A trader should backtest a strategy to help determine if a trading strategy is likely a waste of time and money, or if it shows promise and profitability in a variety of markets. While you can get software that does systematic backtesting… we prefer manual backtesting as it can be carried out by any type of trader, It is a key component in developing an effective trading strategy. There are infinite possibilities for strategies, and any slight alteration will change the results. This is why backtesting is important, as it shows whether certain parameters will work better than others. What Do I Backtest?
The first thing to note is that you don’t need a full trading strategy in order to start backtesting. 

For example I personally am always looking at new trading setups and candlestick formation and then backtesting them to see how effective they are. 

You can test small parts of a trading strategy before putting them all together. 

And of course you can and SHOULD backtest your whole trading strategy in a number of different trading situations. 

How to Backtest

 1) You need data to use in testing… if you are testing short term strategies on small timeframes then use at least a few weeks of trading data.

If you are using higher timeframes then you should be using years of trading data.

 2. Define the strategy parameters. Entry conditions, exit conditions etc. Include as many “If X happens then I will do Y” scenarios as possible so that your strategy is repeatable. 

Its essential to include risk management in these parameters too. So decide on if you are risking a percentage of your account equally on each trade, what is that percentage. If you are managing your risk in another method, clearly define it as something you are able to measure. 

ALL OF THESE PARAMETERS ARE WHAT YOU ARE MEASURING AND TESTING. THESE ARE THE ELEMENTS THAT YOU CAN CHANGE TO SEE WHICH ARE MORE OR LESS PROFITABLE. 3. Use the TradingView rewind tool to go back in time and remove the predictive nature of knowing where the chart will be headed. 

You could go back in time and look for trades from a year, a month or a week in the past, depending on how far back you wish to look. 4. Analyse price charts for entry and exit signals. This can be done until all trades on the chart up to the current time have been located and marked or written down

(be aware that it can take some time and be prepared that you are unlikely to be able to do all of this backtesting in one session… it could take you a few sessions of backtesting and recording the trade outcomes to fully test a strategy.) 5. Once you have competed this process, then you can start to total all of the trade results up to see how profitable or unprofitable your trading strategy / setup has been over time. What Goes Wrong in Backtesting

Typically the pitfalls and the ways that people fail at backtesting are based around not being through enough. 

That could mean that people haven’t included enough data in the backtest. 

It could mean that they left too many unknowns in the strategy so when using it in a live trading situation the strategy isn’t usable or realistic.

Also it could be that people don’t back test for long enough to see if the strategy is profitable or not. If you only have a small sample size of trade then even a short losing or winning streak of trades would dramatically affect the results. You need enough trades to show winning streaks, losing streaks and all between so that you can be confident that your strategy will be able to withstand those situations in live trading. 

Imagine for example in your backtesting your strategy didn’t lose more than 2 trades in a row but when you start using it in live trading you get 5 losses in a row. This is a situation that hasn’t been tested so could show a different result. 

