Calculating my stops and takeprofit for buy or sell against any currency pair

[Larry]

As an old stock trader, I would set my stops at 5% below trade entry and TakeProfit 20% above trade entry. I am attampting to do something like this here, but my numbers are not coming out right. I want to do this for buys and sells and on any currency pair I apply it too, but still having problems. I have tried researching and much of the terminology is still difficult to chew on.

old stock calculation:

double StopPercentage =,05;

double TakeProfitPercentage = .20;

double MyStop = CurrentPrice - (CurrentPrice * StopPercentage);

double MyTakeProfit = CurrentPrice + (CurrentPrice * TakeProfitPercentage);

4x code for the same:

(For the buy)

double StopPercentage =,05;

double TakeProfitPercentage = .20;

double MyStop = (Bid - (Bid * StopPercentage)*Point);

double MyTakeProfit = (Ask + (Ask * TakeProfitPercentage)*Point);

(For the sell)

double StopPercentage =,05;

double TakeProfitPercentage = .20;

double MyStop = (Ask - (Ask * StopPercentage)* Point;

double MyTakeProfit = (Bid + (Bid * TakeProfitPercentage)*Point);

The numbers don't come out right when I run this... any suggestions would be appreciated.

[Ray]

Let's see, you want a stop 5% below current price...

On a long EURUSD, that stop would currently be 1.5405 * .95 = 1.4635... Wow, that is a 770 pip stop loss...

And take profit 1.5405 * 1.20 = 1.8486, take profit of 3,081 pips.

[[Deleted]]

Hi LEHayes,

If I don't missunderstand you, you want to calculate how many pips are 0.5 and 20% of your account balance or you risk at any given order, am I right?

If so, what you have to do is to calculate those percentages in money and convert them in pips according the pip value, and then add and substract to your open price to place them.

Cheers

[[Deleted]]

Also you are having a bad aproach to the calculation, consider that 20% of a currency pair at 2.0000 is not the same as a currency pair at 134.00!!!

So, as I've said above, you have to trnaslate into pips based on money.

Cheers

[Larry]

forexfordinner wrote >>

Also you are having a bad aproach to the calculation, consider that 20% of a currency pair at 2.0000 is not the same as a currency pair at 134.00!!!

So, as I've said above, you have to trnaslate into pips based on money.

Cheers

To try and clarify, I am looking for the mathematical formula. that will let me calculate my risk, I want to close my trade if it is 5% below entry point and 20% above entry for my take profit. I may use this on different pairs, so I need to calculate that in.

Overall, I want to make sure that I never risk more than 5% of the total account at a time. In this case, I want to stop trading if open trades are more than 5% of the total account value, then resume when less than 5%.