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Ok so seems that's the wrong way to look at it. Funny in a way that actually it's about damage limitation and that if anything the aim is to keep your account at least at break even and if you do better your doing well. That kind of says how hard it is.

Hi all, I know everyone will think differently on this. But i was thinking that if over the course of a year i could beat most passive investment funds, if we assume an average of 10% growth on investments annually, is that a good starting point. As an example: Investment: £10000 + 10% = £11000 year 1 Trading equivalent: Aim to equal or beat the investment i.e. the account must grow by >£1000 year 1. If the account were £10000 as in the investment then that's 10% account growth. If you can't even do this then there's no point trading?

Ok you've lost me on a lot of that but on Gann it is interesting how many stories there seem to be and given it wasn't that long ago, seems to have turned to a lot of chinese whispers. I kind of love all that order to the universe stuff. Anything that personally helps you make sense of the market and make sensible decisions can't be bad.

I see ok thanks for that. I have to admit to being very one dimensional up to now and am only using spread bets but as you know it's more about whether it works consistently more than anything else. Unrelated, but I know you're a big proponent of Gann's work. What do you make of the fact that apparently he was not a rich man and did not make his primarily living from trading but writing about it. Given hi is methods seem to work I don't really understand that. Unless he gave it all away of course.

Hi there, Sorry this question isn't specific to the thread really but i just wanted to ask, is everything you talk about in reference to spread bet trading? I.e. you're using leverage. I know IG have other instruments but i assume its mostly about spread betting.. And again i assume thats what most poeple are using when they're trading. Thanks

Hi all, anyone having an issue with set alerts not coming through. Been an issue for me for about a week now.

It's times like in the attached image, Oct 18-dec 18. The FTSE saw declines over an extended period of time. If your view even over the short term eg days is that the market will recover the falls, in this case that isn't true. Basically I think I need to learn how to short, as long trading isn't always the right thing to do.

Yeah i'm talking about trading. I think what i'm trying to figure out is how i'd fair in a crash given you don't really know its happened until its happened. I suspect i would lose money initially but then should be able to turn it around, assuming the market recovers of course. There are also whole years where markets go into reverse trends and again i guess i could trade those but its easier to see that's what's happening once it been and gone, at the time you might always be looking for the market to turn upwards and it keeps trending downwards.

Hi all, do you have any advice about what to do when a market crashes? I would assume a major crash was like what we saw last year when coronavirus broke. I only started looking into trading just after that happened so have not experienced one yet. Although was involved in the recovery which was a baptism of fire..I guess the question is, do you know when you're in a crash scenario? Of course the news might give clues but you don't know how far the market will fall so are you inevitably going to lose money at least in the short term? This especially if you're a long trader. I assume you don't just carry on trading as you normally would. Thanks for the advice.

Yeah got you thanks

Thanks THT, yes well i do estimate my possible returns by estimating a target price. Of course if the market doesn't get there then i've got several smaller rolling losses to deal with and i've not figured out yet how i make up for that if it turns out i'm wrong. I'm currently not using a trailing stop for simplicity and the sake of not adding another variable into the mix. However, I imagine that only having a binary situation where the market either hits the stop or target is too simplistic in a fluid market..

Thanks for the replies guys. I brought this up because i try to use tight stops, but due to inaccuracies in finding the turn point i need several attempts to get into a position. Sometimes the running loss can be 1x + ATR so i kind of wonder if the tight stops really make sense. If i'm not estimating the turn well then maybe i should just give it more room and use the multiple ATR approach. The problem i have with this is that i hate seeing the market go against me and with an ATR multiple obviously you're giving it room to move against your entry point by quite a lot, but in theory if it doesn't get to the stop you don't realise a loss whereas with tight stops i certainly do at least temporarily until the market moves sufficiently in my favour. Another comment on using ATR, you never move the stop down right? only up so if the ATR increases, you just ignore that until it reduces again and which point you start trailing the stop up/down again?

Hi all, Do you think this is a reasonable approach to setting a stop loss? I've read in various places including van k tharpe's book the idea of using multiples of ATR to set a stop loss whatever your time frame is. The issue for me is that 2-3x the ATR of a time period seems like a massive stop but perhaps to others its entirely reasonable? I tend to have my stop at the low but of course this is an obvious location that could be at risk.

