How many Pip do you make per week?

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Magatamg

Member
I asked this question awhile ago on another forum site, ("baby" )
I had over 230 people view the post but No one even made one reply.



Just a quick simple question Folks.
How many PIPS do you make on average per week?

I don't want to know your lot size, leverage, account size,currency traded, where , when, how , why or how high you can pee or how many time you flush.

Just an honest simple answer Please.

Me I have averaged about 38.20 pips per week in the last few yrs. ( 41 wks./yr trading..still on my 10 yr learning curve.)
I am more than satisfied with my performance but after, I turned 60 this year, I am still out to learn whatever I can.
Good Luck with your trades.

Thanks for you answers.
 
Hey that's cool you are learning at 60, and it sounds like you're successful or will be when the time comes. I personally am still learning so no regular numbers to report yet, but wanted to bump this up because it would be cool to hear from others and found it interesting you gave yourself 10 years. I'm hoping to hit my goal in 5 years, but if it takes 10 I dont' care.
 
I think people don't answer because pips mean one thing to someone and something else to another.

Someone who trades different lot sizes at different times and time frames with different strategies means he cares little about the the pips made but rather the RR and how it impacts his bottom end.

If thats the answer you're looking for - I've had a good run last few weeks but am down overall
 
Problem is that the pip numbers aren't that important. 30 pips at a small risk % is a lot different than 30 pips at a high %. Plus, unless you're day trading only, some weeks "0" is a good answer.

But, over the course of the last 3 months, since I went full tracking for my demo learning, I'm sitting at 38 pips per week, 9 "risk adjusted" per week. I care far more about my equity-risk adjusted number, and didn't have a clue about the raw value until I went and checked.
 
sqa said:
Problem is that the pip numbers aren't that important. 30 pips at a small risk % is a lot different than 30 pips at a high %. Plus, unless you're day trading only, some weeks "0" is a good answer.

But, over the course of the last 3 months, since I went full tracking for my demo learning, I'm sitting at 38 pips per week, 9 "risk adjusted" per week. I care far more about my equity-risk adjusted number, and didn't have a clue about the raw value until I went and checked.

This.

At work we deal with a lot of various strategies. Some are better with greater size and a smaller change in price, others better with small size bug huge volatile moves... we try to risk adjust most things when keeping track of performance.

Consider using risk multiples and average risk as a better measurement of performance.

(PS. I moved your thread to the trading development area. It fits better here. :) )
 
Jack said:
This.

At work we deal with a lot of various strategies. Some are better with greater size and a smaller change in price, others better with small size bug huge volatile moves... we try to risk adjust most things when keeping track of performance.

Consider using risk multiples and average risk as a better measurement of performance.

(PS. I moved your thread to the trading development area. It fits better here. :) )

It's actually a problem through Business in general. Some projects/companies simply aren't viable endeavors until you put Billions into them. Others are only viable if you put in a few thousand, as they don't scale. Neither endeavor is unprofitable, just unprofitable at certain levels.

There's actually a few industries where being "right in the middle" of size will kill the company. Which doesn't make me feel too bad for spending several days trying to come up with how I wanted to track my own progress. (I came up with a standard relational calculation, just so I can key how well I did that week, regardless of how big or small the trade size was.)
 
sqa said:
He works at a Prop Shop, it's all sorcery. ;)

Well, to be more exact: for keeping track of performance you can do a whole bunch of things... what I mentioned wasn't something my work makes mandatory or presses upon traders, just another tool that's available. I use it, and that I've seen others use it, but it's not exclusive to the prop world... I think the first place I heard about the concept was in 'Super Trader' by Tharp, and my own personal take on it extends the concept a bit.

When I say 'risk multiples' I basically mean try to get some common understanding of what a given setup/trade/strategy is worth to you (that is, how much are you willing to spend in order to see if it will work out, or 'preconceived risk',) so you can measure return in units of risk taken**. (ie, if you're total stop out on a trade is $150, then that's 1 unit of risk. If you make $300 on that trade, you returned 2R, or two risk multiples. This also allows for tracking actively managed risk or plans that involve trailing the stop, where the trader might close a trade out before hitting the initial hard stop level, and thus record a result like -0.33R in an example like what we just did where the trade is closed out at a loss of $50.)

With that, and an understanding of expectancy for the given idea/setup, you can start to solve for 'relative risk' between ideas (assuming you want to evenly distribute risk between ideas, weighted properly for expectancy.) This works even if the ideas aren't closely related or have entirely different characteristics.

Practically speaking, viewing your performance like this can help when you have a given max $ (risk) amount you're working with within a day, and you need to split that amount up between trade ideas, or at least avoid pushing past that limit at any given time while floating multiple trades that are still individually within their respective targets and limits (to avoid some higher level risk control function from flatting you out.)

**$'s aside, as you track your day-to-day in these 'units/multiples of risk', when you start 'jack'ing up your size, you can still keep tabs of how well the trades themselves are performing vs your expectancy and past results.

