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2. If so, why did you risk 75% of your trading account on one trade outcome, or if multiple trades then you need a max loss threshold to protect your account ?
I am surprised your SIM practice trading did not bring out these issues sooner. Perhaps you let the Sim trades run around freely (with no stop) until they produced a profit ?
This sounds like you have too large of a gap between your Sim trading and Live trading. It takes baby steps for most people to move from Sim to Live. A 75% loss of your trading account balance is clearly not in the category of "baby steps". So one of the things you will have to do during this regrouping period is figure out a way to move from Sim to Live in much smaller incremental steps with a lot less risk per trade and trading day.
I am not sure but if your account is failing so fast, I think there is an issue with your risk management. Don't you think so. I think you need to set stop loss on your account.
I fully agree. Stop losses are essential when trading futures. Learning how to take the bad with the good. You need to figure out your risk perimeters before you enter a trade. You can't enter in a trade blindly not knowing where the market is heading without a stop loss. It's pretty foolish.
thanks for the feedback. I kept practicing on my sim account until I felt I had the confidence to go live. My strategy was to wait until a candlestick was clear of the Bollinger band while at the same time the rsi broke the 70/30 mark. when this would happen I would go the other way on a 60 second forex option. If I lost the initial trade ($24) I would follow it in the same direction with $41, $70 etc. this was my money management strategy.....this is what cleaned me out I think.
I understand that a different level of emotion comes into it with real spondoolicks but I was pretty strict with strategy.....do you think its a bad strategy?
Yep. Unless 'certain' of being in a range day with band size set usefully for that ATR then it's just as likely to be a strong breakout and the bands will just expand with price, i.e. they don't ring bells at tops and bottoms. John Bollinger himself would agree. You need new h/l's that don't push outside the bands in these sort of cases for the bands to add any useful information.
Stay on sim until you have many hours of experience and consistent winning before going live. While on sim and learning, take the excellent free trading course (below) that includes psychology trance work to help you overcome the inevitable difference between sim and live.
And suggest to use 5 minute bars as minimum. One minute has far too much market noise to derail you/us.
Check out 'Al Brooks' and 'PATS Trading' price action offerings too. Lots of good journals here on futures.io (formerly BMT). Whatever you do, keep it simple and don't get lulled into adding indicators.
Isn't it all new and fun and fuzzy? So exciting....
Do you feel like you caught the bug?
Can you divide your forex lots up into smaller trade sizes?
I can with IBFX, but I can't with FXCM, but they are both small $100 and $1,000 lots are the lowest for each.
I ask because in the beginning risk is everything. Why is risk everything? Because you are risking real money but you are a beginning trader, right? If one is not a seasoned, educated, consistently profitable "real" trader then should that trader be using the tools of the trader who is all of these things? (real big money) I'm not saying sim only, but that is good if you can do it, I just can't because of the different psychology, but if you feel that you are a beginner, then why not use beginning money? I'm only pressing on this first issue of many because I didn't do it, do I wish I did? YES! Hear that foot kicking me? ...it's mine....
