Ten pips per day, if I could only do 10 pips each day… I’d be a millionaire in 18 months!

Have you ever run calculations like that? I know I have. That’s the allure of just 10 pips a day. It’s just 10, right? I mean, how hard could that be? Really hard.

First the bad news, if you try to just make 10 pips in a day, you will fail. You can’t be that consistent in trading over any significant space of time.

Now the good news, you can make an average of 10 pips a day. Notice however, that I said average 10 pips per day.

Let’s back up a bit. 10 pips per day become 50 pips in a week. 50 pips in a week become 200 pips in a month. Now that’s something you can work with.

Focus on 200 pips per month. Take fewer trades. Trade off of the daily charts. Use much larger profit targets and stop losses. Trade less lots. It will still equal the same outcome as the unreal expectations above, but this time you’re actually setting yourself up for success.

Doing all this still won’t guarantee that you’ll be able to hit the target. You’ll probably still have a losing month here and there. That happens. The thing is you’ll be able to survive it.

In the 10 pips a day mindset, you’re trading with very high leverage. One or two errors and you could be wiped out. In fact that is what happens almost every time.

Give yourself a change. After all, really making money is more fun.