How to survive in the market for the long-term?
In the market, regret is a frequent word. Many people face the complex investment market and often feel fear, hesitation, and regret, whether it's before buying, after buying, after selling, or just watching without buying. How to avoid this phenomenon? The fear, hesitation, and regret are largely due to not knowing how to manage positions and follow the crowd. Often pursuing high probability profits results in the opposite.
Risk management is an unavoidable issue when it comes to this. Whether you are a financial master or an individual investor, the importance of risk management is paramount. To relax and operate in the market, you need to face your current situation, make correct judgments on the profit and loss ratio, determine your operating frequency and position management, and give yourself correct psychological guidance.
Everyone's personality is different, and their risk tolerance and trading styles are also different. There is no strategy that is 100% accurate, but if you want to survive in the market for a long time, you need to control risk. Don't be afraid of losses. Losses are inevitable, but the key is how much loss you can tolerate. This is the core of risk management. For small losses, we need to prepare ourselves psychologically. This is a link in risk management. Don't rely on luck. The losses brought about by a lucky mentality are incalculable.
About 70% of the time in market fluctuations is in oscillation, and only about 30% of the time is in a unilateral surge or decline. Therefore, accumulating small victories is the magic weapon for long-term success. Always wanting to go all-in and make a big move at once may result in missed profits due to not exiting in time. No matter what state you are in now, I hope I can bring you a little bit of help!
Riskmangement
The Simpliest Math Behind Every Succesful TraderWhat exactly is risk management?
The ability to control your losses so that you do not lose all of your equity is referred to as risk management. This is a system that may be applied to everything that involves probabilities: trading, poker, blackjack, sports betting, and so on.
Many inexperienced traders underestimate the significance of risk management or don't understand the basics when it comes to risk management.
Would you risk $5,000 on every trade if you had a $10,000 trading account? Probably not. Because it only takes two consecutive losses in order to lose everything.
🧠 Now, let's imagine a thought experiment, in wich 🤩Alex and 🤨Peter are both traders with $10,000 in their accounts. Alex is a high-risk trader who puts $2500 risk on every trade. Peter is a cautious trader who puts $100 risk on every trade. Both apply a trading strategy that has a 50% success rate with an average risk-to-reward ratio of 1:2.
For good example, let's imagine the next 8 trades had the following results:
4 losing trades in a row
4 winning trades in a row
Here is the result for Alex: -$2,500, -$2,500, -$2,500, -$2,500 = -$10,000 Loss of the total account 😭😭😭😭
Here is the result for Peter: -$100, -$100, -$100, -$100, +$200, +$200, +$200, +$200 = +$800 Profits. 🏆 🏆 🏆 🏆
Can you tell the difference? See how risk management show the difference between being a profitable or losing trader. Peter managed to recover losing trades, and get into good profits after 8 trades. Alex didn't survive 4 trades...
🚨 You might have the finest trading strategy in the world, but if you don't manage how much you lose, you'll lose it all. It's only a matter of probability and time.
However, following this basic example will assist you to make your trading more profitable. Simply give it a shot.
Kind regards
Artem Crypto
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Take a look at my other Educational ideas below:
Strategy Coding E05: Risk Management (Part 1)This is a deep dive into the concepts surrounding "Risk Management" and how to realistically model managing risk.
We will discuss:
Risk Units
Scaling in to positions at a one third risk unit increments
Raising stops
Taking profits
Closing/exiting the position.
Don't Blow Your Account | Learn How to Avoid Margin Call
Hey traders,
In this educational article, I will share with you 5 simple tips that will help you not to blow your trading.
1️⃣Always Use Stop Loss.
Let's start with the obvious - with the stop loss order.
Never ever trade without that. Before you open your trade, plan in advance its placement, stick to it once the position becomes active and never remove it.
2️⃣ Manage Your Position Sizes
I know that most of you are trading with a fixed lot. That is a bad habit. You should measure the lot size for each trading position you take. You should define in advance the risk percentage you are willing to lose per trade and calculate the lot sizes for your trades accordingly, then.
3️⃣Avoid Taking Too Many Positions
Remember that in trading, quantity does not imply quality. The more trades you take, the harder it is to manage each position individually. I would suggest opening maximum 5 trades per day and holding no more than 8 trades simultaneously.
4️⃣ Avoid Trading Too Many Markets
The wider is your watch list, the harder it is to focus on each individual element inside. Do not try to control as many markets as possible, instead, narrow your watch list and concentrate your attention on your favourite trading instruments.
5️⃣Remember About Volatility
The more volatile is the market that you trade, the harder it is to trade it and the bigger stop losses you need to keep your positions safe. Remember, that the volatility is the double-edged sword. It can bring substantial profits, but it can also blow your entire account in a blink of an eye.
Following these 5 simple rules, you will make your trading much safer. Study them and add them in your trading plan.
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10 Common Lies and Misconceptions About Trading 🥺🤮1. People are born traders. While it is true that certain personal characteristics make it easier to trade, no one is born a trader. One of the main themes of the Market Wizards books written by Jack Schwager is that almost none of the market wizards was successful from the start. They all worked hard at it.
2. You have to have a high IQ to trade. Just not true. In some ways, an above average IQ may be a hindrance. Trading is a human performance activity where strong intellectual abilities are unnecessary.
3. Top traders are successful because they have the "right trading personality." There is no such thing as the "right trading personality." Researches have been unable to find a strong correlation between personality type and trading success. It is important, however, to understand your personal characteristics and how they may help and hinder your trading.
4. Trading is easy. It sure looks that way, doesn't it? Just draw a few lines on the chart, watch your indicators, and follow the price bars. The truth is that trading is a difficult business to master. It involves different skill sets and abilities from what are needed in most other professions and careers. The trader must understand his or her personal strengths and limitations and develop specific skills to deal with the mental and emotional demands of trading. The later skills are the most difficult to develop and the most overlooked.
5. You must be tough, hard charging, and fearless to be successful. That's more media hype than anything else. It glorifies a strong ego, which is a detriment in trading. The most successful traders I know quietly do their research, study the charts, and patiently wait for the right moment. They strive to keep their ego out of their trading.
