So I've been doing some scalping on pairs with high spreads in cryptocurrencies previously with great success, but I finally figured I'd give forex a real shot (was into it a few years ago, but didn't go live). Last time I scalped in crypto, I had 14 out of 14 successful trades, but only about a 10% profit. I haven't heard about anyone scalping the way I do in crypto, but I find my method extremely reliable when I just find the right pair to trade. This is just to say I have some experience with trading, but I'm by no means an expert.
Now, I've been scalping the past few days with a paper trading account on TradingView. I've mostly been trading the US Currency Index, S&P 500 and some crypto pairs thus far. I'm scalping on the 1m time frame using bollinger bands and looking at trends, price action and stoch RSI for confirmation on my entries. I started out with 100k a few days ago and first doubled my account to around 200k and then did a 1,3 mill trade, but I was running like 500-1000 USD per pip, so if the market turned against me, I'd be liquidated real quick. While the trades were good, I figured I was disconnected from the risk I was taking because it isn't real money, and I wanted to try doing more conservative and realistic trades, so I reset the account yesterday.
Edit (more trades done): Since the account was reset, I've done 45 trades where I've lost on two of them. If my math serves me right, that's about an 95.5% win rate. I'm up around 77.5% currently. I did lose 1500 on one trade, but that's because I by mistake placed a sell order when I was supposed to add another buy order double down on my long position, so I'm not counting that one in (but I'm not counting the 1500 I lost as profit either). I have a very strict strategy I'm sticking to when doing these scalps. I realize 45 trades is not a huge sample size, but that is kinda why I'm asking:
How many trades should I do on the paper trading account before I should run it live with confidence?
For anyone who might be interested, here's my account history: https://imgur.com/a/zuRSWwd
Edit: here's 6 trades more: https://imgur.com/a/CmbyU6n
Edit2: some more trades: https://imgur.com/a/q9xqVyq
Edit3: I think we're up to 45 trades now: https://imgur.com/a/CsWZEN7

My mother, being concerned for my future wellbeing, as I’m not a successful person by any means, has introduced me to a friend of hers that apparently is a “currency exchange” trader or something.
I’m generally a sceptical person so I put off the idea of having a zoom meeting with this person for a few weeks. But today I met him, he was a pleasant older man, apparently about 70 years old.
Essentially, he claims that he spent $40,000 ish about 7-8 years ago to be given a proper education in the whole Forex and analysis thing. Makes a decent living himself but as he’s nearing retirement he wants to offer me free tuition to essentially learn the ropes.
I don’t, at least yet, see where I am to lose money, unless it’s a really long game scam.
But in essence he wants me to go through the entire pips school thing, and if I manage to without finding it too difficult, understanding the basics, and showing that I’m actually up for putting the effort in, he will essentially teach me everything he knows etc, set up in modules. This won’t cost me anything other than my time.
Where I get a little confused and, as I’m completely oblivious to all of this, it may just be how these things work.
But he said, he’ll show me how to set up a Demo account and over the months learn how to try to make consistent growth on these demo account (I believe he spoke in the 3%+ per month range)
And here’s where I don’t know if it gets shady or if it’s ok. . . Once I’m relatively experienced in this, showing consistency on this etc, he says he can offer me access to a hedge fund or something? Where apparently I trade some other organisations money and not my own? Something like $100,000 per fund and I’d be expected to make profits, but never more than a 5% loss in a month or a 10% loss in any one day. Other than that, I would apparently receive 10% of profits from that.
Only thing is something to do with a server fee, something like to have access to those funds it’s something like $750 a month that’s deducted from your profit, so I don’t know if it’s a scam or it’s just how the professional world of this works.
Either way I’m keen to learn from the modules he’s sending me and so on, just not sure about any part once actual money, whether that be mine or someone else’s, is involved.
Any advice would be well received thanks

So, I am learning the art of forex, and I am learning about the art of margin :)

1. I have created the demo account with 10K in the account balance and the 200 margin.
2. Then I bought a lot of lots. In particular, I bought 16 lots. Here's the pic - https://i.imgur.com/TAQsmTV.png
3. But the position size calculator tells me that I want to open a position with the 70-pips SL and with the risk exposure of 1.5%, I should specify the 0.21 lot sizing. It's a deal I have recently opened.
4. I googled and it's said that you should never take your margin to the vicinity of 100%. But it took me 16 lots to take my margin to that level! Thus, the 0.12 lot sizing equals to 1.25% of the 16 lots...
5. Thus, it looks like I am utilizing only 1.25% of the margin made availlable by the broker, right?
6. And, ofc, I should be basing my lot sizings based on the desired risk exposure and not based on the available margin because the second scenario is gambling.
7. So, do I understand this correctly:

a. margin is well... it's for gamblers, uknow, the folks who wouldn't be able to follow the narrative in this post... who treat forex like slots... playing, not trading with a good trading strategy.
b. but I can create the deals with super-tight SLs and let them run. Thus, if I already have the deal that is well into the profits zone, i can then just move SL from the original level to BE. And then I can open another deal. If I open the second deal, the cumulative margin utilization would result at 2.5% from the available volume. And thus, if I have 20 such deals running for months, then my margin utilization would be 25%, right? I mean it's not bad and there would be risk of the margin call... I would need to open 80 thus-sized deals to get to the dangerous area.
Did I get it right?