Ok it's the partial closing of force open positions that I can't seem to do. I have 1 click dealing disabled in my account but I often use the IG phone app so I think it just doesn't have the functionality. All I've been able to do is net off with opposing position to partially close. Thanks for the help though.

Hi all, apologies not really a strategy question but this is where its likely to be answered. Not sure if anyone at ig answer on these forums. This might be a stupid question sorry. If I use the net off ticket type and then I partly close the position. How can I open other positions on the same market ideally net off without it closing the former position. Is the only option to switch to force open for subsequent positions? And this won't close the open position that was set as net off? Really I want the functionality of net off i.e. partial closing ability but to make each new position opened somehow independent and not linked to the first even if its a position in the opposite direction once the partial closure has been done. If a scenario is easier to understand, I have a short term goal, when I hit it I partially close and leave the remaining open for a longer term goal. However, now I can't open any more positions at least in the opposite direction net off as it will close the former position. Is there a way to use force open that achieves the same goal? Thanks for the advice

Good point.. but yes I think that does make more sense as the open/close is not so significant.

Hi all, just wondering whether open/closing prices are more important for finding support/resistance levels or are the wicks as important? Depending on the market the high/lows of a period can make a considerable difference to where you might consider a stop loss location for example. Thanks for the advice

Yeah I see what you're saying but it's not really a position you want to be in in the first place. Perhaps I don't understand how much people's accounts fluctuate even if they are are profitable. In an ideal world your account for the most part goes up with the odd dip back here and there but I don't know maybe the swings can be massive but that's not how i'd want to trade. The problem with working a standard job is you get used to a steady paycheck every month so your balance as it were steadily goes up. Very hard to replicate that through trading I assume.

It's not being terrified of losing. I get that you need to lose sometimes to win but in the end of the day your account/expectancy needs to be positive, so I guess it's the fear of repeated losses or the one big loss that you then need to recover from, 2 steps forward 3 steps back. That's of course if you're willing to put yourself in a big loss situation i.e. too big a position size.

Sorry captainsamurai, are you actually saying that you won't go bankrupt? In my case no I'd stop trading before that happened but I could sure make a nice dent in my savings first.

Hi all, thanks for the comments. Yes I see that SL should be based on strategy. I haven't yet found a strategy that fits me or that really works but I pick them up and drop them too quickly, partly the problem comes from manual testing which takes patience. It's not a game but somehow it feels like I'm playing one because you want to be right in your beliefs about what the market is going to do and I know trying to be right all the time is not the correct mentality for most. No one wants to lose but I really don't so I wonder if my mind just isnt cut out for short term trading. Should have kept my passive index tracker open but that's another story.

But those stop points obviously vary depending on your time frame. I have often thought that putting the stop where everyone else is, is half the problem in that it's obvious and those on the other side want to get you stopped out. I've often had my stop at the swing low as it's turning and it gets stopped. If you wait for the move to establish and you still want your stop at the swing low you've got a larger point distance in risk to deal with therefore your profit target also has to go up.

When I say no insight, that's not strictly true. I just know from what I've read that the thing that comes up again and again is is keeping your R multiple losses low Vs your R profits. But thats just an obvious statement.

One problem I have is that low risk to me just means tight stop with very low position size as this way each trade doesn't dent your account much. I have no insight into the market other than this. However, repeated attempts to get into a position with a tight stops ends up like just going in once with a large stop and defeats the purpose somewhat. And at the end of the day, over a period of time is whether you want a very slow drain on your account Vs a faster drain potentially if you go with higher position size. Obviously I want neither of these things but in the end the result I assume would be account balance zero. I'd need to test a lot before I got a real sense of the overall result.

Hi Boppers, thanks for that, yeah I understand the conventional way of doing it. They say position sizing is super important and I don't disagree but it assumes you know a sensible place to put your stop in the first place in order to make this calculation. If you don't know what's sensible then that's why I was just thinking put it 1000 points away at £0.5 but I couldn't handle this getting hit as it would wipe out a lot of prior profit and also it's not that practical as for the market to move in your favour by this amount e.g. at least 1R is a big ask when it's 1000 points!