6. You must trade without emotions. If you are human, that's impossible. More importantly, when you understand your emotions you will realize they are assets, not liabilities. The real keys are:
To be aware of how your emotions interact with and influence your trading, and
To develop the skills needed to trade with them.
7. Top traders are usually right about the market. Top traders have many, many scratch and losing trades. Top traders are at the top because they exercise good risk control, limit the amount of loss from any given trade, and have developed a psychological edge that allows them to be unfazed by small losing trades. Most of their trading consists of modest profits and very small losses. When conditions are right, they step up size and let the profitable trades run.
8. Paper trading is useless - it's not a real trade without money behind it. If you aren't paper trading,you are doing yourself a disservice. You should always be paper trading your trading ideas. Why limit your education and experience by the amount of capital you have? Paper trading keeps you sharp ; you learn the conditions under which your trading ideas work best. Where else can you get such vital education at so little cost?
9. Master the technical skills and you will be successful. This is where most traders spend the vast majority of their time, but it's only part of the picture. You also have to learn important performance skills. Traders should spend as much-if not more-time learning to develop their psychological edge as they do in developing their technical trading edge.
10. Trading is stressful. It certainly can be stressful, and it certainly is stressful for many. It doesn't have to be. Successful traders have a certain mindset. They put little importance on any given trade. Their focus is on the long haul. They know that if they attend to the aspects of trading that are within their control (i.e., trade selection, entry, risk control, and trade management) the profits will take care of themselves.
source: DailyFX
Learn Risk to Reward Ratio | Forex Trading Basics
Hey traders,
Planning your every trade, you should know in advance the profit that you are aiming to make and the maximum amount of money you are willing to lose.
In this educational article, we will discuss risk reward ratio - the tool that is used to compare your potentials losses and profits.
Let's start with an example. Imagine you see a good buying opportunity on EURUSD. You quickly identify a safe entry point, your take profit level and stop loss.
From that trade you are aiming to make 100 pips with a maximum allowable loss of 50 pips.
To calculate a risk to reward ratio for this trade, you simply should divide a potential gain by a potential loss:
R/R ratio = 100 / 50 = 2
In that particular example, risk to reward ratio equals 2 meaning that potential gain outperform a potential loss by 2.
Let's take another example.
This time, you decide to short USDJPY.
From a desirable entry point, you can get 75 pips with a potential loss of 150 pips.
Risk to reward ratio for this trade is 75 divided by 150 or 0.5.
Such a ratio means that potential loss outperform a potential gain by 2.
Risk to reward ratio can be positive or negative.
If the ratio is bigger than 1 it is considered to be positive meaning that a potential gain outperforms a potential loss.
If the ratio is less than 1, it is called negative so that potential loss is bigger than potential risk.
Knowing the average risk to reward ratio for your trades, you can objectively calculate the required win rate for keeping a positive trading performance.
With R/R ratio = 0.5
2 winning trades recover 1 losing trade.
You need at least 70% win rate to cover losses of your trading.
With R/R ratio = 1
1 winning trade, recover 1 losing trade.
You need at least 50% win rate to compensate your losses.
With R/R ratio = 2
1 winning trade recovers 2 losing trades.
You need at least 35% win rate to cover losses of your trading.
Trading involves extremely high risk. Risk to reward ratio is a number one risk management tool for limiting your risks. Calculating that and knowing your win rate, you can objectively decide whether a trade that you are planning to take is worth taking.
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Learn Why Do You Need a Stop Loss 🟥
Hey traders,
Talking to many struggling traders from different parts of the world, I realized that the majority constantly makes the same mistake: they do not set a stop loss.
Asking for the reason why they do that, the common answer is that
these traders consider the manual position closing to be safer, implying that if the market goes in the opposite direction, they will be able to much better track the exact moment to cut loss.
In this article, we will discuss why it is crucially important to set a stop loss and why it is the number one element of your trading position.
First of all, let's discuss what is a stop loss. By a stop loss, we mean a certain price level where we close our trading position in loss. In comparison to a manual closing, the stop loss should be set at the exact moment when the order is executed.
Stop loss allows us limiting the risks in case of unfavorable movements.
On the chart above, I have illustrated 2 similar negative scenarios: 1 with a stop loss being placed and one without.
In the example on the left, stop loss helped to prevent the excessive risk, cutting the loss at the beginning of a bearish wave.
With the manual closing, however, traders usually hold the negative positions much longer, praying for a reversal.
Holding a losing trade, emotions intervene. Greed and fear usually spoil the reasoning, causing irrational decisions.
Following such a strategy, the total loss of the second scenario is 5 times bigger than the total loss with a placed stop loss order.
Stop loss defines the point where you become wrong in your predictions. Planning your trade, you should know in advance such a point and cut your loss once it is reached.
Never trade without a stop loss.
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How to do accurate entries using the 50% fib levelThis strategy will require you to be able to distinguish between the impulsive move and the retracement since we only apply the fib retracement tool to the impulsive move.
What you do is just lay your fib from the body to the body (not the wicks) then identify the 50% retracement level.
Now if you're an aggressive trader you can set a pending order or just execute an instant entry once price reaches your 50% retracement level.
On the other hand if you're a less aggressive trader, you will make a decision based on what price action will reveal at the 50% retracement level. I'll leave it to you to decide what kind of trader you are.
Learn How to Apply a Position Size Calculator
Hey traders,
In this educational article, I will teach you how to apply a position size calculator and calculate a lot size for your trades depending on a desired risk.
First of all, let's briefly discuss why do you need a position size calculator.
Even though, most of the newbie traders trade with the fixed lot, the truth is that fixed lot trading is considered to be very risky.
Depending on the trading instrument, time frame and a desired stop loss, the risks from one trade to another are constantly floating. With the constant fluctuations of losses per trade, it is very complicated to control your risks and drawdowns.
A lot size calculation, however, allows you to risk the desired percentage of your capital per trade, limiting the maximum you can potentially lose.
A lot size is calculated with a position size calculator.
