My forex aspirations

[Forexwatchman]

So the first part of your message mentions being off by 500 pips, which is way over any S/L I'd ever set. And I dont reccomend the advanced method of offseting your exposure with with cross hedges. That's not going to cut losses short and its just asking for a margin call. Remeber you shouldn't use more than 6 percent of your capital on all out standing orders (maybe 10% if your very sure of your analysis).
Besides that, I do have an answer for how I let profits run. One tool I find very successful is through the use of the Alligator. Now I actually use a different Alligator than the Bill Williams one, which combines 2 EMA's and a SMA. The trick is to not close out your trade until the red MA crosses back over the blue one. here's an example:

If you go to my profile you'll see an option to visit my homepage which is the website that I'm developing to help traders out just like this site helpped me out. I also go into much more detail on using this indicator.

 

[cowmadagan]

Thanks watchman.
Just for the information of any one who cares, this is what I do now, and is how I'm actually 100% sure of my exposure. I recently came up on a goldmine (nothing illegal or insider) which is getting to know the VP of a major bank who is head of the currency division. It turns out that they don't use set risk:yield ratios, they go off of support and resistance levels. Now, while retail traders completely lose all of their money between 80-90% of the time, banks are profitable 90% of the time. That's because they have inflow from depositors or exchangers (and their massive spread...)
That said, here's what I do. I use whatever indicators float my boat enough to make me believe in a direction. I then mentally place my stop just about 5-8 pips beyond the closest support or resistance level, paying attention to if I'm using a buy chart, a sell chart, or an average chart, and then put my profit taking at 2-3 times the stop loss value. If that seems unrealistic, I don't initiate the trade. The idea is that you should be able to be wrong two or more times and still make money on the one trade that was right.
As for risk now, it's 1% max. per trade without exception.