Trik take profit forex

When entering a trade, how do you choose the point of the stop loss and take profit? Clearly, this decision will have an impact on how profitable your trades are. However, did you know that the placement of your exit levels can actually have more of a bearing on your profitability than the decision on which direction to trade? In the volatile forex market, it take actually true. Given how important this decision is, it is surprising how little thought many traders give to this component of their trade.

In this article, I want to explain a quantitative strategy that will help you select stops and take profit levels for maximum profit. I also want to debunk some of the common misunderstanding around risk-reward setups, and show how following poor advice can ruin a potentially good trading system.

When deciding trade exits, it is sometimes tempting to make an educated guess. Some traders use technical features such as chart candles, trends, resistances and supports. Others simply choose a fixed ratio of profit target to stop loss. There is nothing wrong with using technical analysis as a guide for timing the trade entry, nor for judging how far the price might move.

Rather, the method I describe below is used alongside both charting and fundamental analysis. Forex trading forums are full of well meaning, yet rather misguided advice about risk-reward setups and how to set your stop losses. Unfortunately, many of these people take to understand the true meaning of risk or reward.

The idea that simply setting your stop loss smaller than your take profits will achieve a certain risk reward is complete nonsense. Take this simple example.

By that definition, this would seem a fantastic game to play. However, suppose we know that two million people enter the lottery. This makes the odds of winning 1: Now we know the odds, we can calculate the true risk reward:. Most would now agree this is not a very good game. E lose is your stop loss amount. The first thing to realize about setting trade exit points is that the amount of profit you want to make on a trade is directly proportional to the risk you will need to take to capture that profit.

Take the following trading scenario. The trend has been in place for around trik day, so the trader thinks there is a good opportunity for profit. The first thing to notice is the trader wants to capture a profit of 70 pips on the trade.

That means, on average, the movement of the price over one hour is Sometimes more, sometimes less but this is the average. This means the trader is trying to profit by 70 pips.

In reality, he is actually betting against the market because he is relying on the fact that the price will not descend more than 20 pips from the open price during the life of the trade. That could be up to 30 hours if the current trend continues from Figure 1. Choosing the right stop loss placement is a critical decision but it's often left to chance.

This Metatrader tool advises where to place stops and take profits on any order. Just set the desired trade time and win ratio and the indicator does the rest. While the trade has a very low maximum loss 20 pipswhich might seem like a plus, the chances of it finishing in profit are extremely low. The answer is that it would not and the trade would probably strike the stop loss for that reason.

The basic problem with the setup was that trader was trying to capture too much profit without accounting for volatility. Remember that in forex, volatility is not something you can avoid by careful trade picking or a clever strategy.

It is an absolute certainty. The question then is when setting up a trade, how do you know where to place the exit points other than just taking a wild guess?

The following will explain how to do this. The method I prefer to use is based on a technique known as maximals. What this does is give a precise formula to work out the probability of the price moving a certain distance from the open during a given time.

This model gives a complete distribution of price profit for a given volatility. This method works for any timeframe, minutes hours or even months. It also works equally well with either historical past or implied future volatility. The type of trader you are will have a bearing on the time that your trades need to stay open to reach your take target.

A day take or a scalper would hold a position for hours, minutes or even seconds. At the other extreme, a carry trader holds positions for weeks, or months.

For the carry trader, capital gain on the trade is usually less important. The goal is to hold the position open for as long as possible to accumulate interest. Clearly then, profit and time are linked. So in setting your trade exit points, the first step is know precisely how far the price is likely to move in a given timeframe.

Once you know this, forex will be able to decide a realistic profit target. Take the following example. The chart spans a hour period. The first thing I do is calculate the volatility over my chosen period. Once I know how volatile the market is, I can project the price forwards to work out the probability of a certain move x hours defined by 5-minute intervals into the future. To do this, I need to calculate what are known as maximal curves see box for an explanation.

Briefly, taking the volatility as input these curves will tell me the probability of a maximum price trik up or down being reached. For example, looking at the maximal curve for 24 hours top lineI know the price has a I only give a brief description here of what are rather complex calculations.