It is integrated in some trading platforms like cTrader. If it is absent in yours, there are a lot of free ones available on the internet.
Step 1:
Measure a pip value of your stop loss.
It is the distance from your entry level to your stop loss level.
In the example on the picture, the stop loss is 290 pips.
Step 2:
Open a position size calculator
Step 3:
Fill the form.
Inputs: Account currency, account balance, desired risk %, stop loss in pips, currency pair.
In the example, we are trading with USD account. Its value is $20000. Trading instrument is EURUSD.
Step 4:
Calculate a lot size
The system will calculate a lot size for your trade.
0.069 standard lot in our example.
Taking a trade on EURUSD with $20000 deposit and 290 pips stop loss, you will need 0.069 lot size to risk 1% of your trading account.
Learn to apply a position size calculator. That is the must-use tool for a proper risk management.
❤️If you have any questions, please, ask me in the comment section.
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Expectations and TradingExpectations and Trading
When you trade, you look at chances that either come true or don't. You can't expect or demand anything from the market or from other people who take part in the market. No one owes anyone anything in this world, and trading is no different.
In trading, you have complete freedom of expression; you can do almost anything and however you want. This freedom will show you how irrational people are and how they can't just control their thoughts, feelings, and actions.
All traders lose money because they take too many risks and don't have enough self-control. How long does it take for a trader to lose control of himself? A feeling of being left out It all starts with the idea that money has been lost. This feeling is exactly what makes people want to take more risks.
You open the chart and see that the price of your favorite asset has been going up for more than a day. Then you start thinking about how much you could make and where you could spend that money. This makes you want to buy an asset with a larger volume so you can make more money. You make a trade that is set up to have the best possible outcome, but you have no idea or acceptance of the possible consequences.
Revaluation
Take a look at what you have done so far. Are you ready to put everything on the line? If the answer is no, you should ask yourself, "Why do I want to put everything I have at risk?" Most likely, you feel this way because you want to make a big change in your life. But do you really know what's at stake?
"Filter of perception" or what are the risks of expectations?
What happens after you have set up the expectation that the trade will go well for you? When you go into a trade with more money than you need, you somehow set yourself up for a good result. Your mind starts to ignore information and signals from the market that don't fit with what you already think, as if you were wearing blinders. You won't know for sure how this filter works until you close the deal and stop having false hopes.
Is trading something that everyone can do?
Trading is not something that everyone should do. To get good at this craft, you have to work on yourself all the time, get over your emotions, control your thoughts, and question your own decisions while always following the rules. Don't give up on trading if you think it's not for you. You can be successful if you only do what you really want and work to improve yourself and show off your inner potential.
What is it to trade?
Trading is a game of chances, and you should have the right mindset for it. You shouldn't feel bad when a stop loss happens, because if you use a method that has a certain chance of working, you know that in the end, you'll still have made money. It's just a matter of time. You can survive and put off the so-called "trader's cycle" only if the trading process makes you feel good.
System trading
System trading means that you only make a trade under a certain set of rules. Your system could include chart patterns, candlestick formations, indicators, a certain astrological date, and more. No matter what, it's important that the chance of success and the risk vs. reward are both high. As soon as you make your own trading system, start keeping a trade diary, write down the rules of your trade, and answer when you enter a trade, you will be in the big leagues of traders, and nothing can stop you from making money on the market. If you stick to your own rules, you'll be happy with both your take profit and your stop loss, knowing that you did things in a planned way. It is not your fault that the stop loss worked or your credit that you got a take profit.
Worry and concern
Before making deals, many traders are afraid and have doubts. These feelings are bad for you, so don't give in to them. They will only get in the way. You might be scared to open trades because the amount of money you risk in each trade is too high. Let's draw an analogy. You and a friend make a bet on the flip of a coin. The coin is strange, so it comes up heads 70% of the time. If it comes up heads at least once, you lose. If it comes up heads twice in a row, you win. Can it happen that heads come up twice in a row by accident? What's four? Yes, it sure can! Your task is in increasing the number of coin flips to win the bet as often as possible over time. The same is true of the business you do. When you act in a systematic way on the market, you might get four stop losses in a row. But at the same time, you shouldn't lose a lot of money that will change the way you live. One to two percent of your capital is the best amount to put at risk in a single trade. Getting a stop loss only won't throw you off your emotional balance and let you fall into the "trader's cycle" if you have so much used volume. If you don't think this is enough, ask yourself, "Is the goal of your trading to try to increase the size of your capital no matter what, or to keep it and grow it?"
How often you trade ?
Overtrading, which leads to "trading burnout," is not a small mistake made by new traders. Your job is to wait in a humble way for a new system to set up on the chart. You don't have to look at the chart every ten minutes. Instead, decide on your own what timeframes you will use to trade, and keep in mind that the longer the timeframe, the more reliable the signal.
Take profits and stop losses in a row
The most important thing to remember is that you must keep acting according to your trading system, no matter how many stop losses you get in a row, and you must keep not acting against your trading system, no matter how many take profits you get in a row. The market can be irrational, and technical analysis may stop working at those times, but that doesn't matter. What matters is whether you are acting in a systematic way and whether you are in control at this moment. We can get several stop losses in a row if we only follow our trading system, but we don't have to worry about losing a lot of money or feeling bad about ourselves because we know that over the course of a few years, we are statistically certain to succeed if we trade on system entry points that have a 70% chance of working out and a ratio of possible profits to possible losses of at least 2:1, which guarantees us a profit even if we lose.
Conclusion
Real traders trade probabilities based on market signals in the moment instead of building expectations, because they know that expectations lead to unfulfilled expectations and missed opportunities. You can only make money with a system, self-control, and time.
JS-Masterclass: Risk Management #1JS-Masterclass: Risk Management #1
Risk Management in Trading – What does it mean ???
Risk management in trading is following a set of principles for minimizing losses. It’s an essential part of a trading plan that helps to minimize the losses and capture sustainable profits.
One of the biggest mistakes traders make is focusing on maximizing profits while overlooking the potential for loss. Unfortunately, that’s the best way for losses to get out of control. Traders need to leave this notion of greed behind them and always think risk first. Once a trader has mastered this principle, the successes will follow.
