Ch@lie: Pyramiding – A Money Management Strategy To Increase Profits

Let’s say the EURUSD is trending lower like it has been recently. You see a solid pin bar entry strategy that formed showing rejection of the 1.2625 resistance level. You decide that since price has respected this level and it’s obviously a “key” level, it’s a good place to set your stop loss just above. So you decide to put your stop loss for the trade at 1.2650….we ALWAYS set our stop loss BEFORE deciding on a potential profit target. This is because risk management in Forex tradingis the most important aspect of the whole thing…if you don’t properly manage your risk on EVERY trade you WILL NOT make money.

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Next, there is no obvious / significant support that you can see until about 1.1900, so you decide to aim for a larger profit on this trade and see if the trend won’t run in your favor a bit. Your pre-defined risk on the trade is going to be $200, to keep the math simple let’s say you sold at 2 mini-lots at 1.2550; 100 pip stop loss x 2 mini-lots (1 mini-lot = $1 per pip) = $200 risk

You decide to aim for a risk reward of 1:3 on this trade, so you set your initial target at 1.2250 and you plan on adding two positions to this trade, 1 when you are up 100 pips and another when you’re up 200 pips. You plan on doing this because the market is trending strongly and you have decided based on your discretionary price action trading skills that there’s a good chance the trend will continue.

Here is a diagram of what your trade looks like at the beginning:

The trade pushes on in your favor and you decide to scale in with another 20k units at 1.2450. Your overall position size is now 40k or $4 per pip on the EURUSD, this increases your potential reward to $1,000 if price hits your target at 1.2250. Since you trailed down the stop on your initial position to 1.2550, that position is now at breakeven, the stop on your new position is also at 1.2550, meaning your overall risk on the trade stays the same at $200.

Next, the trade continues on in your favor and you decide to pyramid in with another 20k units at 1.2350. This means your overall position is at 60k or $6 per pip on the EURUSD. Your overall reward potential is now $1,200 if your target of 1.2250 gets hit; note that your reward is now double what it was when you started whilst your overall risk is now at $0 as you’ll see now…

You trail down the stops on both previous positions to 1.2450 thereby locking in a profit of $200 on the first position, reducing the second position to breakeven and offsetting the $200 risk on your new position to $0…you now have a breakeven trade. The catch here is that the market is only 100 pips from your breakeven point on the whole trade, so there’s a bigger potential of the whole position getting stopped at breakeven…the good part is you have increased your potential for profit without taking on any more risk.

The trade continues on in your favor and hits your target at 1.2250, all three positions are now closed and you’ve netted a 1:6 risk : reward. You never risked more than $200, which was your predefined 1R risk amount, and you gained $1,200. This is an example of how to take advantage of a strong trending market like we have seen recently in the EURUSD and other markets.