The best market model we have for forex is the random step process or random walk. This just means that in every interval, the market moves by a random step value. The price can slant towards an uptrend or a downtrend with a drift parameter.

From this we create a set of curves for different timeframes. In trik, the longer the time interval and the greater the volatility, the further the price can move from the existing level. Hedge funds and professional traders often use maximal curves or some variant thereof. The reason they are so important is that they allow you to setup your trade accurately in terms of time and profit capture. The curve tells you if the amount of profit you want to make is reasonable in terms of the time span.

For example, I know if I wanted to capture a pip movement, I would likely be waiting roughly ten-days based on the current volatility level. If the market is flat, or trending in a certain direction this will have a strong bearing on where you place your stops and profits. In terms of the model, it means that we have an asymmetric distribution of price movements.

There are several ways to allow for this, but the simplest and the one I prefer is to use a different volatility for the upside and downside price model. Random walk — not trending Trend up — positive drift Trend down — negative drift. With the random walk, up and down price moves are equally likely.

When trending, two different sets of maximal curves are needed, one for up moves and another for down. Having decided on a timeframe and on the trending characteristics, I can now choose an appropriate profit target that will give my trade a high win probability.

The table below gives the probability of my exit points being reached in each of the three market conditions. Trend in same direction Trend —: Trend reverses direction Flat: What I would also like to see is the probability of profit trade actually making a profit or loss.

The price could reach the stop first, and then the take profit. In that case, my trade would finish with a loss. It could alternatively reach the take profit first, in which case it wins. Alternatively, it may neither reach the stop nor take profit level in which case the trade remains open. Based on this analysis I can use standard probability theory to work out each outcome for the trade:. My best outcome happens if the short-term trend reverses, that is if the market rises and makes my buy profitable.

When I set the trade up what I am looking for is the chance of the take profit being reached, to be at least 1. Also, remember that if you move the stop loss or take profit while the trade is open that gives you an entirely different set of outcomes. To see how the stop and take profit levels shift for different trading timeframes, I can work out an envelope, which will give me a fixed win ratio. The graph below in Figure 4 shows this plotted out for my example trade.

The chart below Figure 5 shows the probability of a win, a loss, or the trade remaining open over 24 hours — the expected lifetime of my trade. From the chart, I can see it has the highest chance of closing in profit within the first 90 minutes of being opened. Thereafter, the chance of a loss rises significantly.

This is because the maximal curves become flatter for longer periods. If you check Figure 3 againyou will see that the curves for hours and 18 hours are quite similar, whereas there is a big difference between the 1 hour and 6-hour curves. The highest differential is in the first few intervals where the curves are steepest. As shown above, your stop distances have to work in terms of your profit target and the volatility levels.

New traders often place stop losses too tight, thinking they are reducing risk. The usual reason for this is that they are using far too much leverage and try to reduce exposure by placing limits on individual trades.

Suppose you see a trading opportunity, and the potential drawdown needs to be pips to capture that profit. If pips is not an acceptable loss, then it is better to reduce leverage and adjust your trade size downwards to give you more flexibility. What is most important is that a potential loss or drawdown amount on a trade should be manageable within your account.

This should be part of an overall money management strategy so that you know your loss limits and those losses, even in succession will not cause a margin call or bankrupt your account. I provide the Excel spreadsheet with all calculations here so that you can download it and try this system out for yourself.

For instructions on how to use the sheet, please see here. The MetaTrader indicator, which does the same calculations in real time and includes additional features is also available. See below for more details. Metatrader Stop Loss Take Profit Indicator. Very reasonable and well suported thinking. What do you think? It would be a decision for the strategy being used as whether to move the stops or close as that point.

Hi Steve — Great article! Could you please advise how the reward: I am newbie and till now I was calculating reward: I am not able to get the mathematical figure shown in the excel sheet for the target win ratio I selected. Could you also please show with an example of how probability trade wins and probability trade losses are calculated.

Thank you very much. Hello, I really like your article. Like in Figure 3. I was looking for a solution for Stop Loss placement and came across your article.

Thank you for what seems to be a great solution. I do not use MT4, but have been able to export the historical dat. My only challenge is that I cannot paste the data in the provided columns, as the cells are protected. How do I get around this? Can I get the password?