Implementing risk management techniques into your trading strategy can mitigate your risk when the market moves in the opposite direction.
Fundamental risk management principles for minimizing losses
Whether you are new in trading or an experienced trader, you always need to consider the following principles. They need to be a central part of your trading plan and strategy.
The 1% rule
The 1% rule in trading is a crucial principle of position sizing. It refers to risking no more than 1% (absolute max. for pro-traders is 2%) of your capital on a single trade.
For instance, if you have $50,000 in your account, applying the 1% rule would mean you won’t risk more than $500 on a single trade.
Some traders use the 2% rule to increase potential profits, but that amplifies potential losses, too. Sticking to the 1% rule will limit your risk on any given trade and help you preserve your equity. New traders should start with even lower risk levels.
Stop-Losses
Stop-loss orders are sell orders that trigger automatically when a traded security’s price reaches a lower, pre-specified price. They can help you mitigate losses on trades that don’t pan out the way you hoped.
For instance, if you buy a particular stock at $32 per share, you could put a stop-loss order at $30 to close the trade if the price drops below $30 per share.
Amateur traders should work with stop loss orders that will automatically trigger when your pre-defined stop-loss is being hit. This avoids a mistake that every trader tends to do – go in with a stop-loss plan but then deviate from it when things go against you.
Using stop-loss orders is key to having complete control over your positions, particularly when engaging in day trading.
The risk/reward ratio
The risk/reward ratio is a measure for calculating expected returns for every dollar you risk on a particular trade. For instance, if your risk/reward ratio is 1:2, you could earn $20 for every 10 dollar you risk.
It’s crucial to calculate the ratio after you’ve decided on your stop-loss and take-profit orders. If the ratio doesn’t match your requirements, you need to wait for a more profitable trade.
Here’s how to calculate your risk/reward ratio:
RRR = (Entry price – Stop-Loss) / (Profit Target – Entry price)
If dividing the potential risk with the possible reward results in a value below 1.0, your potential profit is more significant than your potential loss.
Make sure you maintain a favorable risk/reward ratio and look for ways to improve it consistently. IN order to be able to do that, you need to have a trading log book.
The Batting Average
The Batting Average helps you compare your winning and losing trades. Dividing your total number of wins by the total number of trades will help you analyze your past performance and identify areas for improvement. A ratio above 0.5 (or 50%) shows your trading strategy is working.
Suppose you had 60 winning trades and 40 losing trades. Your Batting Average is 60%, which means you have more winners than loosers.
Combining your Batting Average with your risk/reward ratio will help you manage potential losses more effectively.
Here is a table which helps you better understand the relationship between the risk/reward ratio and the Batting Average:
The table shows that you should have a minimum batting average or 40% or better. Many traders would consider themselves as so called ’2:1’-traders. This means they always try to have a profit of their winners at least 2x their pre-defined risk (stop-loss). As you can see in the table, ‘2:1’-traders have built in failure in their trading strategy as they can be wrong more often than right and still make tons of money – a ‘2:1’-trader can be incredibly successful at a batting average of only 40%. This means the ‘2:1’-trader can only have 4 winners out of 10 trades and still be highly successful.
TRADING - TRUTH VS LIE 📉📈
A financial background can be useful for understanding how forex and other markets work. However, more beneficial are skills in math, engineering and hard sciences, which better prepare traders for analyzing and acting on economic factors and chart patterns. It doesn’t matter how much awareness you have about financial markets – if you can’t process new data quickly, methodically and in a focused manner, those same markets you thought you knew so well can eat you alive.
ANSWER: LIE
EXPERT TIP: To prepare for trading, focus on developing analytical skills rather than boning up on financial knowledge.
Trading is like running a business. In order to be successful, you need to learn from mistakes and have rules in place to help protect your capital. Like a business, it’s crucial to have appropriate strategies on hand for varying market conditions. Setting up a business is easy, and similarly, trading is easy too. Developing successful strategies and making money? That’s the hard part.
ANSWER: TRUTH
EXPERT TIP: It will seem easy if your early trades go well, but long-term profitability is a different matter altogether. Make your life easier by researching your trades, using the right position size, setting stops and keeping a handle on your emotions.
Can you be successful with a small trading account? It depends on your definition of successful. An account needs to be large enough to accommodate proper risk parameters. But success is relative; a high rate of return is based on percentages and not on monetary amounts.
For example, a 20% return is a 20% return regardless of the account size. However, if your 20% return isn’t worth enough in hard cash, it might be hard to incentivize yourself to improve as a trader.
ANSWER: IT DEPENDS
EXPERT TIP: Your account size will depend on your goals and your prior success. Naturally, experienced traders will have a larger account but to begin with, concentrate on that rate of return percentage.
Bragging rights be damned: the number of trades you win is irrelevant. Profitable traders simply make more money than they lose.
Say you win five trades and make $5,000, but lose one trade and lose $6,000 – you have won more trades than you have lost but are still down overall. Profitable traders will set rigid risk-reward parameters for a trade – for example they might risk $500 to make $1,000, a risk-reward ratio of 1:2.
If a trader makes five trades using this method, loses three of them and wins two of them, the trader is still $500 in profit ($2,000 profit-$1,500 loss). Don’t be afraid of taking a few hits: if your process is sound, one big winning trade can reverse your fortunes.
ANSWER: LIE
EXPERT TIP: Many successful traders will be losing more trades than they win, but oftentimes it won’t bother them. Focus on getting the right setups rather than worrying about the ones that got away.
How much time you spend trading, and monitoring trades, will depend on your trading style. Those employing a scalping strategy, for instance, will make a large number of transactions per day, entering and exiting many positions, and will need to pay close attention to their trades on the shortest timeframes.
However, position traders won’t need to spend as much time monitoring, as their transactions may last weeks, months or even longer – meaning long-term analysis will account for short-term fluctuations.
ANSWER: IT DEPENDS
EXPERT TIP: Ask yourself what type of trader you are. Shorter timeframes will mean monitoring and analyzing constantly – being ‘always on’. If you favor a more relaxed approach you may be suited better for position trading.
