Ways to achieve greater profits
It's not necessary to use heavy positions or hold onto trades in order to achieve greater profits. I want to emphasize the dangers of these two approaches again. Heavy positions - the most direct manifestation of this in the market is that even if you are in a relatively good position, once you are stopped out, the heavy position can lead to significant losses. Of course, it must be acknowledged that if you can correctly predict the direction, it can also bring significant returns.
However, when weighing the two approaches, preserving capital should always be the first principle. Holding onto trades is even riskier. Once you encounter a one-way market, if you keep adding to your position, the result will be huge losses or even blowing up your account. Therefore, both approaches are not advisable.
The correct approach is twofold. First, operate in markets with larger formations, using staged profit-taking and setting trailing stops to take advantage of greater market space with zero risk. By holding for the long term, you can maximize profits.
Second, as the market continues to move, add to your position appropriately in situations where you already have profits, and then set stop-loss orders to protect your capital. For example, if you sell at the upper bound and the market later falls below the lower bound, the entire formation will turn downward.
We understand that there is still a lot of room for the market to run, so if you have profits from your sell order at the upper bound and the formation begins to turn downward, you can use additional orders and stop-loss orders to hold onto the position with zero risk, thereby maximizing profits.
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Profits
Two methods to ensure no loss of principal
There are only two ways to avoid losing capital: one is to have a small stop-loss space (reflected in the entry position), and the other is not to bet too much at once. For example, buying one lot with $10,000 can earn $1,000, and buying ten lots with $100,000 can earn $10,000. Although the probability is the same, the more you do, the more you earn, and the less you do, the less you earn. However, controlling losses should be the top priority. As discussed earlier, if you buy too many lots this time and get stopped out, it will result in a big loss, which violates the principle of capital preservation.
Some traders become increasingly greedy after making profits and then add more positions. A typical behavior is adding positions. For example, if you bought 10 lots at first and then made a profit in the expected direction, the trader would blame himself for not buying more at the beginning. Then, he would begin to imagine that the market would continue to move in the expected direction and invest most of his capital in this product, let alone any correct practices such as taking profits in batches.
After you add more positions, it means that the cost has changed. Once the market reverses slightly, you will go from being profitable to losing money. At this point, you panic, lose your ability to think, and greed slowly turns into hope. You hope that this is only temporary, but the losses increase every moment. Perhaps you will have some luck a few times, but it won't be long before there is a risk of a big loss or liquidation.
It is important to understand that becoming rich cannot be achieved by just one market movement, so don't be obsessed with this one time. Greed makes people forget about risk, and don't always imagine that the market will move in the expected direction, ignoring the risk of the opposite trend. This is the key to keeping your capital out of danger.
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Handling losses like a pro!Hey traders,
Ever wondered how some of the professional traders can lose tens of thousands of dollars and still not be phased? Well, today I am going to chat about how and why they have the ability to remain consistent and trust the process, and how you can do the same.
Enjoy!
Reminescence of a Scam Operator (ANTI SCAMMER GUIDE)Reminiscent of the roaring 1920s, the 2020 epidemic and the inability to work for many people brought an influx of new retail investors to the public market. Furthermore, the FED's decision to prop up the market by dropping interest rates combined with stimulus checks handed out by the U.S. government lured in even more investors who were hungry for profits. Although the market sensation also brought a rise of omnipresent scams across all trading platforms.
Lack of workforce, sophisticated methods, and automated bots often play into the hands of perpetrators who try to get ahead of the platform and its users. Therefore, we decided to write this concise article with the purpose of helping new investors to recognize good apples from bad ones.
The most common means of communication for criminals is to use private chat, public chat, comments, ideas, and headline references. Several examples of red flags are shown below.
RED FLAGS AND OTHER POINTS:
Asking for personal information and TradingView account information
One common tactic criminals use to exploit their victims is to ask for personal information or account information (login and password). This information should not be disclosed to anyone, including someone claiming to be a platform's employee/support (as these people tend to have access to this information).
Asking for trading account information
Another standard method bad actors use is asking for trading account information. On such occasions, a perpetrator asks for existing account information or requests a victim to create a new account; then, a perpetrator usually asks the victim to invest money into the account and let them use it in return for shared profits.
False promises
The third point probably accompanies every other point on our list. This point relates mainly to false promises about trading achievements, which often include statements about having a high win rate, high net worth, and an unbeatable trading system.
