Podcast:

The Importance of High Reward:Risk

In this weekly video:

00:32 – Understanding high reward:risk trades

00:55 - Letting losing trades to get even bigger

02:00 – Reward:Risk of 3:1 – what does that mean?

02:58 – Is a 90% win rate a good system?

04:00 – Growing your account

05:10 – Further trading help for you

I'm going to explain how understanding the reward to risk ratio of your trades can dramatically change around your trading results. Let's get into that and more right now.

Hi, Forex traders. Andrew Mitchem here. The Forex Trading Coach, video and podcast number 245. I'm gonna talk about a very, very important subject. It's all about understanding how important it is to have correct reward to risk. High reward to risk trades. It is something as simple as this can dramatically change around your trading results.

Understanding High Reward:Risk Trades

If you do not have high reward to risk trades, the probability is you'll be losing money. Let's talk about that.

When you think about the psychology behind trading, why is it that so many traders, when they have losing trades, they're happy to let those losing trades get bigger and from time to time.

Letting losing trades to get even bigger

People will move the losses further away even and allow that stock loss or that trade, that's losing, to become even bigger loss. You flip it round the other way and why is it that so many times, when traders are in a profit, just a small profit, they want to start fiddling with the trade, they want to start closing the trade, partial closing, closing all of it, locking in profits, et cetera. It just doesn't add up.

When you have a trade that's losing, people are happy to let it lose and let the loss get bigger. When it trades the right way and you're picking the market the right direction, everybody wants to click their mouse and close their trades early. When, in reality, you should actually let that trade get to its full profit target because you picked a good trade. It's a very odd, but very common problem. Think of things this way, always understand reward to risk. Most people actually say risk to reward, whereas you notice I'm saying reward to risk.

Reward:Risk of 3:1 – what does that mean?

Let's say for the ease of numbers, that our trades have a three to one reward to risk ration. What does that mean? It means, let's say the trade is risking $100 but it's making three times that if it gets to its profit target. It's making $300. Think of it this way as well, let's say I have two losing trades and one winning trade. I'm still profitable. I have a 33% success rate, which you would say, "Andrew, that's terrible." But think of it this way, I'm losing two trades at $100 so a total of $200 lost but my next trade hits the full profit target for a $300 gain. Net result, I'm $100 up.

Also, if someone says to you, "I have a 90% win rate," it doesn't mean to say they're making money. You see, if you're taking lots of small gains or break even trades, tiny gains.

Is a 90% win rate a good system?

We have one or two big losses, then those losses completely outdo all those small gains you've got. The win rate really is not that important. What is important is having high reward to risk trades.

For me, as a trader who prefers the higher timeframe charts, the higher timeframe charts and I mean something like over a one hour chart, four hour chart. If you've got non-standard MT4 charts like I can when I'm trading six, eight and 12 hourly charts, or daily charts or weekly charts or monthly charts, generally the higher the timeframe the trade that you're taking, generally the higher reward to risk of that trade can be.