This happens when you are pasting in too many rows for the range. Just clip the rows to the max number allowed and it should be fine.

I find that most trends on the pairs I trade move in period cycles, so I use that as the sampling period so I can for example bring up a 15 min chart and have an SLTP value that coincides rather than use a longer period and have to consult the shorter timeframe for SLTP values.

Is that too forex a period? What would be cool is if shorter timeframe SLTP values could be displayed on the longer timeframe chart. About 20 to intervals is the optimum. This is fascinating stuff. Is there any way to use the spreadsheet for equities? I trade equities more than forex. It should work on the short scale, day trading for example. You would probably need to do some scaling of the data in the spreadsheet depending on the price ranges.

Although, trading more flexible units does not mean you are going to win…that is another story. Steve, thank you very much for this article. As per wikipedia https: Is trik a typo, or I do miss something? This is because of the symmetry of the combinatorial function. Thanks a lot for the explanation. Could you also kindly explain how m is related with the 62 pips?

As I understand it:. The pip movement depends on the scaling factor in the random process. That scaling is governed by two things:. The time period for each step — for e.

And secondly the volatility because that will tell you the expected movement in the random process for a given time step. Hi Steve do you happen to know the financial theory that happens to have a close connection with the stop loss order?

The underlying theory is most always based on stochastic probability models. This is used to characterize price volatility and risk. In the basic theory a characterization of volatility is found and this is then used as way to model the price development. That being in terms of a probability distribution that allows some kind of forward prediction. But there are plenty of others which cover more obscure areas.

Hi, Maybe you are planning mt5 version of this indicator? I already have mt4 version, but mt4 is a lot slower in backtesting. Have a nice day. They said mt5 is faster. Cannot say have seen a difference yet in my backtesting but I guess it depends what you are doing. Most of it makes sense to me, but can you please explain how take arrived at the equations for p win first and p lose first.

If the price touched both the stop loss and the take profit during a time frame then there are two distinct probabilities with that set: Either it touched the SL first or it touched the TP first during that period. Hence the two different cases to count for this. It states, that future princes are normally distributed and the probability to take each value depends on the standard deviation volatility in this case. Based on that, how can big price fluctuations be explained?

I want to know your opinion about this, and if is possible, have an idea of how efficient is this strategy when you use it. I am not going to spend a lot time defending it as there are people out there who can do a lot better job than I can.

What you say above only holds true if you assume that volatility and drift in the model never changes. Actually though these components are changing all the time. Volatility measuring is by definition lagging so you can never know what the instantaneous volatility is. You can only estimate it based on information available at the time.

So when you say a 3x volatility move, what that really means is 3x what the volatility was in the past. Not what it is at a given instant. This is a limitation of measurement not the model. As I mentioned in the article implied volatility can give you a forward measure and that can be used instead. So far RWM is the best and simplest explanation of market moves I have yet seen. Hi can you explain how to upload new metatrader data in the excel spread sheet please?

Thanks your help is appreciated. The maximals are a forecast of how far the price is expected to move maximal distance over a certain time. The drift gives the trend so that allows the model to forecast changes in different directions other than a flat market. There are standard mathematical procedures for working this out and creating a discrete time-based probability distribution from it. Duke uni also has a lot of good info on this subject. The above papers are giving an overview.

This leads to a negative expected return:. You also have to account for the probability of the trade still being open. So the value If you look at figure 5 for example the p open graph gets smaller but it never quite becomes zero.

Indeed, the expected profitability of a trade if I am not mistaken should be an integral of an asymmetric capped maximal curve. Have you per chance made this computation in your testing, as I think this is the most relevant quantity to optimize on?

Another thing is that this is still very simplistic in the sense that the construction of your stop loss and take profit are based on how you built your signal. My understanding is that the signal you built is a simplistic version of something along this line: Then wanting to build your asymmetric maximal curve makes sense since you look at an asymmetric volatility which kind of tell you if the trend was fundamentally stopping and the future was noise, I can still expect the market to trend lower profit x pips due to underlying volatility.

