What is the ideal risk to reward ratio successful traders are using. When i use 1:2, market gives me 1:3 but i end up taking 1:2. Then next time i use 1:3, market gives me only 1:2 and i end up taking a loss.
Look up positive expectancy, this is much more important. http://www.stator-afm.com/positive-expectancy.html
Longer-term trading should have a higher ratio. Shorter-term trading can have a lower ratio combined with higher trading frequency to maintain profitability.
I don't recommend using them unless you have in-depth statistics that tells you what type of ratio to use and when you should be using a different ratio for different types of market price action. For example, maybe your trade signal statistics for the morning trading session shows that you should be using a 1:3 ratio. However, maybe your trade signal statistics for the afternoon trading session shows that you should be using only a 1:2 ratio. Throw in some volatility analysis for different types of volatility market conditions... You could be using a completely different ratio for the morning and afternoon trading session. The worst thing you can do is to randomly select a ratio without doing any type of statistical analysis to determine what's suitable for your particular trading signal. By the way, my trading improved dramatically when I stopped using risk to reward ratios. Mark (a.k.a. NihabaAshi) Japanese Candlestick term