Forex Peace Army Education>

[Pharaoh]

If you are manually entering based on your indicators, but the market usually goes against your direction of entry before heading in the "right" direction, try using a limit order.

I'm not sure what indicators you use or what trading platform you have, but I'll try to give an example anyway. (Never let lack of information stand in the way of wild speculation - ha ha!)

Let's say that MurpheySystem1 is good for predicting a 50 pip moves, but that 6 times out of 10, there's a 25-35 pip pullback in price before it moves in the predicted direction.

If so, then use limit orders with entry set to 20 pips against the direction you are trading. If MurpheySystem1 says to go long with a 50 pip target, then place a buy limit order 20 pips below the current price. This will have 1 disadvantage and 3 advantages. The disadvantage is that price might only fall 19 pips (or not fall at all), then would zoom off to hit that +50 take profit level leaving you out of the trade. The advantages are that you should be able to set your stoploss closer (reducing your risk), that if things to work in your favor, you'll gain 70 pips instead of 50, and that pending orders are much less likely to encounter slippage.

[murpheytrader]

awesome advices! I’ll try to find out that system but I couldn’t. Anyway I’m not that sure of using the stop limit, it makes me lose some pips, maybe the spread. Sometimes it starts going up and I prefer to stop watching how many pips I could have won. I’d think about stop limits. Kevin

[Janethjack]

that is what we call a scalping strategy. when a trader doesn’t place tp and sl, he needs to be in the front of the pc screen. Leaving an order without it, is too risky in high volatile times as these

[murpheytrader]

I just read about expert advisors and I guess it would be really useful placing tp, sl and tools you use to trade. Check your platform and usually you get some trials or examples. Check how it works

[Pharaoh]

No matter what your trading method, always place a stoploss. Even if you are glued to your screen, there's always a chance that you could lose your connection.

If you are worried about your broker stop hunting, place an "emergency stoploss" 50 pips or so below where you plan to exit manually. At least this way you won't get wiped out if price goes badly against you when you have to step away from your computer for a few moments to clean up where one of your psychotic cats just barfed up her breakfast again.

[J.B. Blank]

Originally Posted by bygolly

Limit your risk (this was attributed to a posting by the Elliott Wave group, however, I was not able to confirm)

If you risk 2% – you will wipe out as soon as you have 50 consecutive losing trades – 1 chance in 1,125,899,906,842,620 or about a BILLION!

Uh, that's a LOT more than 1 chance in a billion! That's slightly better than 1 chance in a quadrillion.

[moonstar]

So, I have a pip dream. (har har)

I want to make money on forex and start with a deposit of $25. Now I know, the road may be slow, but with $25, I can afford to start the road a few times and learn a few things along the way. (and yes, I can see you rolling your eyes)

Thanks Pharaoh for the great rundown on risk and money management, which put together a lot of things I had read in one coherent place. There is another good article on babypips: http://www.babypips.com/school/everage_the_killer.html

Anyway, I liked how Pharaoh translated it back into cash in margin account. That helped a lot to clarify things.

So, my question is this: where can I trade nanolots? And using a broker that supports MT or some programming API.


From my current poking around, it seems a stop loss of 25 is somewhat reasonable. Preuming $0.01 a pip, this is a $0.25 risk, or 1%. So, I *need* to trade nanolots, or else I am gambling. (and yes, I do know that with, say, a 10% monthly return, it will be 2 years before I make $250 and can trade bigger lots with less risk - but perhaps it takes that long to learn?)

Or is micro the only thing on offer? Meaning a $2.50 risk, or 10%. In this case, I would be wise to save up 10 $25s and deposit $250, thus keeping my risk at 1% of my account.

Or do I let caution fly, and let margin call by my risk management on a $25 account? (ie, keep $250 margin in a regular bank account) I'm guessing this is a bad idea because brokers love to grab your money on margin call and it is more brutal than pip drop (you just have to fall below the minimum margin % requirement).

Any ideas/opinions/pointers greatly appreciated!

[moonstar]

My post has not been approved yet, otherwise I'd edit it. I did some googling I found Oanda and InterbankFX will go to nanolots. Oanda do as low as you like, but sadly, no Metatrader and very expensive API rates.

Arrgh! InterbankFX says : We do not currently accept customers from Nigeria, Korea, or British Columbia, Canada. How did British Columbia, Canada join the likes of Nigeria! *sigh*

So, some more digging and it appears

FXOpen InstaForex and LiteForex all offer nano lots ($100 lots).... now to check the ratings, but I guess I can't expect much. Anyone who'd take a dubious British Columbian must be dubious themselves...

[moonstar]

anyway, for anyone interested, i found my solution. i can use FXCM micro using a COM based API to their trader platform called Order2Go.

[elah024]

hi there!

your advices in most of your posts are really great and helpful. I'm sure we can gain a lot of tips from it. thanks for that!