power rarely goes out, if it does i could lose money, but thats the cost of doing business. thank god for wireless internet as well, so yes i do have a back up. i could set stops if i wanted about 8 or 9 pips below the entrance point, but its not worth the effort because if it was a bad trade i'm usually out of it with a 2 or 4 pip loss.
Nice encouragement Something tells me you've never traded the Forex market or have been burned by it.
I think forex may be a very good place to learn trading. You can open up an account for a few hundred dollars and trade 1000 at a time and pick up invaluable experience for a tiny fraction of what it would cost you in stocks or futures and from what I can see they behave very similiar to the futures market. No doubt you will take the worst of it from your broker but youre still talking a small amount of money. I just think the live trading is better than papertrading.
Still, stuff happens. Anyway, 2 - 4 pips and you get out? What do you trade? That happens in about 3 seconds. If I set a stop at 2-4 (real or mental) I would just be paying commissions and selling for less than I buy. I like to use 8-11 pips and even then I get stopped out too much. (Hence, I am here... Seriously, I don't believe you do this. That means you pick the absolute bottom of every trade. - If I can't do that, nobody can! hahahah Tell me your secrete please.
thats a strategy based on a 1 min chart with confirmation on the trend from longer charts. i'm usually looking for 5-10 pip gains. i'm still working on other things tho without using the stomach churning 1 min charts.
Sounds like we may have a lot in common but still you need more room than that. The way I see it is with said strategy it is fair to risk 8-10 pips to capture the same amount. Nonetheless, I do basically the same thing so feel free to pm if you would like to have a more in depth convo.
Focus on developing long-term forex strategies. Short-term trading is a zero sum game, and 80% of all forex traders blow up their first account. Here are some books that could help: http://www.fxstreet.com/education/forex-books/books/#FS
For those of us with no patience to wait in the long term what do you suggest? If 80% blow out their account, that means 20% do not.