You've presumably heard "retracement" or "follow" much of the time in case you're keen on exchanging the monetary business sectors. Be that as it may, do you really understand what value retracements are, the reason they're so significant and how to appropriately exploit them? Maybe not, yet regardless of whether you do, the present exercise will reveal new insight into how to use these incredibly amazing business sector occasions…
A retracement in a market is a pretty simple idea to characterize and comprehend. Basically, it's actually what it seems like: a period when cost remembers back on an ongoing move, either up or down. Consider "remembering your means"; returning a similar way you came. It's fundamentally an inversion of an ongoing value move.
For what reason are retracements significant? For various reasons: They are occasions to enter the market at a "superior value", they take into account ideal stop misfortune arrangement, improved danger prize and then some. A remember passage is more traditionalist than a "market section" for instance and is viewed as a "more secure" passage type. Eventually, the objective of a dealer is get the best passage cost and oversee hazard on a par with conceivable while additionally expanding restores; the retracement section is a device that permits you to do every one of the three of these things.
This exercise will cover all parts of exchanging retracements and will assist you with understanding them better and put them to use to ideally improve your general exchanging execution.
Presently, how about we examine a portion of the Pros and Cons of retracement exchanging before we take a gander at some model graphs…
Professionals of Retracement Trading
We should discuss a portion of the many "Geniuses" of retracement exchanging. Frankly, retracement exchanging is fundamentally how you exchange like an expert rifleman, which, on the off chance that you've followed me for any timeframe, you know is my favored strategy for exchanging.
Higher Probability Entries – The very idea of a draw back or backtrack implies that cost is probably going to keep moving toward the underlying move when the follow closes. Henceforth, on the off chance that you see a solid value activity signal at a level after a retracement, it's high-likelihood passage since all signs are highlighting value bobbing starting there. Presently, it doesn't generally occur, however hanging tight for a remember to a level with a sign, is the most elevated likelihood way you can exchange. Markets pivot back to the "signify" or "normal" cost again and again; this is clear by taking a gander at any value outline for a couple of moments. Along these lines, when you see this revolution or backtrack occur, begin searching for a section point there in light of the fact that it's a lot higher-likelihood passage point than just entering "at market" like most brokers do.
Less Premature Stop-Outs – A retracement permits greater adaptability with stop misfortune arrangement. Essentially, in that you can put the prevent further away from any territory on the diagram that is probably going to be hit (if the exchange you're taking is to exercise by any stretch of the imagination). Setting prevents further away from key levels or moving midpoints or further away from a pin bar high or low for instance, gives the exchange a higher possibility of working out.
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Better Risk Rewards – Retracement passages hypothetically permit you to put a "more tight" stop misfortune on an exchange since you're entering more like a key level or you're entering at a pin bar half level on an exchange section stunt passage for instance. In this way, should you decide to do as such, you can put a stop a lot nearer than if you entered an exchange that didn't occur after a follow or on the off chance that you entered a pin bar exchange at the high or low of the pin, for instance. Model: a 100 pip stop and 200 pip target can undoubtedly turn into a 50 pip stop and 250 pip focus on a follow passage. Note: you don't have to put a more tight stop, it's discretionary, however the choice IS There on a backtrack section in the event that you need it. The other option, utilizing a standard width stop has the benefit of diminishing the odds of an untimely stop out.
A danger prize can likewise be somewhat expanded regardless of whether you utilize a standard stop misfortune, rather than a "more tight one". Model: a 100 pip stop and a 200 pip target can without much of a stretch become a 100 pip stop and a 250 pip target. Why? This is on the grounds that a remember passage lets you enter the market when it has "more space" to run toward you, because of the way that cost has pulled back and it consequently has more separation to move before it follows again when contrasted with in the event that you entered at a "more awful cost" further up or down.
Cons of Retracement Trading
Obviously I will be straightforward with you and told you a portion of the "cons" of retracement exchanging, there are a not many that you ought to know about. Notwithstanding, this doesn't mean you shouldn't attempt to learn retracement exchanging and add it to your exchanging "tool stash", in light of the fact that the geniuses FAR exceed the cons.
More Missed Trades: Good exchanges will "move away" now and then when hanging tight for a retracement that doesn't occur, for instance. This can test your nerves and exchanging attitude and will bother even the best dealers. In any case, trust me, passing up exchanges isn't the most exceedingly terrible thing on the planet and it's smarter to pass up certain exchanges than to over-exchange, that is without a doubt.
Less Trades in General – A great deal of the time, advertises just don't remember enough to trigger the more moderate passage that returns with a force. All things being equal, they may simply prop up with insignificant retracements. This implies you will have less opportunities to exchange by and large when contrasted with somebody who isn't essentially hanging tight for follows.
Because of the over two focuses, retracement exchanging can be disappointing and takes unimaginable order. In any case, in the event that you build up this order you'll be WELL in front of the majority of losing dealers thus retracement exchanging can assist you with building up the control you should need to prevail at exchanging regardless of what passage technique you wind up utilizing.
Retracements Provide Flexibility in Stop Loss Placements
Setting your stop misfortune at some unacceptable point can get you taken out of an exchange rashly, that you in any case were spot on. By figuring out how to sit tight for market pull backs or retracements, you won't just enter the market at a higher-likelihood point, however you'll likewise have the option to put your stop misfortune at a lot more secure point on the diagram.
Regularly, dealers get debilitate in light of the fact that they get halted out of an exchange that actually they were spot on. Putting a stop misfortune at some unacceptable point on a diagram can get you removed from an exchange before the market truly gets an opportunity to get moving toward you. A retracement presents a clever answer for this issue by permitting you to put a more secure and more extensive stop misfortune on an exchange, giving you a superior possibility at bringing in cash on that exchange.
At the point when a market follows or pulls back, particularly inside a moving business sector, it is giving you an occasion to put your stop misfortune at a point on the outline that is significantly more averse to take you out of an exchange. Since most remembers occur into help or opposition levels, you can put the stop misfortune further past that level (more secure) which is fundamentally less inclined to be hit than if it was nearer to the level. Utilizing what I call a "standard" stop misfortune (not a tight one) in this case will give you the most obvious opportunity at keeping away from an untimely take out of an exchange.

I have a habit of backtesting every strategy I find as long as it makes sense. I find it fun, and even if the strategy ends up being underperforming, it gives me a good excuse to gain valuable chart experience that would normally take years to gather. After I backtest something, I compare it to my current methodology, and usually conclude that mine is better either because it has a better performance or the new method requires too much time to manage (Spoiler: until now, I like this better)
During the last two days, I have worked on backtesting ParallaxFx strategy, as it seemed promising and it seemed to fit my personality (a lazy fuck who will happily halve his yearly return if it means he can spend 10% less time in front of the screens). My backtesting is preliminary, and I didn't delve very deep in the data gathering. I usually track all sort of stuff, but for this first pass, I sticked to the main indicators of performance over a restricted sample size of markets.
Before I share my results with you, I always feel the need to make a preface that I know most people will ignore.

• I am words on your screen. You cannot trust me. I could have edited this or literally just typed random numbers on a spreadsheet. Do your own research if you want to trust my conclusion.
  
• Even if you trust me, you need to do backtesting for yourself. The goal of backtesting isn't simply to figure out whether a strategy has an edge: it's a way to get used to how the market flows (valuable experience you will bring on to any other strategy) and how the strategy behaves. You need to see it with your own eyes to allow your subconscious mind to be at ease when it comes time to trade it live: the only way to truly trust your strategy during a period of drawdown, is to have seen it work over hundreds of trades in the past.
  

Strategy
I am not going to go into the strategy in this thread. If you haven't read the series of threads by the guy who shared it, go here.
As suggested by my mentioned personality type, I went with the passive management options of ParallaxFx's strategy. After a valid setup forms, I place two orders of half my risk. I add or remove 1 pip from each level to account for spread.