Financial gurus and lavish lifestyles
A high follower count and strong social media presence do not equal reliability. Perpetrators often portray lavish lifestyles across social media platforms to entice more people and trick them into buying a trading signal service or trading course (or any other service). The public image does not necessarily have to match a person's authentic lifestyle. Indeed, trading as a career is highly time-consuming and does not come with trading from a vicinity of a pool or ski resort; that is just public perception.
Trading signals and trading courses
Unfortunately, most of the time, trading signal services (for buy) lack performance and do not consider subscribers' risk tolerance and account sizes. In regard to trading courses, we hold a similarly low opinion of them as we think learning a skill to trade goes far beyond a few hours of any trading course.
Unrealistic win-rate claims
Most brokerages report that their retail clients lose about 50-90% of the initial capital, especially when trading CFDs. Therefore, we would like to put in perspective how realistic claims about a high win rate really are. Professional traders tend to peak at approximately a 50% win-rate over a consistent period. Thus, claims about a 90% or higher win rate are likely to be false.
Guaranteed moves and risk-free investments
Another tactic of scamming utilizes guaranteeing moves in the market. However, there is nothing like a guaranteed move since the market constantly changes and is influenced by complex factors.
These are just few points we included, however, we ask a public to share their own points in the comment section.
DISCLAIMER: This content serves solely educational purposes.
The Truth About Trade AccuracyA critical component relating to trading success is the relationship between your win percentage and your bottom line. Many new traders hold some extremely inaccurate views when it comes to what kind of win percentage is required to generate net profit, including the notion they need a 70% or higher win percentage to achieve success. This notion is wrong and misleading. The relationship between your win percentage, your risk management, and the profit you generate from each trade are intricately related.
The beauty of this post is that the backtest logic in our Olympus Cloud indicator showcases the concepts covered with real trades, which is shown under this post in the data section.
The Positive Win Percentage
A win percentage over 50% is regarded as a probable edge or edge. Yet, even with a 60% win rate, you can generate a net loss. How? If your average loss is $100, but you are in the habit of falling prey to your emotions and prematurely selling your winners so you only generate an average of $50 when you win, you will lose money regardless of your 60% win rate.
No trader goes into a trade thinking, “Hey, I’ll lose $100 if I’m wrong and I’ll make $50 if I’m correct.” Nevertheless, random wins of $75, $25, $60, $40, $90, and $10 will average out to $50 per win. No one purposely tries to win half of what they lose, but random trading combined with random emotions produces random results.
We all desire winning and making good profits when we take a trade, but as emotions come into play, things quickly change. You may take a trade that reaches $75 in profit and then decide the move looks gassed out, so you sell. On another trade, you might get scared by some volatility, or notice a resistance you neglected to spot initially and sell for $25 of profit. It is all too common to fall prey to your emotions and behave in a way you didn’t plan to. The irony is, that you will regard the $25 trade as a winner, and it will raise your trade accuracy.
Let’s look at a simple example:
Example: 100 total trades with 60% trade accuracy
60 winning trades at an average of $50 per win = $3,000
40 losing trades at an average of $100 per loss = $4,000
Net loss of $1,000
In the example above, your break-even point is a 67% win percentage for a whopping $50 in profit. With this type of random risk and profit management, any meaningful net profit requires a win percentage upwards of 75-80%.
The psychological damage of having a higher average loss than an average win is hard to quantify, but it’s easy to feel frustration when one loss wipes out two wins. While this sounds like common sense, many, many new traders fall into the habit of random profit management and find themselves in this undesirable situation. The same theory holds true even if you let your winners play out, but you also let your losses escalate and take a few big hits to your account. In either scenario, your 60% win rate means nothing.
The Negative Win Percentage
In the case of a negative win percentage, you can produce a net profit even if you are correct less than 50% of the time. In this scenario, your advantage over the market is getting into trades that consistently provide large gains when you win, and by letting those winners play out fully. Furthermore, you can’t hesitate to cut your losses and keep your drawdown controlled. With this kind of win rate, you must not sell early or your entire business model falls apart. You must understand that the big winners will make up for any profit you leave on the table.
Let’s look at what happens if you are correct 40% of the time, but your average win is $100 and your average loss is $50:
Example: 100 total trades with 40% trade accuracy
40 winning trades at an average of $100 per win = $4,000
60 losing trades at an average of $50 per loss = $3,000
Net gain of $1,000
It is now clear that win percentage is not everything. You can make money even if you are correct on 40% of your trades as long as your average win is double your average loss. The smaller your average win compared to your average loss, the higher your accuracy must be to make a net profit.
Of course, if you can maintain a win percentage over 50% while also having proper risk and profit management you will end up far ahead.
