Most people lose all their money in forex, at least the first few times they load up their live account and try to profit from platforms trading. They start out with demo accounts with the platform, most probably with Meta-Trader 4 as it is the most widely used and they practice varying strategies and at least master the basics of platforms trading like opening and closing trades.

The first thing that strikes people when they go live is that all their cool handed emotions that were under control with their demo account has flown straight out the window and change into a completely different person. They start smoking 2 cigarettes at the same time and cannot leave the screen to eat of visit the toilet. Certainly going live even with a tiny $200 account is a very emotional awakening. In no time at all, they’ve lost all their money and don’t have enough equity in the account to open even a single micro-lot trade.

But even if the emotions were not a problem, the true reason that most people lose their money is that they operate under the same nonsense belief system that has been taught throughout the ages. And the main problem these people suffer with is the use of Stop Losses. The real issue is the Stop Loses settings do not stop losses – they only crystalize and confirm them. They lock in losses which seems to me to be a crazy way to hope to make a profit.

I do use the same methods to calculate a stop-loss position, often 50-80 pips away from the price of a trade – but I never enter the setting on a trade. In the alternative, what I do is open a pending Stop Order at the 50-80 pips, and so if a trade does go bad on me, the trade will always stay alive until it eventually does hit my profit target and the pending order goes live in the interim period just locking my equity to no further losses. Thereafter I have time to manage the trades, and to close both the hedged trades in profit. I refuse to accept any trade is a loser; I hedge my bets at safe levels and then make money on both of them.