• The first at the 23.6 retracement.
• The second at the 38.2 retracement.
• Both orders have a stop loss at the 78.6 retracement.
• Both orders have the same target at the -100.0 extension.
• If price moves to the -38.2 extension, I delete any unfilled orders.
• I do not scale out, I do not move to breakeven, I place my orders and walk away.

Sample
I tested this strategy over the seven major currency pairs: AUDUSD, USDCAD, NZDUSD, GBPUSD, USDJPY, EURUSD, USDCHF. The time period started on January 1th 2018 and ended on July 1th 2020, so a 2.5 years backtest. I tested over the D1 timeframe, and I plan on testing other timeframes.
My "protocol" for backtesting is that, if I like what I see during this phase, I will move to the second phase where I'll backtest over 5 years and 28 currency pairs.
Units of measure
I used R multiples to track my performance. If you don't know what they are, I'm too sleepy to explain right now. This article explains what they are. The gist is that the results you'll see do not take into consideration compounding and they normalize volatility (something pips don't do, and why pips are in my opinion a terrible unit of measure for performance) as well as percentage risk (you can attach variable risk profiles on your R values to optimize position sizing in order to maximize returns and minimize drawdowns, but I won't get into that).
Results
I am not going to link the spreadsheet directly, because it is in my GDrive folder and that would allow you to see my personal information. I will attach screenshots of both the results and the list of trades. In the latter, I have included the day of entry for each trade, so if you're up to the task, you can cross-reference all the trades I have placed to make sure I am not making things up.
Overall results: R Curve and Segmented performance.
List of trades: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Something to note: I treated every half position as an individual trade for the sake of simplicity. It should not mess with the results, but it simply means you will see huge streaks of wins and losses. This does not matter because I'm half risk in each of them, so a winstreak of 6 trades is just a winstreak of 3 trades.
For reference:

• Trades: 145
• Profit Factor: 2.34
• Return: 100.47 R
• Strike rate: 48.28%
• Average win: 2.51 R
• Average loss: -1.00 R

Thoughts
Nice. I'll keep testing. As of now it is vastly better than my current strategy.

Disclaimer: None of this is financial advice. I have no idea what I'm doing. Please do your own research or you will certainly lose money. I'm not a statistician, data scientist, well-seasoned trader, or anything else that would qualify me to make statements such as the below with any weight behind them. Take them for the incoherent ramblings that they are.
TL;DR at the bottom for those not interested in the details.
This is a bit of a novel, sorry about that. It was mostly for getting my own thoughts organized, but if even one person reads the whole thing I will feel incredibly accomplished.

Background

For those of you not familiar, please see the various threads on this trading system here. I can't take credit for this system, all glory goes to ParallaxFX!
I wanted to see how effective this system was at H1 for a couple of reasons: 1) My current broker is TD Ameritrade - their Forex minimum is a mini lot, and I don't feel comfortable enough yet with the risk to trade mini lots on the higher timeframes(i.e. wider pip swings) that ParallaxFX's system uses, so I wanted to see if I could scale it down. 2) I'm fairly impatient, so I don't like to wait days and days with my capital tied up just to see if a trade is going to win or lose.
This does mean it requires more active attention since you are checking for setups once an hour instead of once a day or every 4-6 hours, but the upside is that you trade more often this way so you end up winning or losing faster and moving onto the next trade. Spread does eat more of the trade this way, but I'll cover this in my data below - it ends up not being a problem.
I looked at data from 6/11 to 7/3 on all pairs with a reasonable spread(pairs listed at bottom above the TL;DR). So this represents about 3-4 weeks' worth of trading. I used mark(mid) price charts. Spreadsheet link is below for anyone that's interested.

System Details

I'm pretty much using ParallaxFX's system textbook, but since there are a few options in his writeups, I'll include all the discretionary points here:

• I'm using the stop entry version - so I wait for the price to trade beyond the confirmation candle(in the direction of my trade) before entering. I don't have any data to support this decision, but I've always preferred this method over retracement-limit entries. Maybe I just like the feeling of a higher winrate even though there can be greater R:R using a limit entry. Variety is the spice of life.
• I put my stop loss right at the opposite edge of the confirmation candle. NOT at the edge of the 2-candle pattern that makes up the system. I'll get into this more below - not enough trades are saved to justify the wider stops. (Wider stop means less $ per pip won, assuming you still only risk 1%).
• All my profit/loss statistics are based on a 1% risk per trade. Because 1 is real easy to multiply.
• There are definitely some questionable trades in here, but I tried to make it as mechanical as possible for evaluation purposes. They do fit the definitions of the system, which is why I included them. You could probably improve the winrate by being more discretionary about your trades by looking at support/resistance or other techniques.
• I didn't use MBB much for either entering trades, or as support/resistance indicators. Again, trying to be pretty mechanical here just for data collection purposes. Plus, we all make bad trading decisions now and then, so let's call it even.
• As stated in the title, this is for H1 only. These results may very well not play out for other time frames - who knows, it may not even work on H1 starting this Monday. Forex is an unpredictable place.
• I collected data to show efficacy of taking profit at three different levels: -61.8%, -100% and -161.8% fib levels described in the system using the passive trade management method(set it and forget it). I'll have more below about moving up stops and taking off portions of a position.

And now for the fun. Results!

• Total Trades: 241
• Raw Winrates:
  • TP at -61.8%: 177 out of 241: 73.44%
  • TP at -100%: 156 out of 241: 64.73%
  • TP at -161.8%: 121 out of 241: 50.20%
• Adjusted Proft % (takes spread into account):
  • TP at -61.8%: 5.22%
  • TP at -100%: 23.55%
  • TP at -161.8%: 29.14%

As you can see, a higher target ended up with higher profit despite a much lower winrate. This is partially just how things work out with profit targets in general, but there's an additional point to consider in our case: the spread. Since we are trading on a lower timeframe, there is less overall price movement and thus the spread takes up a much larger percentage of the trade than it would if you were trading H4, Daily or Weekly charts. You can see exactly how much it accounts for each trade in my spreadsheet if you're interested. TDA does not have the best spreads, so you could probably improve these results with another broker.
EDIT: I grabbed typical spreads from other brokers, and turns out while TDA is pretty competitive on majors, their minors/crosses are awful! IG beats them by 20-40% and Oanda beats them 30-60%! Using IG spreads for calculations increased profits considerably (another 5% on top) and Oanda spreads increased profits massively (another 15%!). Definitely going to be considering another broker than TDA for this strategy. Plus that'll allow me to trade micro-lots, so I can be more granular(and thus accurate) with my position sizing and compounding.

