General rule: I stop buying when the equity of my account get to 80%. Note, this dosn't mean I've had a loss, remember it takes $200 dollars to hold a 10K possition. Here's the rule I live by. When the signal are right, in a account that has $10K in it. I'll by 10K block of a pair at a time. I check the markets twice a day. Once in the morning, once in the evening. I spend about 30 min in all tradding everytday. And I avoid trading on Sunday. Taken when the previous post, one can figure out my whole strategy. It's pretty boring, but over time it seems to work for me. As far as stop losses. I don't use them. I did in the beginning. I've found out that with lost of small possitions, and intrest on my side, I can hold out for the next rally. Even if that rally only get me to a break even point. Therefore, my trades have gone as long as 1 week to 3 months. Though, with my leverage, I can go as long as year mentally with a lossing possition. But that dosn't mean that I'm not trading within that pair. Also, I trade all 17 pairs that FXCM offers. I like to spread out my money as much as I can. Though, I"ve found at the most, I'v only held about 6 differrent pairs at one time. One thing to note with this strategy. At the end of the year when you print out your account statement for taxes, you'll probally chew through a ream or two of paper.
Month.............Interest...............P/L December .......1081.3211..........11173.44 Updated to include December. Cheers.
wow, ivan, that is quite a encouraging number, i'm becoming interested in 4X too now, could you shed a light on what method you used to achieve this? great job, wish you even better in 2006!
Heh so you got interested in FX after seeing another trader's success? Good luck to you. Ivan> Nice job!
Who said that? I certainly didn't. I still have an unrealized loss position, though it is less than before.
I am just trying to compare what I believe is oranges to oranges - those are two numbers brought up by you for the month of december.
The only thing I said about December was the following: Right now, my unrealized P+L is -1,200 ish... Throughout december, I've closed trades, and that is where the 11 number comes in. Realized p+l. So I don't really understand what exactly you're comparing. If I close everything I have open right now, I'd lose about 1,200 dollars. But I don't close them because they've not hit my stop loss.
Skalpz based his entire persona upon differentiating between realized and unrealized p/l. Word to the wise: mark to market and move on.
So you're comparing me to Skalpz now because I was trying to explain the difference to someone unable to grasp it. That's nice. You know what? The more I post on this board, the more I realize that it is stupid and worthless to do so. EVERYONE who plays the market has an unrealized p+l. It represents positions simply not closed yet. If my unrealized p+l was -20,000 or something, you could make a stupid comment like you did. But it's not. It just represents a few positions that are in the negative and have not hit the stop loss yet. What am I supposed to do? Close them just because you want me to ignore that?