eToro – Forex Trading Forum

[Patrick]

Hi,

I am Patrick, one of the top 3 traders during the January competition in eToro. Although it looks good being in the top 3, like the rest of you I also suffer losses and am still learning.

But I think the most important thing we need to do everytime we loss is to look back and see what went wrong. My posts will focus on mistakes I tend to make during my 3 months of trading in eToro.

The #1 mistake is probably the hardest thing I am trying to overcome and that is not setting an exit point in the scenario when the trend goes against me. I believe this does not apply to me but to alot of people.

If you all notice, the worse losses we all have are when we refuse to acknowledge that the trend has reversed and its time to get out. Often we just hold our position and hope that the trend will reverse back to our favour. But most of the time it does not.

Frankly speaking, half of the time I still do not cut losses. Its probably a ego problem which I hope to either overcome or to find another way to soften it.

Does anyone else have this problem? How would you overcome it?

[KobiKan]

But the thing is, the trend will eventually change.
in etoro there is an automatic stop loss limit, but when do you usually get out? 20% loss? 50? loss? 80% loss?

I limit my losses at 50%, it's really annoying to see the the trend changes after you got out...

[Patrick]

Unfortunately for eToro, there is no 20% stop loss target. I only see a 50% stop loss setting where you can place. I sometime use it but often than not I don't use it. I use it if I need to be away from the screen for a long period of time.

Can't agreed more with you on the frustration of seeing the trend reverse the moment I get out. And because of this I frequently adopted an averaging policy (entering another position about 20 pips from first position) which sometimes work but at times I would lost more.

[mattyobi]

Hi Patrick howz the going? What u said applies almost to every body. There are times u see urself loosing but all of a suden the changes to ur favour n vis versa. What i do to avoid much loses is:
a. Avoid trading more than one currency combination at a time.
b. Watch the market situation for about minutes before placing orders.

This has been very helpful to me.

[Patrick]

Sadly it is so difficult to do cut loss especially when we keep harbouring thoughts that the market will turn around.

After so many trading the past 2 months, one thing is for sure... be very very very careful of your entry like what you said. Now I always look for overbought or oversold timing and then look out for doji or hammer (candlestick charting) to appear. Thats where I will go in for a short term trade to get a quick profit and run. If I feel the doji/hammer is not convincing, then I don't go in even if I am wrong. Its ok to be wrong rather than ended up really losing money...

[annet1983]

when i wa strying to change my stop loss etoro charge me 25 dollars for it extra, why?