A Note on Spread

As you can see in the data, there were scenarios where the spread was 80% of the overall size of the trade(the size of the confirmation candle that you draw your fibonacci retracements over), which would obviously cut heavily into your profits.
Removing any trades where the spread is more than 50% of the trade width improved profits slightly without removing many trades, but this is almost certainly just coincidence on a small sample size. Going below 40% and even down to 30% starts to cut out a lot of trades for the less-common pairs, but doesn't actually change overall profits at all(~1% either way).
However, digging all the way down to 25% starts to really make some movement. Profit at the -161.8% TP level jumps up to 37.94% if you filter out anything with a spread that is more than 25% of the trade width! And this even keeps the sample size fairly large at 187 total trades.
You can get your profits all the way up to 48.43% at the -161.8% TP level if you filter all the way down to only trades where spread is less than 15% of the trade width, however your sample size gets much smaller at that point(108 trades) so I'm not sure I would trust that as being accurate in the long term.
Overall based on this data, I'm going to only take trades where the spread is less than 25% of the trade width. This may bias my trades more towards the majors, which would mean a lot more correlated trades as well(more on correlation below), but I think it is a reasonable precaution regardless.

Time of Day

Time of day had an interesting effect on trades. In a totally predictable fashion, a vast majority of setups occurred during the London and New York sessions: 5am-12pm Eastern. However, there was one outlier where there were many setups on the 11PM bar - and the winrate was about the same as the big hours in the London session. No idea why this hour in particular - anyone have any insight? That's smack in the middle of the Tokyo/Sydney overlap, not at the open or close of either.
On many of the hour slices I have a feeling I'm just dealing with small number statistics here since I didn't have a lot of data when breaking it down by individual hours. But here it is anyway - for all TP levels, these three things showed up(all in Eastern time):

• 7pm-4am: Fewer setups, but winrate high.
• 5am-6am: Lots of setups, but but winrate low.
• 12pm-3pm Medium number of setups, but winrate low.

I don't have any reason to think these timeframes would maintain this behavior over the long term. They're almost certainly meaningless. EDIT: When you de-dup highly correlated trades, the number of trades in these timeframes really drops, so from this data there is no reason to think these timeframes would be any different than any others in terms of winrate.
That being said, these time frames work out for me pretty well because I typically sleep 12am-7am Eastern time. So I automatically avoid the 5am-6am timeframe, and I'm awake for the majority of this system's setups.

Moving stops up to breakeven

This section goes against everything I know and have ever heard about trade management. Please someone find something wrong with my data. I'd love for someone to check my formulas, but I realize that's a pretty insane time commitment to ask of a bunch of strangers.
Anyways. What I found was that for these trades moving stops up...basically at all...actually reduced the overall profitability.
One of the data points I collected while charting was where the price retraced back to after hitting a certain milestone. i.e. once the price hit the -61.8% profit level, how far back did it retrace before hitting the -100% profit level(if at all)? And same goes for the -100% profit level - how far back did it retrace before hitting the -161.8% profit level(if at all)?
Well, some complex excel formulas later and here's what the results appear to be. Emphasis on appears because I honestly don't believe it. I must have done something wrong here, but I've gone over it a hundred times and I can't find anything out of place.

• Moving SL up to 0% when the price hits -61.8%, TP at -100%
  • Winrate: 46.4%
  • Adjusted Proft % (takes spread into account): 5.36%
• Taking half position off at -61.8%, moving SL up to 0%, TP remaining half at -100%
  • Winrate: 65.97%
  • Adjusted Proft % (takes spread into account): -1.01% (yes, a net loss)

Now, you might think exactly what I did when looking at these numbers: oof, the spread killed us there right? Because even when you move your SL to 0%, you still end up paying the spread, so it's not truly "breakeven". And because we are trading on a lower timeframe, the spread can be pretty hefty right?
Well even when I manually modified the data so that the spread wasn't subtracted(i.e. "Breakeven" was truly +/- 0), things don't look a whole lot better, and still way worse than the passive trade management method of leaving your stops in place and letting it run. And that isn't even a realistic scenario because to adjust out the spread you'd have to move your stoploss inside the candle edge by at least the spread amount, meaning it would almost certainly be triggered more often than in the data I collected(which was purely based on the fib levels and mark price). Regardless, here are the numbers for that scenario:

• Moving SL up to 0% when the price hits -61.8%, TP at -100%
  • Winrate(breakeven doesn't count as a win): 46.4%
  • Adjusted Proft % (takes spread into account): 17.97%
• Taking half position off at -61.8%, moving SL up to 0%, TP remaining half at -100%
  • Winrate(breakeven doesn't count as a win): 65.97%
  • Adjusted Proft % (takes spread into account): 11.60%

From a literal standpoint, what I see behind this behavior is that 44 of the 69 breakeven trades(65%!) ended up being profitable to -100% after retracing deeply(but not to the original SL level), which greatly helped offset the purely losing trades better than the partial profit taken at -61.8%. And 36 went all the way back to -161.8% after a deep retracement without hitting the original SL. Anyone have any insight into this? Is this a problem with just not enough data? It seems like enough trades that a pattern should emerge, but again I'm no expert.
I also briefly looked at moving stops to other lower levels (78.6%, 61.8%, 50%, 38.2%, 23.6%), but that didn't improve things any. No hard data to share as I only took a quick look - and I still might have done something wrong overall.
The data is there to infer other strategies if anyone would like to dig in deep(more explanation on the spreadsheet below). I didn't do other combinations because the formulas got pretty complicated and I had already answered all the questions I was looking to answer.

2-Candle vs Confirmation Candle Stops

Another interesting point is that the original system has the SL level(for stop entries) just at the outer edge of the 2-candle pattern that makes up the system. Out of pure laziness, I set up my stops just based on the confirmation candle. And as it turns out, that is much a much better way to go about it.
Of the 60 purely losing trades, only 9 of them(15%) would go on to be winners with stops on the 2-candle formation. Certainly not enough to justify the extra loss and/or reduced profits you are exposing yourself to in every single other trade by setting a wider SL.
Oddly, in every single scenario where the wider stop did save the trade, it ended up going all the way to the -161.8% profit level. Still, not nearly worth it.