Some traders advocate a ‘mental stop loss’ when the market gets tough – that is, relying on oneself rather than a computer to set a level at which to exit a losing position. The problem is, a ‘mental stop loss’ is just a number that makes you worried about the money you’re losing. You may fret about the direction of the market - but you won’t necessarily be compelled to exit your trade.
A fixed forex stop loss is completely different – if your stop loss price trades you are out of the position, no ifs or buts. Exercising proper money and risk management means setting solid stops. Period.
Answer: TRUTH
EXPERT TIP: It can be so easy to neglect your stop loss. When a trade is going your way, the dollar signs can blind you - but you should protect yourself against the market turning.
Spreads may represent the primary cost of trading, but they aren’t the be-all-end-all when it comes to choosing your market. You may find an asset that has a wide spread but represents a strong opportunity due to its volatility. Similarly, you may find an asset with high liquidity and a tight spread, but that isn’t showing much trading potential. Above all, you should let your trading decisions be governed by setups presented by the market, not the size of the spread.
Answer: LIE
EXPERT TIP: The spread can represent a significant cost to traders – but don’t let it be the sole factor dictating your choice of asset.
The economic analysis key to a fundamental approach helps give traders a broader view of the market. Sound knowledge of the underlying forces of the economy, industries and even individual companies can enable a trader to forecast future prices and developments. This is different to technical analysis, which helps to identify key price levels and historical patterns, and provides conviction for entering/exiting a trade.
It’s true to say that expertise in economic analysis is important. However, so too is expertise in the technicals. Many successful traders will look to combine fundamental and technical analysis so as to be in a position to draw on as wide a range of data as possible.
Answer: TRUTH
EXPERT TIP: It may be worthwhile to devise a strategy accounting for the nuances of both technical and fundamental analysis.
News can create big moves in the market, but that doesn’t mean trading the news leads to the biggest opportunities. For a start, the volatility of important news events often makes spreads wider, in turn increasing trading costs and hitting your bottom line. Slippage, or when you get filled at a different price than you intended, can also hit your profitability in volatile markets. On top of these drawbacks, traders could get locked out, making them helpless to correct a trade that moves against them.
ANSWER: LIE
EXPERT TIP: ‘Trading the news’ can seem like a fashionable thing to do, but market movements can be unpredictable at the time of major releases. It’s often best to steer clear during such high volatility.
Excluding emotions from trading is an impossible endeavor. It can lead to more internal conflict than benefits, which is why managing emotions is a better way of looking at it. You have negative emotions like fear and greed that need to be managed without suppressing positive ones like conviction that help drive you towards the best opportunities.
Answer: TRUTH
EXPERT TIP: Even the most experienced traders feel emotion in the heat of the markets, but how they harness that emotion makes all the difference.
Source: DailyFX
CORRECT AND INCORRECT RISK MANAGEMENTHello everyone!
Today I want to remind you about the risks!
Risk management is very important in every trade , but most traders are too lazy to act according to the rules, so I decided to remind the basic rules.
They look simple, but following them will greatly reduce losses and increase the win rate.
Let's go!
Correct calculation of possible losses
Beginners are AFRAID to think about losses.
And even more so to count them!
But it must be done, otherwise you will lose much more than you should.
Even BEFORE opening a position, you should know how much you are willing to lose under unfavorable conditions.
Cut losses and let your profits grow
It's strange, but people are ready to quickly fix a profit, but not fix a loss.
Premature profit-taking is a normal phenomenon, as is overexposure of unprofitable transactions.
why?
Because traders are afraid of losing profits and hope that the loss will decrease and even turn into profit.
Don't move your stop loss
If you followed the first advice and calculated the stop loss, and after placing it you started moving, then you did not understand the essence!
Stop loss is very important and it is important not to move it.
In each trade, you risk a certain percentage and should not increase this indicator by moving the stop loss.
Monitor your drawdowns
It's unpleasant to lose, it's unpleasant to analyze your losses, but you have to do it.
Without loss analysis, you will not get better as a trader.
You have to keep track of losses, you have to analyze trades to improve your trading and not repeat mistakes.
Opening positions without risk management
Most traders don't think about risk at all, much less risk management.
Most of them open trades without risk management and therefore most of them lose all their money.
Trading without stop losses
The fear of losses and the fear of being wrong leads to the fact that the trader does not set a stop loss.
If you do not set a stop loss, know that the stop loss is still set, how?
It's simple, in this case your stop loss will be equal to your capital.
The position will close when your account is 0.
Is it easier this way?
Let the losses run
Why don't traders close unprofitable positions?
As mentioned above, it's all about hope .
do you think that the price will sooner or later go in your direction?
Perhaps.
But by that time, most likely you will already be closed by margin call.
Ignoring drawdowns and other important indicators of risk management
Ignoring is a favorite thing of novchikov.
They think that they have understood everything, they think that the market will spare them.
Unfortunately, the market doesn't work that way.
Risk management was invented long before you and will be and will be used after you.
And all because it works and without it YOU CANNOT BECOME a SUCCESSFUL PROFESSIONAL TRADER .
And then it's up to you who you want to be.
Traders, if you liked this idea or if you have your own opinion about it, write in the comments. I will be glad 👩💻
Successful traders think like chess playersEvery day I get many questions from traders and more than half of them are: "What will X asset do today, will it rise or fall" or "Do you think X asset will reach Y price?"
With very few exceptions, I say "I don't know". Surely my interlocutor will think that I don't want to tell him/her or that I'm an idiot.
In fact, the correct answer is another: "I don't care"
And now, dear reader, you will think not that I am an idiot, but a complete one.
But bear with me a little more and let me explain using a real trading example on EurUsd
Let's say we consider taking a trade on this pair so, we ask ourselves what do we know about it?
1. Fundamentally the USD is favored
2. The trend is down for more than a year.
So, we want to trade in the direction of the trend and sell this pair
Looking closely at the chart we see that EurUsd is contained in a downwards channel and recently found support in the 0.99 zone.
