garyfritz wrote:VFM, I agree you got **lucky**. Trading multiple positions is fine, as Bob said, but you made several serious mistakes:
VirtualFM wrote:But EURNZD was not getting back on track and even if it was not even close to DS3 I forgot how huge the volatility of EURNZD is, so I was already on a DD of 200+ pips on that and suddenly it dropped even further for 350 and on and on (reaching 455 pips on its peak DD).
If I closed it by then it would been an huge loss (at least psychologically speaking).
Holding onto a position because you don't want to admit you're wrong and take the loss is a good way to blow your account. The market doesn't always oblige by turning around to rescue you. This time it worked, but that's a dangerous practice. You should have an exit level in mind when you enter the trade, and you should stick with that. Limit your losses from any one trade.
This worked throughout the rest of Wednesday and Thursday, and as such Wednesday got a good 13% increase of my balance and Thursday was also reaching 13% at some point... but this implied much more screentime than I was used to, and suddenly I was caught by JPY hiccup strenght and USD weakness and my hands were full of trades and a margin call was arriving. I fought a valiant battle against it and won (sweating under an available margin of 19€!)
If you were flirting with an MC, then in addition to not limiting the risk on your positions (by exiting when they go a certain amount against you), you are also trading TOO LARGE. Making 13% a day doesn't do you any good if you blow up the account the next day. How many times has Bob said "trade to trade another day" ?? You WILL have strings of losses, it WILL happen, so you need to trade so you can SURVIVE those losses. Keep your size small enough, and your position risk small enough, so your worst-case losses are limited to much less than what would cause an MC. A single day's trading should never risk more than a set small amount -- maybe 5% or 10% of your account. You should NEVER be able to drive yourself into MC because a few trades went against you, because they WILL.
Keep your sizes smaller, and exit your losers, so your losses are contained.
and I know you are mostly right. And I say "mostly" because I am not adding to those positions blindly, I am still following 10.5 rules, still onto the trend (that EURNZD was an exception), still obeying RSI2 and CSS... and only doing it when the trade is not going where expected (again, following 10.5 rules). And since last week the markets were doing anything but what was expected, I used this reasoning and, as you said, luckily it worked!