Correlated Trades

As I've said many times now, I'm really not qualified to be doing an analysis like this. This section in particular.
Looking at shared currency among the pairs traded, 74 of the trades are correlated. Quite a large group, but it makes sense considering the sort of moves we're looking for with this system.
This means you are opening yourself up to more risk if you were to trade on every signal since you are technically trading with the same underlying sentiment on each different pair. For example, GBP/USD and AUD/USD moving together almost certainly means it's due to USD moving both pairs, rather than GBP and AUD both moving the same size and direction coincidentally at the same time. So if you were to trade both signals, you would very likely win or lose both trades - meaning you are actually risking double what you'd normally risk(unless you halve both positions which can be a good option, and is discussed in ParallaxFX's posts and in various other places that go over pair correlation. I won't go into detail about those strategies here).
Interestingly though, 17 of those apparently correlated trades ended up with different wins/losses.
Also, looking only at trades that were correlated, winrate is 83%/70%/55% (for the three TP levels).
Does this give some indication that the same signal on multiple pairs means the signal is stronger? That there's some strong underlying sentiment driving it? Or is it just a matter of too small a sample size? The winrate isn't really much higher than the overall winrates, so that makes me doubt it is statistically significant.
One more funny tidbit: EUCAD netted the lowest overall winrate: 30% to even the -61.8% TP level on 10 trades. Seems like that is just a coincidence and not enough data, but dang that's a sucky losing streak.
EDIT: WOW I spent some time removing correlated trades manually and it changed the results quite a bit. Some thoughts on this below the results. These numbers also include the other "What I will trade" filters. I added a new worksheet to my data to show what I ended up picking.

• Total Trades: 75
• Raw Winrates:
  • TP at -61.8%: 84.00%
  • TP at -100%: 73.33%
  • TP at -161.8%: 60.00%
  • Moving SL up to 0% when the price hits -61.8%, TP at -100%: 53.33%
  • Taking half position off at -61.8%, moving SL up to 0%, TP remaining half at -100%: 53.33% (yes, oddly the exact same winrate. but different trades/profits)
• Adjusted Proft % (takes spread into account):
  • TP at -61.8%: 18.13%
  • TP at -100%: 26.20%
  • TP at -161.8%: 34.01%
  • Moving SL up to 0% when the price hits -61.8%, TP at -100%: 19.20%
  • Taking half position off at -61.8%, moving SL up to 0%, TP remaining half at -100%: 17.29%

To do this, I removed correlated trades - typically by choosing those whose spread had a lower % of the trade width since that's objective and something I can see ahead of time. Obviously I'd like to only keep the winning trades, but I won't know that during the trade. This did reduce the overall sample size down to a level that I wouldn't otherwise consider to be big enough, but since the results are generally consistent with the overall dataset, I'm not going to worry about it too much.
I may also use more discretionary methods(support/resistance, quality of indecision/confirmation candles, news/sentiment for the pairs involved, etc) to filter out correlated trades in the future. But as I've said before I'm going for a pretty mechanical system.
This brought the 3 TP levels and even the breakeven strategies much closer together in overall profit. It muted the profit from the high R:R strategies and boosted the profit from the low R:R strategies. This tells me pair correlation was skewing my data quite a bit, so I'm glad I dug in a little deeper. Fortunately my original conclusion to use the -161.8 TP level with static stops is still the winner by a good bit, so it doesn't end up changing my actions.
There were a few times where MANY (6-8) correlated pairs all came up at the same time, so it'd be a crapshoot to an extent. And the data showed this - often then won/lost together, but sometimes they did not. As an arbitrary rule, the more correlations, the more trades I did end up taking(and thus risking). For example if there were 3-5 correlations, I might take the 2 "best" trades given my criteria above. 5+ setups and I might take the best 3 trades, even if the pairs are somewhat correlated.
I have no true data to back this up, but to illustrate using one example: if AUD/JPY, AUD/USD, CAD/JPY, USD/CAD all set up at the same time (as they did, along with a few other pairs on 6/19/20 9:00 AM), can you really say that those are all the same underlying movement? There are correlations between the different correlations, and trying to filter for that seems rough. Although maybe this is a known thing, I'm still pretty green to Forex - someone please enlighten me if so! I might have to look into this more statistically, but it would be pretty complex to analyze quantitatively, so for now I'm going with my gut and just taking a few of the "best" trades out of the handful.
Overall, I'm really glad I went further on this. The boosting of the B/E strategies makes me trust my calculations on those more since they aren't so far from the passive management like they were with the raw data, and that really had me wondering what I did wrong.

What I will trade

Putting all this together, I am going to attempt to trade the following(demo for a bit to make sure I have the hang of it, then for keeps):

• "System Details" I described above.
• TP at -161.8%
• Static SL at opposite side of confirmation candle - I won't move stops up to breakeven.
• Trade only 7am-11am and 4pm-11pm signals.
• Nothing where spread is more than 25% of trade width.

Looking at the data for these rules, test results are:

• Winrate: 58.19%
• Adjusted Proft % (takes spread into account): 47.43%

I'll be sure to let everyone know how it goes!

Other Technical Details

• ATR is only slightly elevated in this date range from historical levels, so this should fairly closely represent reality even after the COVID volatility leaves the scalpers sad and alone.
• The sample size is much too small for anything really meaningful when you slice by hour or pair. I wasn't particularly looking to test a specific pair here - just the system overall as if you were going to trade it on all pairs with a reasonable spread.

Raw Data

Here's the spreadsheet for anyone that'd like it. (EDIT: Updated some of the setups from the last few days that have fully played out now. I also noticed a few typos, but nothing major that would change the overall outcomes. Regardless, I am currently reviewing every trade to ensure they are accurate.UPDATE: Finally all done. Very few corrections, no change to results.)
I have some explanatory notes below to help everyone else understand the spiraled labyrinth of a mind that put the spreadsheet together.

• I'm on the East Coast in the US, so the timestamps are Eastern time.
• Time stamp is from the confirmation candle, not the indecision candle. So 7am would mean the indecision candle was 6:00-6:59 and the confirmation candle is 7:00-7:59 and you'd put in your order at 8:00.
• I found a couple AM/PM typos as I was reviewing the data, so let me know if a trade doesn't make sense and I'll correct it.

