How to manage a run of losing trades

Podcast:

#366: How to manage a run of losing trades

In this video:

00:25 – Trader struggles with losing trades

01:41 – Your strategy stops working

02:26 – No trading results are ever even

03:13 – Trade a variety of different time frame charts

04:15 – 7 closed trades and a 7% account gain this week

05:15 – Things will be different next week. Be flexible

06:14 – Examples of using Fib levels

What happens to you when you're in a losing streak of trades? How do you cope? How do you manage with it? Let's talk about that and more, right now.

Hey traders, Andrew Mitchem here at The Forex Trading Coach with the video and podcast number 366.

Trader struggles with losing trades

So I've received an interesting email from somebody this week. They're not a client, but they were saying, "Andrew, I'm having a really bad losing streak right now. My trades are mostly going wrong. I'm losing money. What do I do? How do I cope with it?" And it's a really interesting question because of course, nobody writes to say, "Hey, I'm having a fantastic time. My trades are going really well. And I now want to change systems and jump in and take your course." But if someone is having a losing run, then they write and say, "Well, how do I overcome this?"

So it's really interesting that that happens. And it's a tricky one to answer, but I'll do my best to give you an explanation of how we trade and help overcome that. Because to me, it's really important that now I'm assuming this person has a good strategy that's been profitable in the past. If you're just jumping straight into a strategy and there's no proof behind it or you don't know how it was created or it's a logic or it's theory, and it's not working. Well, that might be different. You might want to sort of think about jumping out of that one pretty quick.

Your strategy stops working

But I'm assuming, for now, that you've got yourself a strategy that's been profitable, it's been proven in the past, and now all of a sudden, it's not working for you. Now, if that strategy has been good in the past, logic would suggest that there's no reason why it probably won't come right again, but you've still got to get through this time period that you're in right now, where things are going wrong.

So I think it's really important to start with, that you actually, if you've got confidence and faith in your strategy, and you've created this strategy yourself, and you know it works, is to stick at it. Don't go trying to tweak it. Don't try optimising it. Don't add other indicators or changing it because that's likely just to mess with you and mess with the logic and the strategy.

No trading results are ever even

Don't forget also that no trading or any investment for that matter is a straight-line return. It just doesn't happen. Nothing is perfect all the way through. You're not going to make 5% month after month after month after month, perfect straight line. It doesn't happen. You'll still end up with the same result maybe after a year, but you're going to make 2% minus 4% plus 6%. Depending on how your strategy goes, but you'll still get to that same overall result, but no way do you flat line equal results all the time. So you just need to accept that you might be in a situation where the market's not reacting perfectly to the strategy that you have.

Trade a variety of different time frame charts

So here at The Forex Trading Coach, the way that we try to overcome that is we trade a variety of different timeframe charts. Now, to give you an example, this week, I've seen very, very little on the shorter timeframe charts. I've taken only two trades, three trades, sorry, on the daily charts, two of which closed for profit, one's still in, and I've taken another one just today about an hour ago. So the two that have closed for profit on the pound-yen and Canadian-yen made a 2.7 to one reward to risk and 3.