Opportunity Cost Lost

Moving your stop can cost you big money. There are those that may move their stop farther back thinking "The market will never hit my stop if I move it 20+ more pips." Then you have traders like me "I'll move BE and have a free trade." Can you see the problem with this type of trading?

Let's take the first one: "The market will never hit my stop if I move it 20+ more pips."
Really? No, REALLY? The market can do whatever she wants when she wants. A properly placed SL should never be touched after its set. You pick that area for a reason, stick with that reason because during live trading, nothing is going to change that will make you NEED to change your SL.

Ever hear of the SL Hunt? It happens, what do you think those wicks are? If you are the kind of trader that feels the need to move their SL farther back in the middle of a trade, the simple solution is to build in a 10-15 pip buffer or call me. I can give you may account number and you can wire the money you are about to lose to me. If your SL is 40 pips, make it 50, 55 and build THAT SL into your risk. I had to do that with my GBPCHF trade. I originally had a 90 pip SL and kept getting taken out by a pip or 2, I forgot to add broker spread. My new SL is 100 and that has allowed me to catch these 200, 300, 800 pip runs.

Yes a 100 pip SL is crazy I know, but I don't care when I'm going for 2:1+ returns. The SL to me doesn't matter if as long as my RR is what its suppose to be.

Now time for my biggest issue: "I'll move BE and have a free trade."
I think this comes from being over protective. My true rule on moving BE is to not do it until I'm up 2:1+. I tend to move BE around 50-60 pips which is only 1.25-1.5:1 which is way to soon. Once a month I tend to do this and get taken out by 1-2 pips, then it shoots to the moon. When I don't touch it, like I'm suppose to, I can catch 150-1000 pip runs out of the Eurusd pretty easily.

So what is my problem? My wife always says "Leave it alone. You spent years studying that trade, and you continue to make the same mistakes. Your a great trader, LEAVE IT!" Of course I don't like being told what to do, I'm a stubbon Boricua, but @tradercisco tells me the same thing when I make the same mistake. Granted I have been getting better with this, but I think I am still guilty of doing this at least once a month. This for me is one the the last things that I personally have to work on.

This week I missed out on catching the eurusd long from the 3466 entry that went and paid 200+ pips. 5.5:1 return that I missed = an Opportunity Cost Lost that was huge because the next two eurusd trades failed. Had I caught my trade and not moved BE to soon, I would have had plenty of money and pips to cover the two losing trades. 72 pips lost-200 pip gain=128 pips or 3.5:1 RR. Time's that by 2% risk and I would be sitting pretty with about 7% gain. But NOOOOO, I had to mess with my trade and am -4%. I always say lesson learned and this time I will never forget this trade. (Yes I say that all the time too).

You see where I'm going with this? As @nictrades said in her interview: "Your stop is where your trade fails." So why would you moved your stop farther against you, or move it to soon. My trade mistakes cause me to fail, not necessarily losing money, but I didn't make any money and in my book that's worse then losing.

Opportunity Cost Lost is a big deal to me as I grow as a trader. If I am not aware of it and what I am doing, my account can and would go in the wrong direction. Thankfully with my journal I am able to see exactly what is going on with myself and correct what needs correct and build on the strengths that I do have. My patience is getting a lot better thanks to the egg timer, now the itchy SL finger needs to be adjusted. Time will tell.

Piptee