Insanely detailed spreadsheet notes

For you real nerds out there. Here's an explanation of what each column means:

• Pair - duh
• Date/Time - Eastern time, confirmation candle as stated above
• Win to -61.8%? - whether the trade made it to the -61.8% TP level before it hit the original SL.
• Win to -100%? - whether the trade made it to the -100% TP level before it hit the original SL.
• Win to -161.8%? - whether the trade made it to the -161.8% TP level before it hit the original SL.
• Retracement level between -61.8% and -100% - how deep the price retraced after hitting -61.8%, but before hitting -100%. Be careful to look for the negative signs, it's easy to mix them up. Using the fib% levels defined in ParallaxFX's original thread. A plain hyphen "-" means it did not retrace, but rather went straight through -61.8% to -100%. Positive 100 means it hit the original SL.
• Retracement level between -100% and -161.8% - how deep the price retraced after hitting -100%, but before hitting -161.8%. Be careful to look for the negative signs, it's easy to mix them up. Using the fib% levels defined in ParallaxFX's original thread. A plain hyphen "-" means it did not retrace, but rather went straight through -100% to -161.8%. Positive 100 means it hit the original SL.
• Trade Width(Pips) - the size of the confirmation candle, and thus the "width" of your trade on which to determine position size, draw fib levels, etc.
• Loser saved by 2 candle stop? - for all losing trades, whether or not the 2-candle stop loss would have saved the trade and how far it ended up getting if so. "No" means it didn't save it, N/A means it wasn't a losing trade so it's not relevant.
• Spread(ThinkorSwim) - these are typical spreads for these pairs on ToS.
• Spread % of Width - How big is the spread compared to the trade width? Not used in any calculations, but interesting nonetheless.
• True Risk(Trade Width + Spread) - I set my SL at the opposite side of the confirmation candle knowing that I'm actually exposing myself to slightly more risk because of the spread(stop order = market order when submitted, so you pay the spread). So this tells you how many pips you are actually risking despite the Trade Width. I prefer this over setting the stop inside from the edge of the candle because some pairs have a wide spread that would mess with the system overall. But also many, many of these trades retraced very nearly to the edge of the confirmation candle, before ending up nicely profitable. If you keep your risk per trade at 1%, you're talking a true risk of, at most, 1.25% (in worst-case scenarios with the spread being 25% of the trade width as I am going with above).
• Win or Loss in %(1% risk) including spread TP -61.8% - not going to go into huge detail, see the spreadsheet for calculations if you want. But, in a nutshell, if the trade was a win to 61.8%, it returns a positive # based on 61.8% of the trade width, minus the spread. Otherwise, it returns the True Risk as a negative. Both normalized to the 1% risk you started with.
• Win or Loss in %(1% risk) including spread TP -100% - same as the last, but 100% of Trade Width.
• Win or Loss in %(1% risk) including spread TP -161.8% - same as the last, but 161.8% of Trade Width.
• Win or Loss in %(1% risk) including spread TP -100%, and move SL to breakeven at 61.8% - uses the retracement level columns to calculate profit/loss the same as the last few columns, but assuming you moved SL to 0% fib level after price hit -61.8%. Then full TP at 100%.
• Win or Loss in %(1% risk) including spread take off half of position at -61.8%, move SL to breakeven, TP 100% - uses the retracement level columns to calculate profit/loss the same as the last few columns, but assuming you took of half the position and moved SL to 0% fib level after price hit -61.8%. Then TP the remaining half at 100%.
• Overall Growth(-161.8% TP, 1% Risk) - pretty straightforward. Assuming you risked 1% on each trade, what the overall growth level would be chronologically(spreadsheet is sorted by date).

Pairs

1. AUD/CAD
2. AUD/CHF
3. AUD/JPY
4. AUD/NZD
5. AUD/USD
6. CAD/CHF
7. CAD/JPY
8. CHF/JPY
9. EUAUD
10. EUCAD
11. EUCHF
12. EUGBP
13. EUJPY
14. EUNZD
15. EUUSD
16. GBP/AUD
17. GBP/CAD
18. GBP/CHF
19. GBP/JPY
20. GBP/NZD
21. GBP/USD
22. NZD/CAD
23. NZD/CHF
24. NZD/JPY
25. NZD/USD
26. USD/CAD
27. USD/CHF
28. USD/JPY

TL;DR

Based on the reasonable rules I discovered in this backtest:

• Date range: 6/11-7/3
• Winrate: 58.19%
• Adjusted Proft % (takes spread into account): 47.43%

Demo Trading Results

Since this post, I started demo trading this system assuming a 5k capital base and risking ~1% per trade. I've added the details to my spreadsheet for anyone interested. The results are pretty similar to the backtest when you consider real-life conditions/timing are a bit different. I missed some trades due to life(work, out of the house, etc), so that brought my total # of trades and thus overall profit down, but the winrate is nearly identical. I also closed a few trades early due to various reasons(not liking the price action, seeing support/resistance emerge, etc).
A quick note is that TD's paper trade system fills at the mid price for both stop and limit orders, so I had to subtract the spread from the raw trade values to get the true profit/loss amount for each trade.
I'm heading out of town next week, then after that it'll be time to take this sucker live!

• 86 Trades
  • Date range: 7/9-7/30
  • Winrate: 52.32%
  • Adjusted Proft % (takes spread into account): 20.73%
    • Starting Balance: $5,000
    • Ending Balance: $6,036.51

Live Trading Results

I started live-trading this system on 8/10, and almost immediately had a string of losses much longer than either my backtest or demo period. Murphy's law huh? Anyways, that has me spooked so I'm doing a longer backtest before I start risking more real money. It's going to take me a little while due to the volume of trades, but I'll likely make a new post once I feel comfortable with that and start live trading again.