The goal is to backtest for long enough and through enough so that nothing in live trading hasn’t been tested previously. While it may not be possible to fully achieve this… it should be the goal and you should feel confident enough that you have done everything possible to ensure this is the case.
Education
by JoelWarby
56
Insanity... the thing most traders do (intro)This is a short intro to a major problem traders face... in a longer video, coming out tomorrow most likely, I will explain more on how to stop being an "insane" trader and take control of your trading results by working on the most important person in (your) "room", which is YOU! Just how important are YOU to yourself? take any picture where you are with the people you love the most and look at it, the person you will first search in the picture is you... so I rest my case. Anyway, this video might wake you up a little, if it doesn't the full version will!
OANDA:US30USDEducation
by PrimedGroup
Trading PillarsFirst pillar: learning to trade is hard work, but it can be taught. 1) The successful trader can be modeled and taught to other people. 2) Learning to operate requires as much education as any other profession. Second pillar: Know yourself. 3) You need to find a trading system that suits your needs 4) To achieve that, you need to know yourself: a) Your values b) Your strengths c) Your weaknesses d) Meaningful beliefs (Spiritual, yourself, market, system) e) Advantages f) Trading weaknesses 5) You can only exchange your beliefs about the markets, not the market itself. Know and understand your beliefs. 6) The development of the system is 100% psychological: beliefs, mental states and strategies. 7) You must know your personal criteria in order to operate with a trust system. Third pillar: Errors 8) A mistake means not following rules. 9) you are responsible for everything that happens to you. When you understand this, you can correct your mistakes. 10) Avoid repeating the same mistake. Self-sabotage. 11) An operator who comments 10 erroneous operations has an efficiency of 90%; But that 10% drop in efficiency might be enough to make you a losing trader. Follow your trading plan. Fourth pillar: Position size objectives and strategies. 12) 50% of system development consists of thinking carefully and clearly defining a set of written goals: desired profit, maximum acceptable reduction, and how important each is. 13) Meet your goals through position size strategies. 14) Can you perform 10 operations without errors? 15) You must know your mission / purpose in life and incorporate it into your trading. 16) You need to know your financial freedom number (Passive income per month minus expenses) Fifth pillar: Probability and risk / reward. 17) Never open a position and know the initial risk. 18) Define your success as multiples of your initial risk: Risk / Reward → R:R 19)% constant losses. All operations must have the same price. 20) Make sure the earnings on average are more than 1R. 21) Never trade unless the R:R of this trade is 1: 2 22) Your performance has to do with controlling risk and managing positions through exits. Sixth pillar: Market systems and types. 23) Understand how your trading plan works in each type of market: a) Volatile bullish, quiet bullish, laterally volatile, laterally calm, volatile bearish, silent bearish. 24) For each type of markup, create a large sample size to estimate what the plan will be, i.e .: Entry, exit, and profit-taking strategy.
Education
by Ed_Ale
Pyschology Tip of the dayHi guys, I haven't posted anything but analysis of the trades I may take in the upcoming week but I have not really covered pyschology maybe as much as I should be. I think this a huge part of trading that a lot of newer members may just skip or may not pay as much attention as they should to the subject. Being angry at something in your life or being upset will effect your trading and will blow your account if you cannot control your emotions. You need to have a risk management system in place that will limit your losses and give you that edge in the market in the long run. I know its super typical for people to say but trading is only a small percentage of the job, the real job is the pyschology and being able to control your self and be smart about your decisions. For example, today I had a hard time thinking if I should take my NZD / USD trade or not, I was thinking that it is what my setup would need for me to take but the only thing is there is no clear trend but there was a rejection of the beginning of a uptrend in my mind. Since, I am still feeling a little off about this trade I am going to lower my risk for this single trade and I will require a lot more confirmation before taking this trade. If the trade goes in my direction I can always go and add more to make a full percent or even more if you move your original trade to breakeven. Do not be afraid of missing out and try risking one or two more percent the single second the trade goes in your direction, the market will always be their and there will always be a trade for you to take. If not, the hardest thing for a trader to do... is not trading, sometimes being patient and waiting for your perfect setup is better than having three losses before taking a profitable trade, this is only going to loose money in the long run and will maybe make you a breakeven trader. If you guys want to see an analysis that I do for every pair that I am interested in take a look at the link below, this will be my most current analysis at the time. Thanks again, Keyslot
