The Lawrence Chan Blog

Most of the time, when we are looking for a pip calculator, we are not doing that for educational purpose. There is usually a need, a pretty urgent one, to find out how much money is on the line with a particular position. Given that as the requirement, I find not just one but two very good pip calculators that every forex trader should bookmark.

The Norm

Normal pip calculators are simple applet that allows you to choose or enter the following information.

1. base currency

2. target pair

3. current price of the pair

4. lot size / total amount

And it will give you the pip value per unit base currency.

The problem with the simple designs I have seen is that they are provided like an afterthought. They are functional but not as convenient as I like it to be.

Following are links to a few common pip calculators that get the job done.

Babypips.com Pip Value Calculator

Earnforex.com Pip Value Calculator

Dukascopy Pip Calculator

GoForex.net Pip Value Calculator

The Runner-Up

The better pip calculators are well designed online app give us forex traders exactly what we need very quickly – a table of the pip values across the most common currency pairs.

FXStreet.com Pip Value Calculator

6 major pairs listed with the ability to take your trade size as input and calculate the exact pip value for that across all the listed pairs.

Account base currency is fixed to US Dollar.

The pip value for the most common lot sizes (1000K, 100K, 10K) are listed automatically so you do not even need to enter the trade size if that is what you are looking for.

The Best

With everything the runner-up has plus more pairs (16 pairs) and option to change the base currency, these two pip calculators cover all the grounds.

Investing.com Forex Pip Calculator

FXEmpire.com Pip Value Calculator

I am not sure if the pip calculators from Investing.com and FXEmpire.com are coming from the same source. They look exactly like each other while the one from FXEmpire.com allows you to copy the calculator and put that into your own website / blog.

To Sum It Up

Personally I ended up using the one from FXEmpire.com the most because it has a very clean layout and has all the common pairs I need.

Disclosure: I am not affiliated with any of these websites. I just need a good pip calculator like all of you. Since I did the leg work looking for one that is useful, I may as well post it here.

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Day trading (or daytrading) can be a very profitable business. It also has the advantage of being your own boss and keeping your own time schedule. Many ingredients to day trading success is well known – lower leverage, trade only better risk reward setups and focus on performance consistency.

However, no one really willing to go the extra mile to disclose their personal secrets to building a sustainable trading career. I think it is no big deal to tell everyone how it is done because it takes a lot of effort to make it happen. Most people are likely going to give up half way down the road.

So here I am, dishing out my secrets derived from common sense.

Secret #1 – Learn to trade profitably all-in all-out consistently first

Many brokerages and trading platforms that earn flow money from the brokerages like to host seminars, webinars, etc. telling tall tales of scaling in/out of trades. Many gurus like to insist that one has to trade multiple contracts to win in the trading game. The truth is that if the key to profitability is trading bigger size, majority of beginners following the advice would become profitable.

Bigger size means more commission. Multiple contracts trading with scale out gives the illusion of consistent profitability even if the method is not. It makes no sense to tell beginners to trade beyond the smallest size.

It is very important to train yourself to being able to trade all-in all-out profitably. This foundation will make you a better trader in all aspect of trade management – correct control of risk from entry, best judgement in managing a position and determination/patience to hold or exit a position when the situation calls for. It is like training yourself for the perfect execution of your favourite sport manoeuvre.

You will become scalable once you master this fundamental step. Remember, scalability is one of the main reasons why we choose to become traders in the first place.

Secret #2 – Expertise in one method is better than many half-baked ones

Once you can consistently profit from one trading method or setup. All you have to do is to keep doing it again and again. It is that simple. You may have the urge to try out something different. You may think that your method is not that great comparing to the ones you over heard from a party or read from a book or forum. Those urges have to be suppressed.

Your goal in trading is to make money. Your job is to execute the profitable method repeatedly to extract money from the market. There is absolutely no point not doing what you know best and instead dip into other trading setups that affects your bottom-line.

You can expand into new trading method or trading setup if it does not affect your bread and butter trade. Just make sure you trade with smallest possible size so that it will not eat into your profit deeply when it is not working out. Trying out new trading methods is very likely to fail, in case you have forgotten how difficult you trained yourself to do the first one perfectly.

Secret #3 – Only after consistently profitable for a prolonged period of time, increase the trading size gradually

Many people drift away from their profitable trading methods once they accumulated a bigger bankroll in their trading accounts. The appetite for bigger return blinded them to take on more risk irrationally.

The funny thing is that the answer to more profit has been there all along in front of them. For some reason they just cannot see it. Well, maybe not patient enough to wait for it to happen.

To make more money, just trade the way you have been doing and wait patiently for the account to grow. Let the account grow enough so that you can increase your size conservatively. This can be a very difficult task to do because you could be having the urge to buy the toy you are dreaming of, or that you need a certain level of income level to quit your regular job to trade full time.

The moment you deviate from the profitable method(s) you are using, you are gambling your trading stake away. All these dreams to be fulfilled are just removed from your possible future. Some people may get lucky from gambling but we all know the odds is stacking against you.

Patience with yourself will pay off big time. Remind yourself every time you get the urge to make a bet or doing something irrational with your trading account.

Summary

This is not the same as the story of the tortoise and the hare.

At the end your perseverance makes you the winner as you focus on consistent profitability comparing to others who failed to realize the dream of becoming a trader. In this sense, the hares do not even get the chance to cross the line.

Being a consistently profitable trader is not the turtle in the story either because you go well beyond the finish line. Your trading results will blow away those traders who have difficulties to scale as big as you do. The moment you surpassed the other retail traders in size with better consistencies, you are on your way to join the club of the size traders. You transform yourself from the turtle into a race car driver.

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While doing clean up I found this ruler. I got this from my father back in 1970s.

Do you know what it is?

Will post the answer tomorrow.

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I was notified that the domain transfer of Daytradingbias.com has been completed.

If you have problem accessing the website, it could be the case that the routing information has not been fully updated across the net.

I am posting this to my Facebook author page too, so that there is more than one way to reach me in case you cannot access the site.

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From Daily Currant,

Paul Krugman Declares Personal Bankruptcy

How he gets into such trouble is worth reading, well, for a laugh.

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