Forex am not sure the way you measure it though makes sense given that in fact, what you want to look at is the volatility of the price if there were no trend going on, which will give you limit that will be breached quickly if the trend was to continue and the prediction was wrong. I feel this is in a sense a better way to include the potential signal into your stop loss, as the stop loss should then be tighter but on a justifiable note. Overall I quite like the ideas you expose here, but I feel the main point which is the expected return computed from the integration of maximal curve is missing, as this is what is verifiable in live trading or backtest.

The more interesting question to me is the reverse hypothesis. That being the maximum likelihood estimator MLE of the trend and volatility given a noisy sequence of prices. Because without knowing this any expected return would in any case be zero when you cannot make any prior assumption on trend direction the deterministic and you have a symmetric range of probabilities. Solutions to the MLE can be found but that does mean using Monte Carlo simulation or something similar since there are no closed forms to this problem.

This is something we are working on. It should work on most instruments including CFDs: Metals, Oil and so on. If you have any problems just raise a support request. Nobody here is recommending an sl or any other value. The article is an analysis of the stop loss placement and what result that is having on your rr and on probability winning or losing the trade.

If you had read further than para one you would understand your remark has no logic but is the view of the amateur. Great article-thanks very much. Is the spreadsheet still active so that historical data can be copied, or has it been protected since the last posts?

I have Excel but there is no apparent way to paste data in the Input tab. Yes it is still active. But to edit you will need to save a local copy. This is because Excel and later will disable edits for any spreadsheets downloaded from the web.

Hi, I was wondering how the maximal curves are built using estimated volatility. Wondering if you could point me to how to build those curves? I have a question about how sample volatility is used in the calculation of maximal curves. Would be great if you could explain. It is a cumulative probability of maximal distance traversed in a certain time. I would also calculate the trik hour volatility directly if that is what you need, rather than trying to scale up from 5M timeframes.

I tried to use it with AUDUSD values but got thousands pips large TP and SL… While with EURUSD values it works perfectly. This problem is most likely due mixed data histories. This is a very detailed article and confirm to me what I thought when I approached the Forex market after a short period of trading.

Is it available for download free? Thank you very much for your answer and for your website! Yes it can work with a live price feed. It could be made available as an MT indicator in the future — but that would depend on the interest as it would need to be recoded.

It should work with any pair. In your picture each cell gives one information like date, etc, but when I paste it the information starts in one cell and ends in another. I have new excel, what should I do? If you saved it and opened it as a csv file it would normally do this profit you.

Thanks for sharing your knowledge with a newbie like me! I have new excel. What forex I do? According to calculating volatility and RRR, I am wondering that as a day trader with a very short horizon period of investment. This method could be potentially help any trades?

Why I said so? Profit the long run, do you think this kind of statistic will help the trades to win? Literally, taking a smaller pips and widening a SL could really boost up a winning percentage which means that once I losses such any single trades I have to try to double up profitability to cover such losses.

Here come to my question, in this kind of situation that I earlier mentioned, do you have any way to fix it? Thank you very much for your consideration in advance. The choice should be dynamic because it depends entirely on the situation you are trading and the market conditions. A breakout trade for example may have a low probability of success but a high payoff. As well it is usually clear after a short time whether the breakout is going to happen or not.

When in fact if the draw happens you already know the setup has failed. In other situations the reverse may be true.

You can use ATR. You can also use the Bollinger bandwidth as a vol measure. If you need to calculate a specific probability then in this case some calibration is needed depending on which vol metric is being used.

Your value seems too low. Because these are probability functions the curves need to be worked out as a cumulative value of the function not the point value over the move distance you are looking at. Hi, very nice and useful article. I was wondering if it was possible to have a numerical example of how to calculate the probability using random walk.

Thank you in advance. ECB EURNZD, EURAUD, EURGBP, EURCAD whipsaw upwards before collapsing. The greatest one was the EURGBP this time round. One either widens their SLs pips for crosses or tightened stops risked a larger loss when it hits the SL. Other than staying out completely. Prior to ECB, EURCAD went to low of 1. The whipsaw touched SL of 1.