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Fortunately, there are online sites that provide informative Forex broker reviews to aid you in choosing the right firm for your trading needs. These sites have extensively tested the brokers' Forex platforms and trading conditions using real-money accounts and making real trades. This means that you don't have to invest your own money to determine whether a Forex broker is reputable and effective at handling your trades on the market.
Some of the criteria that such sites use in their reviews include the safety of a trader's deposits and the honesty of the broker. The trader can conduct his/her own online research about a specific trader via online forums, ask direct questions to the firm, and seek information from the proper authorities. One of the essential things the trader must learn about the broker is whether the firm is regulated by government authorities. Another is whether the firm uses state-of-the-art measures to ensure that the trader's personal information and account details will remain safe from unauthorized access. Sites that provide Forex broker reviews can quickly give you this vital information. forex broker review
A trader should also determine the spreads and commissions that the broker will receive when executing trades on the Forex market. The lower the level of commission the better it is for you. Any commissions over 3-pips in EURUSD trades should necessitate you finding another broker. There are quality firms that only charge 1-pip for EURUSD trades. It's important for you to find out the spreads and commissions that are charged by the brokers before deciding to employ them for your Forex trades. These are usually explained on the firm's website.
A trader should look for a broker that only requires a small initial deposit. At the same time, however, the trader should also consider leverage and minimum lot size as well. The trader should also choose a firm that provides many ways to fund his/her deposit, including wire transfers, credit cards, and PayPal transfers. Sites that provide Forex broker reviews will usually list the ways in which you can fund your accounts. Top Rated Forex Brokers
The trader should also find the right Forex trading platform to execute his/her trades. The platform should provide a comfortable and familiar interface to the trader and should also provide plenty of customizations options. The best way to find the right platform for you is to take it for a spin via a demo account, which most reputable brokerage firms now offer.
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A lesson I learned from thinking about small island nations has me thinking towards its scalability in larger countries. The idea is to steady a country’s currency in the forex market through open market operations. But why?
It is not uncommon to see a forex pair go up and down 0.1% within a few hours. 0.1% can account for millions of dollars in the red when trading billions in a trading day. That is why a steady forex pair can attract more importeexporters, especially since currency pairs are measured in micro pips. But there is more.
If a trader is willing to accept a 0.1% loss in a day, that accounts for more than 30% a year. That means if a forex currency were to be very steady, in order to attract traders, it could afford to steadily inflate at 15% a year continuously, and still be twice as attractive as a currency that fluctuates at 0.1% a day.
Hence, a country that inflates its currency at 15% a year across all currency pairs, can achieve reserves of other country’s currencies at a rate of 15% a year. That is, because all outstanding currencies will depreciate due to inflation continuously, so less is owed in return. The fact that it is continuous inflation means that even if the currency is only held for a moment, that money will undergo some sort of depreciation. If trillions of dollars in yen are exchanged a year, that could be a profit of 150 billion dollars (15% of 1 trillion dollars).
However there is a minor set-back. To keep the currency’s inflation at 15%, part of the money that is earned would have to be exchanged back in order to keep the currency steady at a 15% annual inflation. Furthermore, expect inflation in the country to reach 15% as well, because extra printed money will be pumped in through exports. After all, the Big Mac Index will trend to a currency’s exchange rate in the long run.
This is, because exports will bring in extra cash until CPI reaches a 15% increase, which in turn will make the exchange pair inflate until currency will need to be traded back across the index to keep the value in the forex exchange.
Therefore, it is better to use a more realistic inflation target such as 3% rather than the 15% example used above. That is, because inflation in a country (CPI) cannot go too high or it will discourage institutions from holding it in reserves. But the good news is that inflation (CPI) is directly correlated to higher GDP. That is, because of the laws of supply and demand; when more goods are sold, prices tend to be higher.

I'm hopeless at formatting text, so if you think you can structure this post better take everything i write and put it into an easy to digest way. I'm just going to type out everything i know in text as fast as possible. I'm not a legal expert, I'm not somehow who understands every bit of information in the PDF's below, but i know I'm a retail trader that uses leverage to make profit which is why I'm posting this, in the hope that someone who can run a charge better than me, will.
Some of you are already aware of what might be happening, this is just a post to educate retail traders on changes that might be coming to certain brokers. This effects Australian Customers the most, but also effects those living in other countries that use Australian brokers, such as Pepperstone and others.
Last year in August 2019, ASIC ( Australian Securities and Investments Commission ) was concerned about retail traders going into Forex and Binary options without understanding these instruments properly and started sticking their noses in for tough regulation.
ASIC asked brokers and anyone with interest in the industry to write to them and explain what should and should not change from the changes they proposed, some of the proposed changes are very misguided and come from a lack of understanding exactly how OTC derivatives actually work.
I will provide the link to the paper further down so you can read it yourself and i will provide a link to all the submission made by all parties that sent submissions to ASIC, however the 2 main points of debate are:
1, To reduce the overall leverage available to retail traders to either 20:1 or 30:1. This means people who currently use leverage such as 100:1 to 500:1 and everything in between will be effected the most, even more so are those traders with relatively small accounts, meaning in order to get your foot in the door to trading you will need more capital for it to be viable.
^^ This point above is very important.
2, The removing of Binary options trading, which basically includes products like "Bet if gold will rise to this price in the next 30 seconds" This sort of stuff. So far from all the submissions from brokers and individuals nobody really cares if this changes as far as i know, though if you have concerns about this i would start voicing your disapproval. Though i would not waste your time here, all is pointing to this being eradicated completely with brokers also supporting the changes, I've never used such a product and know very little about them.
^^ This point above isn't very important and will probably be enforced in the future.
Still to this day i see retail traders not understanding leverage, they think of it as "dangerous and scary", it's not, position size is the real danger, not leverage. So ASIC is aiming to limit retail traders access to high leverage, they are claiming it is a way to protect traders who don't really understand what they are getting into by attacking leverage and not the real problem which is position size relative to your capital.
If it was truly about protecting retail traders from blowing up their accounts, they would look for ways to educate traders on "understanding position sizes and why it's important" rather than attacking leverage, but their goal is misguided or has an ulterior motive . I will give you a small example below.
EXAMPLE - We will use 2 demo accounts for demonstration purposes. If you don't understand my example, i suggest you try it for yourself. - Skip if not interested in examples.
Lets say we open 2 demo accounts with $1000 in both, one with 20:1 leverage and one with 500:1 leverage and we open an identical position on both accounts ( say a micro lot '0.01' on EURUSD ). You are safer on the 500:1 account as you don't need to put up as much margin as collateral as you would on the 20:1. If the trade we just opened goes against us and continues against us, the account with 20:1 leverage will run out of free margin a lot faster than the 500:1 account. In this simple example is shows you that leverage is not dangerous but safer and gives you a lot more breathing room. This trade was a small micro lot, so it would take hundreds of pips movements to get margin called and blow up that $1000 on each account. Lets now use a different position size to truly understand why retail traders blow up accounts and is the reason why trading can be dangerous.
This time instead of opening a micro lot of '0.01' on our $1000 dollar demo accounts, lets open a position size much larger, 5 lots. Remember we only have $1000 and we are about to open a position much larger relative to our capital ( which we should never do because we can't afford to do that ) the 20:1 probably wont even let you place that trade if you don't have enough margin as collateral or if you could open the position you would have a very tiny amount of free margin left over, meaning a small pip movement against you will instantly blow up your $1000 account. On the 500:1 account you wouldn't need to put up as much margin as collateral with more free margin if the trade goes bad, but again a small movement could blow up your account. In this example, both accounts were dangerous because the lack of understanding position sizes, opening a position you can't afford to open. This is what the true danger is, not the leverage.
Even in the second example, the higher leverage would "margin call" you out later. So i would go as far to say that lower leverage is more dangerous for you because it margin calls you out faster and just by having a lower leverage doesn't stop you from opening big positions that can blow you up in a 5 pip movement anymore, any leverage size is dangerous if you're opening positions you can't afford to open. This is also taking into consideration that no risk management is being used, with risk management higher leverage is even more powerful.
ASIC believes lowering leverage will stop people opening positions that they can't afford. When the reality is no matter how much capital you have $500, $1000, $5000, $50,000, $500,000, $5,000,000. You don't open position sizes that will blow that capital up completely with small movements. The same thing can happen on a 20:1 or 500:1 account.
Leverage is a tool, use it, if your on a lower leverage already such as 20:1, 30:1 it means your country has been regulated and you already have harder trading conditions. Just remember higher leverage allows you to open larger position sizes in total for the amount of money you own, but the issue is NOT that your using the higher leverage but because you are opening positions you can't afford, for what ever reason that is, the only fix for this is education and will not be fixed by simply lowing leverage, since you can just as easy blow up your account on low leverage just as fast or if not faster.
So what is going on?
There might ( get your tinfoil hats on ) be more that is involved here, deeper than you think, other agendas to try and stop small time retail traders from making money via OTC products, theories such as governments not wanting their citizens to be traders, rather would prefer you to get out there and work a 9 to 5 instead. Effective ways to do this would be making conditions harder with a much larger barrier of entry and the best way to increase the barrier of entry for retail traders is to limit leverage, lower leverage means you need to put up more money, less breathing room for trades, lower potential. They are limiting your upside potential and the downside stays the same, a blown account is a blow account.
Think of leverage as a weapon, a person wielding a butchers knife can probably destroy a person wielding a steak knife, but both knifes can prove fatal. They want to make sure your holding the butter knife then tell you to butcher a cow with it. 30:1 leverage is still workable and can still be profitable, but not as profitable as 500:1 accounts. This is why they are allowing professionals to use high leverage, this gives them another edge over successful retail traders who will still be trying to butcher a cow with a butter knife, while they are slaying limbs off the cow with machetes.
It's a way to hamstring you and keep you away rather than trying to "protect" you. The real danger is not leverage, they are barking up the wrong tree, how convenient to be barking up the very tree most retail traders don't fully understand ( leverage) , pass legislation to make trading conditions harder and at the same time push the narrative that trading is dangerous by making it even harder. A full circle strategy to make your trading conditions worse, so you don't succeed.
Listen carefully especially if you trade with any of the brokers that have provided their submissions to ASIC. Brokers want to seem like they are on your side and so far some of the submissions ( i haven't read them all ) have brokers willing to drop their leverage down to 30:1 because they know by dropping the leverage down it will start margin calling out their clients at a much faster rate, causing more blown up accounts / abandoned accounts with residual margin called funds, but they also know that if they make trading environments too hard less people will trade or even worse move their funds elsewhere offshore to unregulated brokers that offer higher leverage.
Right now it's all just a proposal, but as governments expand and continue to gain more control over it's citizens, it's just a matter of time till it's law, it's up to you to be vocal about it, let your broker know that if they drop their leverage, you're out, force them to fight for you.
If you have any more information related to this, or have anything to add, post below. I'm not an expert at this technical law talk, i know that i do well with 500:1 leverage and turn profits with it, it would be harder for me to do on a lower leverage, this is the reason for my post.
All related documents HERE
CP-322 ( Consultation paper 322 ) & Submissions from brokers and others.
https://asic.gov.au/regulatory-resources/find-a-document/consultation-papers/cp-322-product-intervention-otc-binary-options-and-cfds/