Putting It Together
Clearly, the best approach is to combine a reasonable win percentage of over 50% with proper risk and profit management. You must consistently let your winners play out regardless of the emotions you feel in the moment and ensure you don’t take losses beyond a certain threshold. Furthermore, scaling out of trades – selling portions of your position as the market moves in your favor – will increase your accuracy and ease your mind. By dividing your position into two or three tranches you can lock in a certain amount of profit at predefined targets and then let the final portion ride out the trend with a trailing stop-loss.
Revisiting our example, let’s put these concepts together with a reasonable win percentage:
Example: 100 total trades with 55% trade accuracy
55 winning trades at an average of $100 per win = $5,500
45 losing trades at an average of $50 per loss = $2,250
Net gain of $3,250
Now, that’s what you want to see!
It’s more important you behave in a consistent manner and follow a predefined game plan than it is to have 80% trade accuracy. It is wise to strive for reasonable trade accuracy – 50% to 65% – and remain consistent in order to fulfill your trading potential.
After you have mastered your emotions with a consistent strategy, perhaps you can raise your win percentage to mythical values like 80%. As we have covered, though, such accuracy is not required for great trading results.
How to generate more profitsTrading requires entries similar to how a computer would enter positions, what I mean by this is entries should be so disciplined it hurts, when you are sitting there bored in the early hours of the morning and you take sloppy trades this has an effect on your results! you should create enough discipline to be able to trade a specific time frame when your entry and exit system provides better returns. Adding rules for confirmation will also lead to better entries, things such as a Baseline, what this will do is create a layer of the bike lock, now you never take buys below the baselines, meaning you no longer take reversals, your winrate will improve and your profits improve. For GBPUSD it is wise to trade over the London session and you can see just how much the pair moved over this session, your trades have a better chance at delivering profits in this zone. You may find your strategy works well in other timezones, and I suggest following the path, dont be restricted if it works elsewhere, but get some good backtest results.
BTC vs stock and investing in difficult timesDifficult times are coming
Since march 2020 when pandemic was accounced we saw many bad for economy decisions. There was no doubt that it will have negative impact. At the beginning bad sentiments were "flooded" with printed money as per tradingeconomics we can see money supply in the US increased 4 times between march and april 2020. Until now we can see effects in very high inflation in Europe and both Americas. South America however always had this problem :)
The war in the Ukraine will have negative impact for wheat supply to many countries in the Middle East and Africa. Other countries to save wheat supply for themselves will ban export. Ban on the Russian oil will increase prices in Europe even more. Probably in some countries we will see fire on the streets in the next year.
When LUNA crashed many people lost 100% of their savings because some invested 100% in one asset.
High inflation is pushing people to bad economical decisions. Some people invest in gold, other in BTC or real estate to save money from inflation. This is however creating the bubble. Many people bought houses in the past 2 years because of very cheap loans (0.05 interest rates). With higher interest rates they will be not able to pay loan, many houses will be sold unfinished.
In the difficult times the winners will be the people who wait with investment for right moment. In next years we will see a lot of bankruptcy.
Watch interest rates in the next months. Expected are further rises in many countries. War in the Ukraine and oil prices have significant role too.
How Much Can You Make Trading Forex?Mark Twain once said: “There are lies, damn lies and statistics”. People lie, numbers usually don’t, unless manipulated by liars. If you ask somebody trying to sell you a course or some other products related to the market, they’ll promise you 3x of your money in a week and convince you can start in couple days. Sounds too good to be true? Because it is.
One way to return to reality in the industry where everybody is showing off their gains and concealing loses is to look at other financial aspects of life (not in a self-diminishing way, but rather self-awaking).
Average General Doctors make 41.000$/year in UK. What makes you think you can make that much in a month with even a 100.000$ account?
Banks deposit interests are currently at low of 0.1-0.25%/year. This is self-explanatory as banks are perceived as one of the most conservative ways of keeping your money.
S&P500 averages around 9.4%/year. 47% of Americans have invested one way or another (pension funds and 401k’s) into S&P500 as a good balance between security and profitability. What do you think is the risk should be to make 25x of that in a year? Answer: 3.5-5% per trade.
Most of the market participants don't risk more than 1%/trade. Why wouldn’t they risk 5% per trade for more gains? Answer: you’ll get wiped out in couple trades :/
Becoming a lawyer takes 7 years on average. Why would somebody think that watching 2 videos on YouTube or reading 7 articles is enough to place a trade? Answer: Here, unfortunately, some brokers and traders try to convince newbies, in order to take advantage of them quickly. However, trust us, trading is no different than other full-time skills you have to acquire over long periods of time.