Last week, the pair corrected and reached a high at 1.0150 and reversed exactly from the channel's resistance, leaving a nice and strong bearish engulfing on our daily chart.
Going further with our judgment, where do we want to sell this pair?
Now, considering my approach, I see a good place to sell in the 1.0030-1.0050 zone.
So we set a sell limit order in that zone (Remember, professional traders use pending orders)
We also consider at this moment the point where our bearish outlook is negated. We get 1.0150 for our stop loss.
Now, using again my personal trade, let's say we set the selling order at 1.0030, with a stop loss at 1.0150 we have a potential loss of 120 pips.
We know that every pip move on EurUsd represents 1usd for 0.01 volume, so 12usd potential loss on 0.01 trade for our trade.
Now, let's consider volumes.
What potential loss are we "comfortable" with?
For the sake of example let's say 120 USD, so a 0.1 volume.
Now let’s see where we can take profit.
0.97 zone is the falling channel's support, so there.
Looking at such a trade we have 120 pips or 120 USD potential loss with 330 pips or 330 potential profit. This gives us a close to 1:3 risk-reward ratio, a very good one.
And now, maintaining the analogy from the title is the market’s “move” turn
And the market can do only 2 things at this point: fill our pending order or not.
Considering that I don't hold pending orders after NY's close, if the market doesn't reach my level by then, I will remove the order, and tomorrow I will start over again by analyzing the market.
The second is to trigger our limit order as is also the case for my trade, and we are in a running trade now.
Now, with a trade running is again the market's move.
So, what are the possible scenarios?
1. The market rises and hits our SL. Although an undesirable scenario, we knew from the start that it’s a possibility and like every trade, this also carries a risk. We considered it and assumed it from the start and didn't trade more than we could afford to lose in a trade.
So, we take it like a stoic and move on to the next trade and market analysis
2. The lovely scenario in which EurUsd breaks 0.99 support and falls to our target.
So, our reasoning was correct and we now have a trade that brought 330usd in our pocket, but more importantly we traded disciplined with a good R: R
3. The market falls below 0.99 but reverses. Now we can also consider some action
- Move SL in BE and let the trade run
- Close half to get some money off the table and move SL into BE
- Close all trade
In conclusion:
As you can see, you don't need to be Gary Kasparov to be a good trader, the market's "moves” being in fact just a few. All you need to do is to be aware of these moves and have a plan for each of them.
This way you will not end up wondering every minute "where will EurUsd go, it will rise, it will fall", you will not trade emotionally or recklessly.
As Benjamin Franklin once said: "Those who failed to plan, plan to fail", but it is not your case, because, as a good trader you always trade with a plan and know from the beginning all that the market can do.
Best regards!
Mihai Iacob
Stop Loss Alone is not Risk Management - What is Your SystemTo be successful, you must develop consistency in your trading.
You can achieve this by creating a system to trade.
One that provides an edge to fit your lifestyle and personality.
Discipline is required to stick to your system so that you can measure results (wins and losses) over a large number of trades.
A simple journal helps you to measure your trades.
This provides edge and success unfolds over time, requiring a strong mindset to create, adhere and measure.
Goals are achievable through steps that are part of the process.
Things to consider when developing your system are: Market Phase, Price Structure, Areas of Value, Areas of Entries as well as Exits, Multi Time Frame Analysis, Trend Lines, Support and Resistance, Dynamic Support and Resistance etc.
Pro Tip: Trade clean and don't clutter your charts. Trade around a couple of levels with a single indicator.
Be PATIENT to let trades come to you once you have made a trading plan.
And when the market enters your zone, be READY to take action and trigger your entry based on rules.
If you're a new trader or a struggling trader, feel free to reach out and ask me a question.
If you liked this idea or if you have your own opinion about it, write in the comments.
The information and publications are not meant to be, and do not constitute, financial, investment, trading, or other types of advice or recommendations.
Trading Psychology | How to Perceive Your Trades 👁
Hey traders,
In this post, we will discuss a common fallacy among struggling traders: overestimation of a one single trade.
💡The fact is that quite often, watching the performance of an active trading position, traders quite painfully react to the price being closer and closer to a stop loss or, alternatively, coiling close to a take profit but not being managed to reach that.
Fear of loss make traders make emotional decisions:
extending stop loss or preliminary position closing.
The situation becomes even worse, when after the set of the above-mentioned manipulation, the price nevertheless reaches the stop loss.
Just one single losing trade is usually perceived too personally and make the traders even doubt the efficiency of their trading system.
They start changing rules in their strategy, then stop following the trading plan, leading to even more losses.
❗️However, what matters in trading is your long-term composite performance. A single position is just one brick in a wall. As Peter Lynch nicely mentioned: “In this business, if you’re good, you’re right six times out of ten. You’re never going to be right nine times out of ten.”
There are so many factors that are driving the markets that it is impossible to take into consideration them all. And because of that fact, we lose.
The attached chart perfectly illustrates the insignificance of a one trading in a long-term composite performance.
Please, realize that losing trades are inevitable, and overestimation of their impact on your trading performance is detrimental.
Instead, calibrate your strategy so that it would produce long-term, consistent positive results. That is your goal as a trader.
❤️If you have any questions, please, ask me in the comment section.
Please, support my work with like, thank you!❤️
Risk management in tradingWhen trading on the stock exchange, you need to know at least the basics of risk management, but it is better to understand it professionally, because the main attribute of any transactions made in the financial markets is risk. Without competent, professional management, without risk management, it is impossible to stay in such markets for a long time. To be a successful trader, you must learn to assess risks, balance and reduce them. Only in this case, the capital will not only be saved, but also increased.
Fundamentals of risk management
To properly manage capital, you need to know about the following principles:
1. You should not invest even in the most tempting project more than half of the total capital.
Among financial experts, this principle is also called "don't put your eggs in one basket" or "diversification." That is, in order to successfully continue your activities in the financial market, it is best not to invest all your funds in only one undertaking. More than half of the money must be left for other projects and for the continuation of their work
2. Invest in one position no more than 10-15% of the total amount of funds you have.
Another advice from the category of diversification, which insures against ruin. He warns that one cannot invest a lot of one's funds at once, it is better to distribute them correctly and limit one's risks, and make the profit more stable.
