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Should I lower contract size for a wider stop loss?
Ive been practicing scalping on ninja trader for a couple of months now and one of the biggest issues I've had is my stop getting hit extremely early and then the market moving in the direction that I had expected/planned for it to.
Ive seen some things about people making their stop loss, 1:3 or 1:4 and I'm assuming they are basing it off of their profit factor.
Would it be a good idea, to lower contract size and instead widen my stop loss for a margin of error at my entries?
Side note:
Only have been trading for about 5 months now any and all information is welcomed. Also my first post here.
Firstly, if you are replying to someone and want to make sure they get notified, either quote their prior post or name them like so --> @xplorer <-- that way they will get a notification.
I have my live trading record for my actual account but I reset my sim accounts funds to match my live trading account and unknowingly reset all of my sim trading performance on NinjaTrader .
I have made 205 total live trades however, I have noticed that Ninjatrader counts an extra # of trades for different exits on multiple contract trades.
I also have a very scuffed google sheets document of all my live trades.
So the MAE suggestion was about getting familiar with what it is: how far a trade goes against you before turning the other way and (ideally) hitting your target.
MAE tracks that, on average. NinjaTrader has this as metric, so over a number of trades it can give you this as reference point.
For example, if your average MAE is 20 ticks that means that on average your trades go 20 ticks against you before turning around - that indicates that your entry point can improve.
On the other hand, if your MAE is 5 tick chances are you have a optimized trade entry, but from your OP this does not sound likely.