Leading investment funds experience ROI drops every 3.4 months. Would you still think profitability 12/12 months a year is realistic? Answer: It is not.
Bottom Line: Trading Forex is an interesting and rewarding way of making money, but the truth is even the best traders don’t usually make more than 5-15% a month on average. On the other hand, %s don’t matter. What matters is your personal demands! If you need to make 1000$ as a side income to add more comfortability to your life a 10.000-20.000$ account with a proper trading plan should do the job. If you’re trying to become financially independent do the math accordingly 😊
Oh and also, if somebody tries to tell you something marked red in the Myths section, respectfully, stay away from them! (RUN!)
10 TIPS TO BECOME A PROFITABLE TRADERThe tips that I am about to give you can completely change your results as a trader and it can help you to start becoming a PROFITABLE TRADER or if you already is a profitable trader it can help you to increase your "win rate".
1 - Never blindly trust in the Moving Averages or any other indicator that you have set in your chart, it only takes a big spike on Bitcoin's price, or a lack of attention of your part to a bigger trend for you to be stoped in your trade.
2 - Always check your Moving Averages and other indicators in different time frames (1H, 4H, 1D, 1W), different time frames tell different stories.
3 - Identify the trend (Up, Down, Consolidation). Always look for the bigger picture.
4 - When all the MA in different time frames are giving you the same direction it's a positive sign for you to trade in the direction of that trend (but that's not the only way to use it and you need to take other indicators in consideration).
5 - DON'T EVER get in a trade just because the price went up or down 10% - 100%, first see the bigger picture (1M, 1W, 1D, 4H), then check your other indicators. Not doing it will make you lose a lot of money (constantly).
6 - Don't "FOMO" is your trades, that will make you lose a lot of money, patience is one of the most important attributes to become a profitable trader.
7 - ALWAYS check the Bitcoin chart before getting in a trade, if Bitcoin is close to a strong support and end up not holding on it and the price goes down it's very likely that other pairs of coins will go down as well.
8 - Don't get in trades that you are not sure about it, it's not worth it, sometimes you maybe right, but in the long term you will not be a profitable trader.
9 - You need to know the "Why" you are getting in that trade, and the "When" (exact moment that you will get in or out of the trade).
10 - You don't need to get into every single trade opportunity that you see, it's better to trade less with more quality trades than to trade a lot but making poor trading decisions.
The tips above are simple to understand and to apply and for some can sound really easy and common but unfortunately a lot of Traders are not practicing it or are not aware of it and not following this simple tips can lead you to failure really fast.
You will not necessarily become a profitable trader just by following this tips, but learnings and applying this tips is the beginning to a glorious path!
I'm using ADA/USDT as an example, the intent is not to predict if the price will go up or not, if the price goes 100% up or down tomorrow it doesn't make any difference. The purpose of the post is to open your eyes to see the big picture of things, to see that sometimes some indicators if not used correctly are not very helpful to our trades, to identify a trend despite the spikes of price, to understand that there are several thinks to be taken in consideration before getting in a trade, is for you to understand that patience is a key aspect to our success. My desire is that you understand that you need to be meticulous in all your analysis, trade less, win more.
The art and math of profit taking in stocksOne of the most common questions from new traders is "when should I take profits?" There is only one wrong answer... that is to NOT have a plan!
I personally take off 75% of my position at a 3:1 Reward Risk Ratio target. The reason I do this is to give my strategy a mathematical edge when dealing with winners, losers, and in between.
DO YOU NEED INDICATORS?SAVE THIS!
I recomand you to trade with price action and yes to use indicators only when you need a second validations that you did your analysis very good.
I have to tell you that I use indicators when I trade ,and here i'm talking about Fibonacci Retracement and Ichimoku Cloud.
But most important thing is to have confirmations before going in to a trade.
Trade smart!And make money!
Proving Your Trading System with BacktestingWouldn’t it be great to see the future? To see where turning points in price will occur with a high degree of accuracy? To see if a trading system that you developed or bought or learned actually works? Well, you can, with a method called BACKTESTING.
Backtesting performs three important functions:
1: It helps you IDENTIFY the reliability / win rate of your trading system over time.
2: It helps develop and reinforce the muscle memory you need to EXECUTE opportunities in your trading strategy
3: It helps you continually REFINE / improve your strategy as you observe it work against price action, ultimately increasing your "hit rate" as a professional trader.
The first requirement of a trading system is that it works via RULES. There are no 'hunches' in the market... the market has *specific* behavior patterns and our job as traders is to recognize those patterns and *capitalize* on them.
