Increase Forex Win Rate – Break Even Stop

If you had to break a system down to it’s various components, most traders will argue that the most important parts of a forex trading system, or any other kind of trading system for that matter, are its exit strategy and its money management. Money management will be discussed in other articles.

The most common technique traders deploy to protect both their profits and their exposure to risk is the break even stop loss. Once a position is ‘in the money’ or showing a floating profit, traders often move their protective stops to break even, assuming that they are protecting their capital by mitigating any risk the trade may bring. The break even stop is also seen as a way to manage profits by protecting any gains the trader has made on previous trades by mitigating the risk of any trades still open.

Break Even Stop

This is a type of risk management technique where the market price move by a pre-defined levels, you will place a new stop loss at the entry price which will guarantee that in the worse case scenario you will not lose money on this trade.

Let’s say you entered a trade at 1.4000. Let’s also say that you plan to shift your initial stop loss when your trade is in 20 pip profits. The market price reached 1.4200 (20 pip profits). You will shift the stop loss to 1.4000 which means that if the market turns against you it will results in a breakeven trade at the worse.

Whenever a forex trader makes a trade entry, the first thing the trader has to ensure is his exit strategy. Knowing how to manage the trade is the single most important thing about trading the Forex market.

Finally, realise that in forex trading, many traders will have their own preference of how they will exit their trades. Is break even stop the best exit strategy? I will say it depends on how you design your trading system. If you want to increase your system winning accuracy rate, break even stop strategy can be employed to increase the percentage.

If you need to increase a risk to reward ratio (risk 1 pip for 1 pip to risking 1 pip to 3 pip), you will like to avoid using break even stop strategy because you may be stopped out in profitable trades prematurely.

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