To trail or not

• 06/14/2018 at 10:06 AM #73158
  ChrisNYE

  I have been analyzing trades and profits and have found that if I do not use a trading stop I make more money with a set profit target.

  I trail my stop when my trade moves X pips in my favor. I do not use any indicators top trail just pips moved.

  Your thoughts?

  

  ChrisNYE

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  06/14/2018 at 10:16 AM #73164
  Vonasi

  As with every idea and theory in this trading game it is your own personal job to analyse, test and prove or disprove the theory or idea. Once you have done that then you will have confidence moving forward of whether to use it in your trading or not.

  One person will say trailing stops are great, another will say fixed stops are great and another will say no stops are the way to go.

  You need to test,test,test and analyse, analyse analyse. Believe nothing until you have tested it and proven or dis-proven it yourself! 🙂

  

  Vonasi

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  06/14/2018 at 10:20 AM #73166
  ChrisNYE

  Could not of said it better myself. Great reply

  

  ChrisNYE

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  06/14/2018 at 11:47 AM #73185
  robertogozzi

  You want to become a trader to earn money, no matter how much, not to just have fun and reach breakeven!

  After studying and analyzing theories, then charts, you may end up finding a good setup to enter a trade, which means setting a stop loss and aiming at a target. Never quit that road! Sometimes you’ll meet great defeats, most time wins (if you don’t, well… keep studying), but once YOU are SURE about the correct setup and direction, stick to that plan!

  That’s my behaviour in manual trading.

  Automated trading is a bit different, because you are not watching the current chart, you are coding a strategy based on past data and want to make sure you end up earning some money without being able to correct a trade while it’s open, that’s why I use trailing stops for strategies, definitely!

   

  

  robertogozzi

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  06/14/2018 at 11:53 AM #73186
  ChrisNYE

  But do you use trailing stops in auto trading or for manual entries?

  

  ChrisNYE

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  06/14/2018 at 12:25 PM #73189
  jebus89

  Hey again Chris, you might want to also start 1 giant topic with all ur noob questions instead of starting 40 topics but anyways!

  There is no right or wrong answer to 90% of ur questions, all we try to do is make profits. Some systems might want a trailing from 1 pip in profit, some might wanna wait until ur 50 pips in profit until trail starts. Some dosnt like trailing at all.. U just gotta test with, and without and see whats best.

   

  edit personally i use trailing in say 90% of my systems because they are a bit better with the trailing than without. But it all depends on what ur trying to do.. if ur a trend follower a trailing stop might be very good. if ur a swing trade then it might be useless. if its a mean reverting strategy then trailing is prob not gonna help u

   

  Edit2: if ur wondering about stuff like this, spesificly things with “should i use this part of the code or not” the answer is 9/10 times: “Try it and see what happens”

  

  jebus89

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  06/14/2018 at 9:18 PM #73242
  ChrisNYE

  profit – that is what I am finding. It is best to put my ideas into the code and compare results. If my learning curve could of been shortened that would of been good. But as they say this is not easy and does take time.

  

  ChrisNYE

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  06/14/2018 at 10:32 PM #73252
  Vonasi

  ChrisNYE wrote:

  But as they say this is not easy and does take time.

  Professional traders for the big financial houses do not learn there trade in a few weeks. They go to university and then they get a position at a company and then they are mentored and they have the best data and the best computers and they work eight hours a day five days a week or more at it. So why should we expect to be successful so quickly by just putting an hour a night towards it and with no previous training and a basic and limited (compared to the pros) trading platform to use?

  I would say – expect it to take years to just get the hang of it. If your expectations are ‘I could get really rich really quickly doing this’ then reign them in and lower them to ‘this is going to be a tough journey and a lot of work so I need to enjoy the work and then at the end I might be in a position to not lose money!’

  

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