Sunday, August 15, 2010

Trading Limitation, My Important Discovery

As a day trader, it's very necessary not to just have a max daily loss limit, but also a Number Of Trade. I realized this very important thing this week.
I suggested that profit target per trade the same or bigger than max daily losses.

Example :
- 5 trades per day with $100 Stop Loss per trade = $500 max losses per day
- Every trade Profit target = $500 with Trailing Stop at Break Even
- If $500 on 1 trade achieved, then the next trade is lowering the target. Assumed that today's big move already happened.

a. Now, if I made $500 on first trade, then the worst day for today will be plus $100
(1 trade = +$500, 4 trade losses = -$400).
b. If all my 5 trades = loss, my losses will be $500.
c. If I can get $500 on first trade, $300 on second trade, then the worst could happen today will be $500 profit.

This is exactly what I was looking for (Thanks to MBAGearHead for showing his trade management :) ) Now all af you may think that Risk Reward Ratio 5:1 is crazy but it's reasonable if applying like this:
20% winning ratio of 5:1 RR ratio (Primary Profit Target)
30% winning ratio of 3:1 RR ratio (Trail To $100 Profit Target Minimum)
50% winning ratio of 2:1 RR ratio (Trail to Break Even)
Then this is what'll happened
20% of the time I'll reach $500
30% of the time I'll reach $100
50% of the time I'll reach $0
50% of the time I'll losed -$100

In 100 trades, it will be like this:
10 times x $500 = $5000
15 times x $100 = $1500
25 times x $0 = $0
50 times x-$100 =-$5000
Total = $1500 profit in 100 trades

It's lesser than just taking ever 2:1 Profit Taking which can profit $5000, but market is not a fixed job income. You may want profit as high as it can when there's opportunity and loss as low as it can when there's quiet market.

Oh and by the way, it's already worth 15 points TF per month. That's very good business plan I must say.

If some of you suggest taking the 2:1 ratio, that's not gonna happen. Market is unique. Profit used for windshileding the bad day. On a good day, you may want profit as high as it can. In a bad day you may want losses as low as it can. That's how the trade is. You can't expect small profit every day. Unless you want a big loss that wipe out 2 weeks worth of trading in 2 days, suit yourself :)

2 comments:

  1. That's a very good probability calculation, thank you for sharing....

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  2. Hi FFXD,
    Tq for visiting. Hope it's useful for you :)

    ReplyDelete