3. The rate of risk in the transaction must not exceed 5% of the total amount of funds you have.
If you follow this principle, then the loss ratio of any trader will be less than 5% of the total capital. Depending on which market and which strategy is used to trade, the percentage of risk can be reduced to 1%.
4. There must be a balance between diversification and concentration.
While diversification is one of the most reliable risk management techniques for reducing risk, even its application must be measured. It is necessary to balance the diversification and concentration of funds. There is no need to turn your portfolio into a "stuffing" of investment instruments, you will only need to open positions in 5-7 groups of instruments. Before compiling a portfolio, it is necessary to determine the correlation between trading instruments. It may be zero, but it is preferred that it be negative. In this case, the future fall of one group of instruments will be compensated by the growth of other groups.
5. Place stop orders.
In order to avoid large losses if the price change is not in your favor, it is best to take care in advance and set Stop Loss. It makes the price fixed, which will allow the trader to close the position at this price. The way the Stop Loss will be set is influenced by market analysis, as well as the personal readiness and ability of the trader to make dangerous, risky, but profitable transactions.
When placing a Stop Loss, you need to correctly assess not only the totality of technical factors, but also the characteristics of personal qualities, in particular, your ability to take risks.
6. Determine the rate of return.
For any operation in the market, it is necessary to determine what the ratio of profit and loss will be. Such a forecast is necessary so that, in the event of undesirable phenomena on the market, the risks are balanced.
In the financial world, a good ratio is 3:1.
The simplest example: if a trader risks $100, then his profit from the transaction must be at least $300 (300:100 is the same as 3:1). If for some reason such a ratio cannot be achieved, then it is better to refuse the deal.
FOMO - Analysis from a Trading PsychologistFOMO.
Fear of Missing Out.
I can feel FOMO’s omnipresence in the trading world right now. We have seen some large career changing moves in Commodities & Futures as of late. Extend the lookback time a few years and the Cryptocurrency universe is surely included.
I decided to turn to my favorite trading psychologists, Brett Steenbarger,PhD. Brett has been in the trading game since the late 1970’s and his Nov 21’ speech on Trading FOMO piqued my interest. Below is a summary of what I took away from it, and some preventative ailments attributed to Brett’s psychological evidence-based outcomes.
FOMO is a P&L Killer! At its core FOMO is a fear. The problem is not that we missed the trade, it’s that our brains perceive that missed trade as a threat to our future, our success, our reputation. When humans are afraid of something, or see a threat, it produces anxiety. This fear takes blood away from the part of the brain where higher level thinking takes place and sends it to the part that impulsive thinking lives. There WILL be poor decision making under the influence of anxiety. The key to solving this issue is to take the threat out of the situation.
Solutions:
Taking a break from the screen is healthy but it is not a long-term fix. Brett explains how to train in exposure therapy (His presentation explains this in greater depth.) Slow breathing and visualization are more adept at battling FOMO. If you can visualize a calming place or situation and pair it with that fear, daily practice and dedication will prevent blood flow to the impulse zone. Gradually, when FOMO comes around, you will experience feelings of safety. Combined with expanding your time of reference, understanding, and acknowledging FOMO will make those events look like potholes on a long highway.
Missing a trade is unfortunate, but will it end my career? No. Will buying at the top, and then being so irate that I add to a losing trade and forgo stop orders end my career? It might. Will I be thinking clearly on my next trade with a fresh mistake permeating my thoughts? No.
The best motivation to avoid FOMO is to develop emotional hate towards the negative consequences of it. In the fullness of time, the desire to avoid negative outcomes becomes self-reinforcing with repetition and therefore cements as an internal priority. This works across the board in other life scenarios as well.
Tapping into other motivations besides P&L is one that really hit home with me as well. Brett dives into the desire to learn and grow as a greater motivator than just P&L alone. This addition will create a dual purpose to each trade. You are diversifying your outcome! If you come away from a trade with a negative P&L, but with a positive learning experience, you are building your Learning Capital. With time under this premise, your Learning Capital will be indistinguishable from your monetary statement.
Instead of tying your value as a trader strictly to your P&L, tie your value to your consistency and risk management. The magnitude of your P&L is nothing without consistency. Risk management begets larger positions, lower drawdowns, and an overall better quality of work life.
A Day comes with myriad experiences. Create a diversified life with people and activities that fulfill you outside of trading and your trading will improve. Reminding yourself daily of this is important.
Tying all of this together is the practice of keeping a daily ABCD Journal.
A - Activating Event – What got you upset? - Missing the trade in this case.
B - Beliefs about the event – Little voice in your head – Why is this upsetting to you? “Other people are getting ahead of me, I’m not as good as they are”
C - Consequences from the event – How does negative thinking affect your subsequent trading? I’m so upset about missing the opportunity I go ahead and miss the next one!
Becoming proficient in ABC will allow you to recognize the triggering event in real time. You begin to identify the negative beliefs and become a pro at understanding the magnitude of the consequences. You can change the pattern of your behavior because the consequences are so front and center.
D - Disputation- You are talking back at that negative thinking. How would you talk to someone you care about who is in that situation? Mentoring a teammate that missed a big play involves constructively lifting them up and helping them learn from it with a comforting tone. You aren’t going to beat them up.
I welcome all feedback and am also here if you want to chat about a particular experience. Happy Trading!
-Paul Wankmueller, CMT
Blue Line Futures Director of Content & Education
Your strategy will inevitably go through a Drawdown!Your strategy will inevitably go through a Drawdown. And there's nothing you can do about it to stop that. However, you can learn how to survive it!
Today I will give you actionable steps, that you can use for the next time the market hit your strategy and you feel that everything is going wrong.
Let's start with an idea of what a drawdown is, and why drawdowns happen.
There are an infinite amount of trading strategies and tools that people use to trade and take advantage of specific market conditions.
Some traders are better in trending markets, they trade breakouts. Other traders feel more comfortable in ranging markets, where they trade quick reversals on key levels.
