we are talking about personal account, not institutional account. lets assume he has a 100k account, 1 lot position with 100 tick against him, with 10 lots average down at major reversal point, he might only take 2k max unrealized loss before he can exit with good profit. that's nothing for him. the key is whether you have the ability to identify the major reversal point/area. only add big position at that point/area.
riiiiiiiiiiiight... up until the very day of a 1,000 tick straight-trend move, which happens more often than any average-down trader's career will span in CL
for an experienced trader, you can always get early warning sign from either chart or your strategy system for big move. easy to be solved.
Ouch! Just came back from the toilet (I'll spare you the details) to see that huge spike in gold... Don't know what that's about, but... sim long .23 (shame I couldn't pull the trigger live way lower ) :29 stop to be and add at .33 and stop to be at avg. .28 :31 stopped out at be. Damn - not very focused today, wandering around after not being able to bring myself to pull the trigger at .70-ish first and on the mini-pullback to .85 after it broke that small range at the previous LOD. Edit: Go get'em, Blox!
No one knows what will happen next. A shock event can run CL several points before your ability or any stop you may have in place kicks in to protect you. If you're leveraged because of averaging a position because you "know" price will eventually retrace somewhere "hereabouts", and a shock event changes everything, then your account is toast. I know averaging at extremes can work, because I tested it in sim ad nauseum. But I finally asked myself why take all that heat, when I could be enjoying it as profit if I traded what price was telling me? I'll take small losses in order to make greater gains any day. A 40% win rate can provide you with consistent excellent profitability day after day if you trade price action. I've been proving that to myself for several months now and you can look at any chart in any time frame and prove it to yourself as well. I started my day with a losing trade and am now sitting on 84 ticks profit. All pure price action.
adding to my 1 remaining short at 82.15. Pretty triangle is forming it's either gonna break up or down. Dollar found support at s2 so my guess is down. Unless im just looking through my bear colored glasses. Both will be stopped out at 82.475
i guess we are talking about his trading style, not our individual trading style. i have seen he took big heat and got big amazing gain in past, that's the scope i discussed here and that's the reason i called him a maestro.