For a short position, adding a Stop Loss gave away profit of 70 pips. Does assigning probability described applies to risk events like ECB? Not unless these events occur frequently within the time sample you are looking at, but even profit its unlikely you could ever model them to predict an outcome.

Absolutely, contrarian trades can and do work — but then there are limits, I would be forex about trading contrarian against strong fundamentals. The strong downward trend for the last six years is a reflection of that.

No only in one direction. The maximal curve will give the probability of a maximum point being reached, or equally if you apply the formula on the other side, to a minimal point being reached.

When symmetric as you say, it is just mirrored. It says nothing about the price falling say pips below, this is why there is a separate case for the SL point. The SL is a separate case. Forex the maximal curve basically shows is the probability of a high-watermark being reached — and that applies for a certain time period only.

It was probably my fault, but my previous comment was strangely truncated. What I wrote was to ask if the maximal curves show: I have to answer here because its not possible to add a reply any deeper it will be better to continue this in Forum section where there is more room.

This tells me only one thing in isolation: I have some questions. In Step 3, can you explain how you got the table for p winp lossp open? Could you commend on reversal moves? Trades such as EURAUD on 20 Feb hit a low of 1. I was in some other trades that reversed off its lows. As I read your posts, I know we are going down to really precise levels now. Are you trading the long or short side because it really makes a difference here.

Reversal moves are all part of the normal daily volatility in the markets. I was thinking through my mistakes, and reading your spreadsheets.

Essentially the trades I got stopped out was Take, GBPCAD, EURCAD. It is trade timing. Actually some profit from the EURAUD, EURNZD. I trade several illiquid pairs gbpnzd and also trade short side for some pairs, and hedge sometimes as well. I will look through the win loss ratios, and forex probabilities to examine the trades and trik if I can improve on where it went wrong.

You have got a great resource. I was already doing breakouts, grid trading, carry trades for some time, but I still come back because everything was very well written and learn from someone who is strong. Could you write an article on basket trading? Leave this field empty. Steve has a unique insight into a range of financial markets from foreign exchange, commodities to options and futures. Start Here Strategies Technical Learning Downloads. Strategies Feb 13, The Random Walk I only give a brief description here of what are rather complex calculations.

Download file Please login. Want to stay up to date? Just add your email address below and get updates to your inbox. TAGS Maximals Quant Trading Stop Loss Strategy Take Profit Volatility. How to Make the Most of Forex Order Types Orders are often seen as nothing more than a side show to the real business of trading. How to Calculate Forex Risk To manage this risk, what some do is make a simple guess to estimate the potential loss involved. Why Most Trend Line Strategies Fail Trends are all about timing.

Time them right you can potentially capture a strong move in the market Day Trading Volume Breakouts This strategy works by detecting breakouts in EURUSD at times when volume trik increasing sharply.

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All you need is the Bollinger bands indicator and to That graph is from a different spreadsheet. It may go in one of the online tools at some stage. Hope what I wrote makes sense! What formula do You use for the estimation of trending parameters from the data sample? Which part are you referring to exactly?

As I understand it: That scaling is governed by two things: From that you can work out the expected distance and convert to pips or percent. Profit risk management and VAR theory is a good starting point. A very interesting article. This is a conditional probability using standard theory. If you required the specific examples let me know I will show you. This leads to a negative expected return: Does that indicator work on anything for e. Hi Steve, Great article-thanks very much.

Thanks, the problem seemed to be with Excel I tried and it works fine. Excuse me Steve, is this spreadsheet valid only for the EURUSD pair? Alternative you can use the MT4 indicator which is now available and does this for you: You will need Excel or later otherwise some of the features will not work. Probably the best forex article I ever read.

The EURGBP is now back at the same level, though it whipsawed the most. Cheryl -Does assigning probability described applies to risk events like ECB? I love your articles. Leave a Reply Cancel reply. Contrarian Method for Trading False Take The Reverse Carry Trade: Trailing Stops — Can they Increase Your Profits?

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Why Most Trend Line Strategies Fail. Five questions to ask when choosing a trading strategy. Day Trading Volume Breakouts. Keltner Channel Breakout Strategy. Contact Us Timeline FAQ Privacy Policy Terms of Use Home. This site uses cookies:

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