Education
by KeySlot
1
FX Compounding Calculator (Do You Want To Be A Millionaire?) Only one way to grow a small account into a large account. That is by treating Forex trading as a marathon race not a sprint race. Do you have 2 to 5 years? You can use the compounding calculator to calculate profits. This allows you to understand better, how your trading account will grow over time. One of the most interesting facts about compounding is, that even a moderate monthly gain turns your initial capital into a serious amount of money over time. A Forex compounding calculator is useful to simulate how compounding the initial equity and the profitable trades, with a set gain percentage, can make a trading account grow over time. It works by simulating the compounding and the reinvesting of the same chosen gain percentage of the account's total equity. With this calculator traders can input the settings in order to accurately calculate the compounding results of a set of winning trades over a period of time. The use of this calculator can demonstrate traders how powerful gains compounding can be, and, that even a moderate gain percentage of 2% (for example) per trade, can turn an account’s initial capital into a substantial amount of capital over time. You will be surprised how powerful compounding can be. My goal is profit at least 1% per trade and/or 1% per session/day. Look at chart: You Can Do It- by letting your account grow with compounding profits < this is the holy grail of building your account. Albert Einstein said,"“Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it ... he who doesn't ... pays it.”
Education
by Anbat
1
YOUR SUCCESS IN TRADING | Expectations VS Reality 💰🤔☠️ Hey traders, Being a full-time trader & running a coaching program for the last three years, I met hundreds of struggling traders from different parts of the globe. Guess why the majority of them could not make it? What was the main reason for their bad luck? It wasn't their trading strategy, nor their technical analysis. The source of their failure was the expectations. Trying different trading strategies, following the signals of different signal providers, these traders expected quick gains and exponential account growth. They were actually in a state of a constant search of a holy grail, of a magic wand that will open Pandora's box to them. Just a single losing trade made them skeptical while the first losing streak made them drop the strategy and return back to the search. They keep spending thousands of dollars on trading strategies promising them close to 100% win rate. There is this common mantra, the stereotype about a pro trader: a guy with 4 screens making a quick buck on each and every market rally, driving Lambo, and living in a mansion. Unfortunately, the reality is different. Ahead you will encounter loneliness, losses, pain, and disapproval. The road to success in this game is long and dangerous. Get ready to see the skepticism in the eyes of your relatives and friends. Many years and tons of money must be spent in order to make it. But even mastering the system, becoming a consistently profitable trader you will not constantly beat the market. Your wins will just slightly outperform your losses giving you the means for living. If you are ready for that if you are courageous enough to start and to proceed no matter what, you are already one step ahead of the majority. Be prepared to work hard and practice much, set a correct goal, and sacrifice your presence for the sake of an independent and prosperous future. Are you ready? ❤️Please, support this post with a like and comment!❤️
Education
by VasilyTrader
145
Comparing a strategy with and without Safety OrdersOne important thing when day trading or scalping is risk management . To find the good balance between risk and reward . So I compared the same strategy with and without Safety Orders. Here's an idea explaining how safety orders work if you didn't know: The strategy used for this example is a daily pivot & consolidation breakout. Before I explain the results, a few definitions: Net profit = Gross Profit - Gross Loss. Basically the total profit earned by winning trades minus the losing trades. Percent Profitable = Percentage of winning trades divided by losing trades. I like to call it the winrate. Profit Factor = Profits divided by Losses. It tells how many times your profit is bigger than your loss. A strategy becomes profitable when the profit factor is greater than 1. Max Drawdown = Maximum consecutive losses. AKA, the biggest lose streak. A good indicator of how risky your strategy can be. A last few details: Both strategies have an intial capital of 10 000 €, 0.1% commission on each trade, and each order is a market one, to make sure everything gets filled. █ STRATEGY 1 - Take Profit & Trailing Stop Loss The strategy has a 7% Take profit and a Trailing Stop Loss that starts at 11%. Each order buys with the total capital without compounding (fixed 10k €) With 52 trades closed, the strategy has a profit % of 147 . It suffered a max % drop of 15.5% . The profit factor is of 2.19 . And finally, the winrate is 76.9% █ STRATEGY 2 - Take Profit & Safety Orders + Stop Loss The strategy has a 7% Take profit, 10 Safety Orders, each spaced by