Lastly, before you say: "but if I just measure pips then that too is independent of how many lots I'm using, why isn't that just as good as far as units of measurement go?"

Pips don't tell me much about what preconceived risks you took to gain them. Someone can tell us that they average 30+ pips a week, and have been hitting that consistently for months now, but for all we know the trader could be just floating losses indefinitely to achieve such a result. We end up hearing +30, +30, +30, then one day silence and an implied blowout.

Think of all the 'averaging down' or martingale type systems that look great and hella consistent on paper all the way up to the point just before they blow up... since their ultimate risk is usually the entire account (or at least a good portion of it,) their R multiple on a winning trade might be dismal.. like ~0.0001R return. If we viewed systems from this perspective, all the straight-line, near perfect looking, equity curves we see on MyFXBook would show their stripes long before the eventual implosion.
 
So, you've basically meant R:R with equity slope, with a lot of clever and complicated words? ;D

-P
 
Piper said:
So, you've basically meant R:R with equity slope, with a lot of clever and complicated words? ;D

-P

Not quite, you're in the right direction though.

R:R might be what you think you can get out of a setup, but it's static.

R multiples is a recording of the end result vs risk. Can't string together a history of trades with just R:R and come up with a measure of performance without the aftermath and a hit rate. :p

In your case, while you gun for huge R multiple returns (with possible 10+ baggers on the R:R scale,) your typical R return isn't 'kahuna' level and would be recorded as what you got vs what you would have paid had things not worked out as expected.

You could start measuring just how well you're pin-pointing and improving your trade entries, over time, with how your average R multiple returns changes week-to-week, or month-to-month. Even a strategy that has a lot of break even or stop-in-profit results will show improvement when it sees less overall losers, more BEs, and more winners...

(And, of course, if you increase your stops to achieve this--risking more and hoping to get a lucky streak going so you don't realize said risk--that would make your "R" get bigger, and thus shrinks your returns in R multiples (as a ratio of R) accordingly, thus balancing things out and preventing you gaming the stats.)
 
Again, I put my own spin on this.. but do check out "Super Trader" by Tharp if you like the concept.
 
Interesting spin... As discretionary and not that systematic(and a lazy one too ???) never really been thinking/utilizing journaling and performance monitoring that closely. Lucky me.. Ordered a copy of VanTharps book back in the days(never really got through it). Time to dust it off. Thx.

-P
 
I think we totally derailed Magatamg's thread.

Welcome to the forum BTW Magatamg! :)
 
Maybe not, because as a noobier noob I thought it was about getting as many pips as possible until I re-read this not long ago - http://www.babypips.com/school/undergraduate/senior-year/position-sizing/calculating-position-sizes.html


are we allowed to link to Babypips here, btw?
 
Peter_Pipper said:
are we allowed to link to Babypips here, btw?

I'd generally like to avoid it (out of a sense of competition,) but it's not a big deal. >:D
 
Interesting, you ask a very simple question and you get such a wide range of answers, and yet the question is still out there.

Bottom line is, PIPS = Dollars.
If you don’t make any Pips you don’t make money, it is as simple as that.
I take the average amount of pips I gain or loose in a week then divide by the number of weeks I actually trade and come up with a simple figure. I do not account for the lot size or when I scale out of the trade just simple over all amount of pips.
In at 50 out at 80 = 30 pips, I do not calculate, take ½ of at 60, then another ½ at 70. Just take the 30 pips.

I do use proper money management, R/R ratios, lots in increments of 2 (easier to divide by 50%..lol) I am not impressed by gaining 6% on my account, because it is screwed by the amount of Lots per trade I use.

Different ideas and strategies are great but, the bottom line always comes down to, did I make any pips this week or did I make or loose any money from my account.
Brian recently tweeted that he made 150 pips in a trade. I thought that was great and was happy for him. I did not ask how his R/R ratio was or how many lots or their size, jut happy the he got them.

So at the end of this Rank I will say that I use the K.I.S.S principal. No PIPs no Money.
If I make or loose trades it works out for me to see my weekly averages. Some weeks I do not trade, I enjoy life.

So back to the question, how many Pips do you average per week in which you trade?
Thanks all for you input.
 
It's ok, we all know that this place is much cooler then BP. :p

-P
 
I myself aim for 10 pips a day... strategy
or
when a day/position trade presents itself, it will depend on the target/time frame to the amount of pips to possibly achieve. One shot...

:nickleflip:
 
Magatamg said:
Interesting, you ask a very simple question and you get such a wide range of answers, and yet the question is still out there.

It happens when you ask the wrong question...
edit: idk a couple hundreds, just to give you one(but it indicates nothing..)..

Mate, you just got a very educated and thorough explanation from El Supremo Faciliator(Jack you should change the title.. ;D ) that why you can't measure it that way and it doesn't really matter(me personally learned a lot from his answer 2 u).. ;) I would recommend to read through it and soak it up..

-P
 
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