# Typical forex trading results people get



## grah33 (28 May 2017)

wouldn't mind asking what kind of results would be 'okay' for trading forex? i'm thinking  something like this maybe?
e.g.   1%, 3%,7%, -2%, 5%,0%,1%, 6%
(each figure is for a batch of 20 trades)
it's not much, but from compounding it adds up...

even after 40 trades, one might make overall nothing...


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## CanOz (28 May 2017)

That's like asking:  "how long is a piece of string?"

Think in terms of reward for risk. I risk 1%  max on each trade and i usually exit at .5% risk if i'm wrong though. I want to see at least 50% wins. I want to see a high number of 1:1 wins, a slightly less number of 1:2 wins, several 1:3 wins and a few 1:4 or better in 100 trade sample. By keeping my losses at less than 1% R i can skew even more positive. I've got a spreadsheet somewhere that will generate an EQ curve based on hypothetical trade results. Its useful for knowing you need to hang on to trades and not exit too early.


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## OmegaTrader (28 May 2017)

grah33 said:


> wouldn't mind asking what kind of results would be 'okay' for trading forex? i'm thinking  something like this maybe?
> e.g.   1%, 3%,7%, -2%, 5%,0%,1%, 6%
> (each figure is for a batch of 20 trades)
> it's not much, but from compounding it adds up...
> ...




*This is not advice

answer 1*) I make 20% gain and 20% loss. What is the result?

either way .8*1.2 or 1.2*.8

=.96 

therefore I lost 4%

But I made 20% and lost 20%????

Look at/google 

logarithmic nature of returns, fixed fractional risk management and volatility drag.

*In general *

Too much volatility either position size has to be reduced to a minuscule amount or the account will blow up.

Not enough volatility and the money is being underutilised. 

*answer 2)

In the long term...*
-Any combination that is making returns above you benchmark/expectation .


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## DeepState (28 May 2017)

grah33 said:


> wouldn't mind asking what kind of results would be 'okay' for trading forex? i'm thinking  something like this maybe?
> e.g.   1%, 3%,7%, -2%, 5%,0%,1%, 6%
> (each figure is for a batch of 20 trades)
> it's not much, but from compounding it adds up...
> ...



An annualised return / annualised risk ratio of 0.4 or better is a solid result.  Think of this as daily P&L for some notional dollar-constant portfolio.  Naturally, this looks like garbage to all the super-star traders out there.  Feel free to jump over it! 95% won't make it.


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## grah33 (30 May 2017)

i appreciate the detailed answers even though  i don't understand everything here fully. might have to see if i can skew less losers...

i've seen some other verified results of traders, including one who might get just a few percent each month (average stop loss 30 pips or so, a short term trader). so i'm thinking if i can get a few R per every 20-30 trades it might be good.   forex compounding calculator with 2.5% a month produces big return after 1 year...

win rates are probable easier for me to understand (ie R/trade) in terms of what is a good result

did some testing for a 1h system i came up with. about 60 trades.  scored about 0.1R/Trade on average.  10 R in one batch which got me excited, and the other 2 batches roughly scored 0R roughly...  maybe i need more testing to see if it works as it might have been a bad run. or  maybe it's just not good enough. perhaps higher time-frames might yield significantly better returns.


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## Quant (30 May 2017)

I really struggle with FX compared to indice in the main , I trade aud pairs ok but the rest just don't lend themselves to my style of algo trading . So I'm useless with any stats , just 1 point id like to make . FX by its very nature is linked to the economics/news/data/BS of 2 countries ( being a pair ) and due to this very fact I see twice as much to move /go wrong /worry about in a way ... Just putting it out there , I personally think FX is one of the harder things to get a handle on . Volatility can be sleep inducing as well at times


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## grah33 (30 May 2017)

thanks quant (and others).  that's what people are saying on other forums here too, that it's hard. and i've heard on other forums that futures is supposed to have easy and long trends to catch on intraday timeframes, which seems wondrous to me, but i don't know.  

http://www.forex21.com/forex-compounding-calculator/
forex compounding calculator shows that just a few percent e.g. 3% (3R using 1% risk) each month adds up to a big return by the end of the year.  3R is such a small amount to make isn't it...


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## minwa (30 May 2017)

grah33 said:


> futures is supposed to have easy and long trends to catch on intraday timeframes
> 
> http://www.forex21.com/forex-compounding-calculator/
> forex compounding calculator shows that just a few percent e.g. 3% (3R using 1% risk) each month adds up to a big return by the end of the year.  3R is such a small amount to make isn't it...




Not much is different about futures. Futures is a derivative. FX futures will match 99% of the moves in spot FX so it is not a "easier" instrument. Equities futures is derivative of equities. If it's "easy and long trends" then you can trade stocks easily intraday.

There is nothing magical about forex compounding. The math is the same for forex/stocks/futures/blackjack. It looks great yes but you can also do that calculation on stocks - nothing magical about forex.


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## grah33 (31 May 2017)

yeah, i know, nothing magical about forex alone.  only realized that just a few R per month will do it and that was a surprise for me.

don't know why i seemed to have  gotten that sentiment from other places online. i was thinking gold/oil/ sugar/whatever has amazing and easy trends to catch. "explosive" and that 1h futures is like 4h forex (easier and longer trends), just something online i picked up...

didn't get any win rates (R/Trade) or monthly percent average reported here (at least in words that i understand) but i take it just a little percent each month on average is very good.   peter reported > 0.25R/trade elsewhere once.  i think the best bet for me is to buy forex tester (i'm subconsciously cheating with mt4...).  makes me realize how good stocks are when there is a bull market...

trading is hard.  you can have an idea, test for a few months, and not be sure if it will work or not.  or start to change it and start over again.  on top of that you have an endless volume of things to learn, plus other challenges too.


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