aliassmith wrote:To follow that up we can go over some of my experience.
I was learning to trade by adding to losing trades.
Over time I noticed that some of my biggest losses were from adding to losing trades, and holding losing trades to long
One of my biggest losses was a 40% loss over 2 days.
It turns out that my biggest gain was a trade I added to that made 130% in 1 day.
It turns out that managing risk and adding to winners can be lucrative.
There are various ways to accomplish this, how do you do it?
The hardest aspect I had to overcome was my need for perfection.
My scalping style - in heavy and stack into MOMO - lends itself to long winning runs. Usually small bites and then a bigger, sometimes much bigger, runner. To get these runners means you need to be in the game. So, small bites, etc...
Problem was, it meant that the urge to hold a bad move was strong...very strong.
It wasn't until I broke down the numbers that I realised that by simply cutting the losses really tight - and here's the key - going back in again if and when it turned back in my direction - did I actually make far, far more money.
Of course it also helped that I could use (trading) psychology to tell myself that well, see, it wasn't a loss, it was a strategic decision and I had in the end been correct in my original decision anyway. I was actually being clever in my cutting losses strategy, not passively negative.