a 1% step, and a stop loss at 11%. Now the base order will only buy 100 €, while each safety order will buy 990 €. This is to ensure that the total capital is used and not more. Also note that the take profit is based on total trading volume. As the safety orders get filled, the target drops a bit lower. With 263 trades closed, which is due to the safety orders (5 per trade in average), the profit % drops to 79 . That is almost half of strategy 1. But, the max % drop is divided by more than 2 : only 6.9% ! The profit factor almost doubled , as it is now at 3.8 . Also, the Percent profitable increased to 83.6% . █ CONCLUSION This comparison is just an example. I did this little process over hundreds of strategies and the outcome is always the same: safety orders reduce the risk, even though they also reduce the net profit a bit, the overall profit factor is increased . So should you use them? It is up to you, but my answer is a big yes . Tips on automation: The simplest way to automate this is to place the safety orders using limit orders when the entry alert is received. Then close all deals upon take profit. If you want to use market orders, you'll have to place each safety order as the price drops through the steps. Indicators used in this example have restricted access. See my profile signature for more info. The backtest results for this pair are shown below.
Education
by cyatophilum
25
Hammer One Candlestick (How To Trade)What Is A Hammer Pattern? A hammer is a price pattern in candlestick charting that occurs when a security trades significantly lower than its opening, but rallies within the period to close near the opening price. This pattern forms a hammer-shaped candlestick, in which the lower shadow is at least twice the size of the real body. The body of the candlestick represents the difference between the open and closing prices, while the shadow shows the high and low prices for the period. This is a major reversal one candlestick pattern, especially on higher time frames. FYI: The chart notes a bullish one candlestick pattern. Yes, they can be bearish reverses on top of trends (but they are called another name). How To Trade: Put entry above bullish hammer Put stop loss below bullish hammer Put 1st target- same distance of stop to entry...for 1:1 Risk and Reward.. You can spot those hammer on any time frames- higher time frames are more reliable to trade from or 1 hour and above.
Education
by Anbat
When to enter? Does it even matter?With value investing everyone knows: Buy when there is blood in the street, when a good company has a P/E ratio of maybe under 10. But with currencies, other than the advice "50% to 61.8% fib" and a whole lot of troll "buy every bottom sell every top with the magic indicator or magic drawing on the chart" there is no common knowledge. We can look at this recent example where the price dropped, went sideways, and then dropped hard. We could keep looking at winning examples when selling or buying at the top of these bands or ~61.8% retracement The only way to know how good they are is by backtesting a large number and writing down the stats. But are there other ways to enter? Rather than write an entire novel with chapters I will simply go through a list of screenshots Some say it doesn't matter where you enter... It does and it doesn't, depends what you mean by that. First Second Third Fourth Fifth Sixth Seventh Eight Ninth Final This is all simplified to make my point, or points I guess. So you can't just say "entry doesn't matter". People that tried trading, failed, got into "holy grail" safe good boy passive S&P in the last 70 years averaged bla bla bla wake me up, they're the ones saying this. Oh so it does not matter if they buy a stock at a P/E of 8 or 280? Of course it matters!!! Entry matters! BUT where you enter EXACTLY does not matter. I'm not sure how to put it, but go through the examples and you see what I mean. Sometimes it matters, but even if you miss it there are other ones, and these entries are going to be at least a small area "of opportunity" anyway. Well it's more complicated than a "yes" or "no". There are plenty of ifs. And plenty of ways to approach this. Look, Warren Buffett bought too early or later and sold too early all the time. And? Most famous investor in the world. Is there an optimal super entry that gives better results than anything else? Statistically there has to be one, so yes. If we spend ages making stats and we find it do we know it will remain this particular one? Probably not... Can we find it without it just being hindsight bias? Probably not... Would having the mighty perfect entry (I didn't say find every exact bottom, that's not actually possible) make a big difference to our results? Lol you might go from 20% returns to 20.5%. Probably even less. The endless search for the holy entry newbs seem to all be obsessed with... Fool game. It's same as with video games, Starcraft, Lol, Dota, W3. Or chess... Newbs go "I will farm for 40 minutes full eco ignore military, full Nasus q, full catch his pawns, I'll be a monster and they'll see", 15 minutes later "Ok tough guy just wait late game you will feel sorry", 5 minutes later "Victory!" or "GG easy noob", 1 minute later "Report Nasus useless afk trash ebay account". Haha I laugh every time. They really make all the same type of newbie "late game" and "magnet logic" mistakes, 80% of retail FX goes into "day trading" because "hey I figured out I'll get more trades and therefore grow my account faster duh", "Hey you can't lose if you don't sell", "Hey I have this brilliant martingale average down", "Hey wassup wassup wassup I found a trick", "hey if I go for lots and lots of little wins, take my profit fast I'll win small but very often and scale", "hey if I run conservative robots that only return 1% but I run 500 of them...", "hey if I add all these conditions". What a circus. Miss the good old days. Can't humiliate noobs with trading their account is secret, they open their mouths when they get lucky then vanish, and it's not a 1 v 1 or 3 v 3 or whatever it's a 1 v whole market. Even if we cooperate and share ideas it's still a 10 v 10 million or idk. There is however the "bull vs bear" thing. But the Bitcoin bulls from 2018 from 15k to 3k almost all left (losers) and the few ones that stayed pretend they won (or they're too dumb to figure out they were on the wrong side of the market). S&P 500 bear tears are pretty delicious at the moment by the way. You both can say entry matters and entry doesn't matter and be mostly right. Don't waste too much time trying to perfect it. Calculating max risk, probabilities of drawdown, when to exit, when to hold, when to add, how to trail, correlations, those are at least as important as the entry. What I can say is entering very early, far from the stop, out of fear of missing out is bad, and entering very late for a giant risk to reward is greedy and bad. Around 50% retracement is often a good compromise. Stats will help choosing areas and price action (stats such as: over the past 10 years on breakouts would it work out to enter in the big red candle? How about on the previous low? How about 61% fib when the price reacts near the previous low? Etc). Entry doesn't go alone, for example when you average in a sideways within a trend well you'll want to move your stop each time you add according to your average price. That's a whole other subject. Coming up with a whole strategy even simple and even once you sort of understand the markets and have the basics of price action is still clearly going to take a couple hundred hours at best... Just writing this took me a little over 2 hours, and I rushed it, and I obviously don't start from scratch I researched all of this. Just writing an intro like this about entries and stops and targets and trends and pullbacks and breakouts and timeframes and risk and all the other stuff, not even with stats, that alone probably would take 100 hours by itself. How long it takes to convince yourself to hold winners and cut losers and quit a gambler mentality however = infinite time, just quit now you'll save time (thousands of hours!), investing is not for you. Oh and finally, an entry "signal" is a joke. You don't go from 0 to 100 "wow this would be a great buy because of this entry", that's beyond ridiculous. You are supposed to be watching something before getting in and waiting on certain conditions to enter (pullback after breakout), never heard of anyone that had "entry signals". When George Soros went short the GBP it was "because of the entry" but he had a whole theory. The "entry" wasn't a magical signal it's simply he was close to the floor, well ceiling, and had a big RR with big odds! And he explains how "I was selling weeks before", he actually "dollar cost averaged" as I explained. He didn't wait for a certain magical point, he wasn't greedy waiting for a 1 pip stop.
Education
by MrRenev
9
Morning Star (Three Candlestick Signal)Example Chart: Down Trend, then Reversal Upwards Morning Star (Three Candlestick Signal/Pattern) 1) Large Red Candlestick 2) Undecided Candlestick (small Doji) 3) Large Green/Blue Candlestick- going up at least 1/2 way of 1st Large Red Candlestick *Trade Bullish or Buy trading is indicated after this bullish morning star signal or pattern occurs afterwards- I see price action on EurAud continuing to go upwards for rest of this month. These happen on all time frames, but higher ones have higher win rates and less noise in price action.
Education
by Anbat
1
HOW-TO: Losses can and will always unfold in TradingIn this help Tutorial, I would like to take a look at losing trades, as show you that losses can and will unfold, no matter what Trading approach you take. In the video we take a look at a losing trade on the 3min NQ. I know that 3min is shorter time frame than we usually look at in TradingView, but it illustrates the example well. As you will see, losses will always unfold when Trading that is why it is important to keep them small. One technique to achieve this is the use of Position Sizing. This varies the number of Lots / Contracts / Shares you take to keep your initial risk small and (more importantly), constant across all your setups. For Futures we suggest a maximum of 2% of your Trading Account size. Over time, your aim should be then to have Profits that are much larger than your losses. That is why we always look at Risk (or R) units for loses and Profits. In this way your Profits can be large in relation to your losses. It is so important to understand, and accept, that no matter what trading approach you take in your own trading, that losses can and will occur. That is why it is vital to keep those inevitable losses small, and Position Sizing is one method to achieve that.
CME_MINI:NQU2021Education
by MTPredictor
1