The Math is simple here. Trending strategies will have a poor performance on ranging markets, while reversal strategies will have a poor performance on trending markets.
Detecting the beginning and end of trending cycles or ranging cycles, is blurry. So, if you agree with that, as I do, you can expect your strategy to start failing at some point. And that's the beginning of the drawdown. (This is true for the best traders in the world, as for the worst traders in the world. Nobody scape drawdowns, the quickest you accept this, the faster you can learn how to handle them properly)
So let's start by saying that drawdowns are situations where your strategy experiences a lasting decline in performance, even if you are doing everything perfectly. Drawdowns, happen because strategies are made to take advantage of specific anomalies that can be found in one part of the market cycle, and when that market cycle finishes, or changes, your strategies become less accurate.
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It's important that you become aware of the Psychological consequences of Draw Downs , so you can have a countermeasure for this. Let's take a look at the most common ones:
1) Decrease in confidence (constant negative thoughts about your system)
2) Fear of entering the next trade.
3) Thinking about changing things in your strategy (deviations from the original plan)
4) Thinking about modifying the risk you are using to cover losses quicker.
5) Ceasing your trading execution, and looking for a new strategy.
ALL THESE ITEMS, are the main situations you may start feeling when going through a drawdown. IF you are going through that, it's important that you understand that you are under a delicate emotional state, where your confidence is low, and you are prone to make more emotional decisions that 99% of the time, tend to increase the drawdown.
So the way we handle drawdowns is by having logical and systematic processes in place instead of emotional ones.
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Here you have actionable steps to handle drawdowns:
STEP 1 : You handle drawdowns by getting ready before they happen, not when they are happening.
This is true for almost all disciplines, not only for trading. Airplanes have clear plans in case things start going wrong, instead of figuring out the problem at the moment, pilots go to the manual book, and use the template for this situation, plus the fact that they trained those situations several times in simulations.
So, if you want to understand what a drawdown situation looks like in your strategy, you MUST go into the past, and when I say this, I'm not saying making a 3 week backtest. You need to go as far as you can in the past, to find that exact moment where your strategy is not working as expected.
How many consecutive stop losses do I have? 3? 5? 15? 20?
How long does this period last until everything goes on track again? 1 month? 3 months? or a year?
These are the kind of answers you are trying to solve. When doing a backtest you are trying to understand two things. The first one is if your strategy has an edge. The second one is how hard you get hit when things go wrong!
STEP 2: Work your risk management around the stats of your system. Imagine we reach the following conclusion "I have a system, that executes 10 setups per month" and the worst-case scenario I have found is 20 consecutive stop losses during 2 months. What I would personally assume is that 20 consecutive stop losses can be 30. So how much capital percentage should I risk on this system so I don't get knocked out if this TERRIBLE scenario happens.
The answer for me would be 1% per setup. Under the assumption of this unique scenario, I would be 30% down, which is something acceptable, compared to the drawdown of conventional investment vehicles like S&P500 where we observed those kinds of declines, in the last years. The main point here is that you need to adapt the risk you are using on the strategy, to the stats of it, and your risk tolerance.
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Let's recap the key aspects of this post.
1) Drawdowns are inevitable, your strategy will be hit by this scenario eventually.
2) Drawdowns cause an emotional disturbance and are the main reason why people make really bad decisions.
3) We handle drawdowns by getting ready in advance. Through backtest, we can understand the edge of our strategy and the worst-case scenarios.
4) We adapt the risk of our strategy, by considering a terrible scenario, like 30 consecutive losses.
This will not eliminate the feeling during this period, but it will bring you a work frame to make logical decisions based on data, instead of emotions. Implementing this type of thinking will make your strategy more robust, it will help you go through these situations, and most importantly it will protect you from making stupid things with a strategy that has an edge, and actually works!
Thanks for reading!
How I'm setting stop losses on USDJPY using IchimokuIn my recent post I indicated that I am long USDJPY due to the higher timeframe bullish trend:
A question that traders often ask is "how do I set a stop-loss when the market is moving up?". This applies if you are looking to enter your first trade in the trend, or if you want to trail a stop-loss on an existing order. The answer is simple when you use Ichimoku.
Briefly, Ichimoku lines indicate the "market equilibrium" over various timeframes. There are three equilibrium lines (or "Han-ne" lines in Japanese). These are:
1. Tenkan-Sen - 9 periods / Short-term equilibrium (yellow on my chart)
2. Kijun-Sen - 26 periods / Medium-term equilibrium (red on my chart)
3. Senko Span B - 52 periods / Long-term equilibrium (red kumo cloud line on my chart)
A Han-ne line is created by finding the midpoint of the highest high and lowest low within the set number of periods. If price is above a Han-ne line, it is said to be bullish in that timeframe, and the opposite for bearish. There is a lot more to learn about Han-ne lines and the meaning of the equilibrium, but for our purposes here, understand that these lines tell you the point where buyers and sellers meet.
One of the reasons we know that USDJPY is bullish is because the Han-ne lines are angled up on the higher timeframes (4H and 1D). This means that the point at which buyers and sellers meet is increasing. In other words: we are trending up!
Now: the secret for setting your stop-loss. If the Han-ne line tells us where the equilibrium is over the short/medium/long term, periods where the line remains flat are significant. If a Han-ne line, especially Kijun-Sen or Senko Span B, remains flat for multiple periods, it means that midprice has been established by many buyers and sellers.
We can use these flat Han-ne lines as:
1. Support/resistance
2. Zones to place stop-loss orders
As I look at a pair like USDJPY trending up, I am zooming into the lower timeframes (think: 15m or 30m) and looking for flat Han-ne lines. If I see several "zones" forming I can place my stop-loss just near the other side of that zone. This means I can receive adequate protection, but also know that if the price does clear that zone and hit my order, a reversal or pullback is likely happening and it will be a good time to exit anyway.
We've already seen a flat Kijun-Sen line act as support on the 15m chart:
You can use this concept for any pair, currency, stock, crypto, etc. The secret is to look for flat lines and use these as your support/resistance levels and stop-loss zones.
Happy trading!