Quoting PipMeUp Disliked

FXCM is doing this kind of stats quite often. I think Jason Rogers was involved in the stats but not sure. You might PM him...

http://trading-gurus.com/fxcm-releas...ty-statistics/



The same for IB. I had found a table with more brokers. The results are quite similar.

http://trading-gurus.com/interbank-f...rs-lose-money/



Here about the direction being... Those are links to stats from 2010 for IB and FXCM. I saw more recent but didn't bookmarked. The figures don't change too much.FXCM is doing this kind of stats quite often. I think Jason Rogers was involved in the stats but not sure. You might PM him...The same for IB. I had found a table with more brokers. The results are quite similar.Here about the direction being... Ignored

Thanks PipMeUP,Although those statistics are a bit vague, they do seem to support FerruFx's post ( just before yours).What do we do when we back test a strategy? Well often we will see that we can earn 100 pips with just a 20 pip SL. Yes, often, but not that often. What we see is that the optimal return may be 50 pips for our 20 pip risk and this happens time and time again.So it may be that we Have an EXPECTANCY that we will profit 40% of the time from trades risking 20 pips with a TP of 50.That is actually very good. Out of 10 trades, you will have 4 winners that give you 200 pips, the 6 losers out of the 10 trades will be minus 120 pips. So a net profit of 80 pips.So you are confident, you start to trade with a live account. You have a great strategy. You only need 40% winners to give you a really good return. You start to trade, but in the back of your mind is the much repeated mantra "Nobody went broke by taking a profit"So what do you do? When price moves 25 pips towards your profit target, you move your stop to BE +5 even though this was not a part of the strategy when you tested it.Price moves back and hits the stop, you are relieved that at least you took a profit from the trade. 5 pips are better than nothing, after all?Although that may be true, that is not the strategy that you intended to trade. The EXPECTANCY was 50 pips from 40% of trades.You are now trading a totally different way than when testing the strategy.I wish that I could say that I don't make these mistakes, I do.