Obtaining lots of money in a short time is very possible with trading. If you want to risk all your capital on a couple of trades and get lucky.

But staying in the game for a very long time, which is hopefully your goal as well as ours, requires that risks are reduced as much as possible. Everything in the software tries to decrease your risk.

No Fear, No Greed

Because the software is, well, software, it has no fear nor greed. The results of the previous trade, wildly good, or wildly bad, will not affect the next trade in any way.

Backtesting Assumes The Worst

If you read this article, you'll see that there are a couple of outcomes possible while backtesting. This software assumes the worst, giving you the peace of mind that the backtesting results aren't too good to be true.

You Have To Use A Stop Loss

This software forces you to use a Stop Loss. This means that at the time the order is set, your total risk is known and limited.

Stop Losses Never Move Down

For a long trade, that is, stop losses never move down. For short trades, the stop losses never move up. Doing so would mean your risk would increase.

No Market Orders

Note: As of v0.8.3, TS now offers Market Orders for Oanda. However, we still think Limit Orders are the way to go. The below explains why.

It requires that the price has enough momentum to bust through where your limit order is set in order to get you in to a trade.

Also, with Gain Capital at least, you cannot set a Stop Loss at the same time as opening a market order. A Stop Loss can be added later, however that option is not decreasing the risk involved - for a short time your entire capital is theoretically vulnerable.

While potentially controversial, it is our opinion that using market orders is a sign that you are fearful of missing out on money, and greed wants you to win as much money as you can on the trade, and therefore have to get in now! now! now!

Whereas a more detached, unemotional approach would be to place a limit order, and then allow the price to prove it has momentum by continuing far enough in the direction you wanted so that your limit order is taken up.

In Thinking Stuff, it's (1) all the entry rules are met; and (2) the limit order is set; and (3) the price must then continue in the direction you wanted in order to get you in the trade.

Unless you are implementing a scalping technique, missing out on a couple of pips should not be enough to break your trading system (although we are happy to read through rebuttles to our argument).