I’m proud to say that I am finally consistent! And by consistent, I mean 6 months of good sleep with a steady growth of my account. This journey began back in March 2016 when my friend introduced me into forex. I’ve lost an average of 1k per year until the start of 2020.
For those feeling horrible because you been stopped out or in a sea of reds don’t be demoralised, think of it as you are paying your school fees. Forex can be a very expensive education...
Things that I have learnt since the start. (May vary person to person)

• Never go against the trend! Our orders are simply too small to tip the scale. Financial institutions and banks have access to billions which has the power to tip the scale
  
• Always have a stop loss(SL) Protect your money! We never know when our 100pips profits will turn into 100pips losses (Eg, XAU/USD on 28th July 1971 - 1933 in 20mins) Another reason I use SL is to prevent me from getting stopped out.
  
• Review your closed trades, regardless it is blue or red. There’s always things that we can improve on! Eg, better entry points and exits. Find out why you entered the particular trade and what can be done better.
  
• Trailing stop is very useful Simply to maximise your profits without the need to be consistently on the charts. If i am in 25pips profits, I will have a trailing stop of 7.5 pips. Which gives a confirmation that regardless of market movement I already have 17.5 pips in my pocket.
  
• There is no ever blue strategy Market is constantly changing and even if there is, it might not work for everyone! Find the strategy that suits you the most
  
• Never let emotions take over! Follow your strategy but you’ll have to be dynamic about it.
  

In my personal opinion! Demo is for new traders like me to learn the basics of forex and once i was familiar with the market, I went live with money that I was okay to lose. I only went back demo to test my strategy when I could trade without emotions. It was a ton of trial and error until this day 😆
If you are like me, a student... My greatest tip for you is to not trade during exams / project submissions...
Trade safe, trade well!
[Edit] I should probably give an idea why I would specifically point out the list of things.

Hey, guys! Beginner trader here. I'm trying to ease myself into this and I want to make sure I have plenty of opportunities to make mistakes, and learn from them. Right now, I'm struggling to understand leverage; I see how risky it is, and I understand how to calculate it, but I don't understand how that effects my actual account. So if anyone can explain what I can expect here, I would appreciate it.
So I have an account with Hugo's Way. I use Bitcoin for my account, so my initial deposit was .005 BTC ($50, for argument's sake), but I added another .01 BTC ($100) before I did any trading. So my account started at a total of .015 BTC ($150), and I chose a leverage of 1:50. Due to my inexperience, I proceeded to lose about .001 BTC ($10). After consulting my teacher, who isn't exactly a forex guru, I was told to change my leverage to 1:500, and I did so, thinking it was safer, which in hindsight probably wasn't where my teacher's mind was. Afterward, through a mix of trades that I can learn from and some genuine bad luck, I lost another .001 BTC ($10), leaving my account with .013 BTC ($130) remaining. So I decided to refresh my understanding of leverage, and by my calculations, I should owe 5.05 BTC ($50,500)... Yikes. However, I see no indication that someone is looking to collect or sue my pants off.
So my calculations must be way off, but what am I getting wrong? I was thinking my broker would ask for reimbursement if I closed this account. But I read somewhere that it's calculated during my trades, so it's the big red or blue number I see next to my pips, meaning it's the same as my net profit. I've even read one top answer saying the broker doesn't care! I think I'm overreacting, but before I continue trading, I need to ask: how screwed am I really?