Backtesting has three important requirements:
The first requirement is that your trading platform supports backtesting. Can you go back "x" amount of time and look at the timeframe(s) you need to make the decisions you would have made if you were "in the moment" in an efficient manner in order for you to simulate hundreds of trade setups?
The second requirement is that *you* are willing to put the energy and work into testing your trading system within an inch of its life before you risk a single penny of your trading capital. You need to know WHEN the system works, WHERE the system fails, and WHY the system worked and failed when it did, and that takes hundreds (if not thousands!) of simulated trades to do so.
As you are observing the system in action you will begin to "see" the patterns in a new light. It will become more and more intuitive and you will find opportunities to 'tweak' the system as you go along. You will identify patterns when trades fail and stop trading that pattern. You will see opportunities that got away and you can 'tweak' your system to take advantage of those opportunities. Most importantly, you will see whether the system even works reliably at all and ditch it if it doesn't. It may be frustrating to decide to do so, but the good news is you will not have lost a single penny trading a faulty system to begin with!
TRACKING YOUR TRADING SYSTEM
To track the accuracy of your trading system you will need to setup a spreadsheet that will record the important variables you want to track. For example, you may want to include the headers,
Asset / Date / Time In / Time Out / Long or Short / Reward to Risk Ratio / Gain or Loss / Account Balance
The "Reward to Risk Ratio" column is the most important. If you read my previous column, "Trade Like a Pirate" ...
... I discuss that you need to think in terms of Percent Risk per trade ("R") and not Dollars. This will show you how well your strategy works. For Example, if after tracking 100 trades you find out that your system has a 33% success rate, your account will grow by 1% for every three trades if you follow a minimum 3:1 Reward to Risk Ratio (3 -1 -1 = +1). If you find on average 6 trades per day, your account can potentially grow by 2% per day. Under the "Account Balance" column, if you add the trade's win/loss to your previous account balance you can determine how long it would take to get 'x' amount of money from where you started (or how long it will take and inferior system to lose it all as well!)
Testing your trading system also shows you how many opportunities present themselves per day / per hour and when the best time is to go 'fishing' for trades. Backtesting might tell you that you need to wake up 2 hours earlier (and go to bed 2 hours earlier) if you want to achieve the goal of replacing your car in 6 months. Or fire your boss in 24 months. Or pay off the mortgage in 3 years. Having a plan to *make* money should also include your plans on how and when you want to *spend* that money - how you will 'pay yourself'.
Socrates famously said “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Likewise the unexamined trading system is not worth putting your hard earned money into. The more you backtest your system, the more you will gain (or lose) confidence in the system which will ultimately determine the actions you will take.
Another happy by-product is that not only will you be able to refine your trading system, but you yourself will be continually refined in the fire of the market, exercising your mental muscles looking for opportunities that meet your particular trading system. For instance, by analyzing all my losing trades in my first batch of 100, I was able to identity a pattern in the formations common to all failing trades but not winning trades. I then modified my trading system to exclude trades which showed that pattern, increasing my success rate by 30% in the next 100 trades I tested with the new system. Not happy with that, I went through my losing trades from Round 2 and found another common pattern among them. Eliminating those, I modified my system and increased my success rate by yet another 20%.
Finding what works is often a product of finding out what doesn't work, and just stop doing that!
If you need advice on how to stop a bad habit, just listen to Bob Newhart:
www.youtube.com
Finally, just as any athlete will you tell you that you should "Warm Up" before performing any strenuous exercise, one thing my backtesting system has taught me is that I need to spend the first 30 minutes of my trading day "warming up" by finding all the opportunities that presented themselves in the Futures market during the overnight session and log them in my spreadsheet. Likewise at the end of the day I look at all opportunities I might have missed so I can reduce the likelihood of missing them again. The original title of this article was "Backtesting to the Future" which reflected this habit: by 'warming up' before actually trading I got my mind prepared to "see the opportunities" for the future day ahead, and I identified these patterns a lot better than I would have if I entered the pool cold and experienced the 'cramp' of a losing trade.
Admittedly, backtesting a highly visual concept, so I will be following up this article with a video showing an example of my backtesting strategy and how you can model my system to meet the needs of *your* system. As I love to say, "Good artists copy, great artists steal." Likewise, "Good traders copy... Great traders steal." I hope you can steal some of these ideas and have them help improve your trading game!
Share your thoughts and success below! As always, I'd love to hear if this has helped you become more confident and profitable in your trading. Like and Follow if you haven't already and you will be alerted to when I post the followup video!
Trade hard and trade well!