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5 Deadly Trading Mistakes to Avoid in
Forex
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January 22, 2023
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Forex trading mistakes are the main reasons why traders lose
their money and fail to achieve their goals.
When it comes to trading the Forex market, only 5% of traders
achieve the ultimate goal of becoming consistently profitable.
Post List
These successful traders grow from their trading mistakes.
W
Deep in their minds, a mistake is a chance to try it harder and do
Weekly Forex Analysis:
15-19 May 2023
May 13, 2023
it better the next time. They simply realize that trading mistakes
can be costly. And in the end, this tiny difference becomes the
big difference.
To help shorten the learning process; here are the 5 most
E
EURJPY Technical
Analysis: 10 May 2023
May 10, 2023
Examples of
common Forex trading mistakes that occur on a regular basis in
successful strategies
Forex that you should avoid at all costs.
based on supply and
demand in Forex
May 7, 2023
Table of Contents
Having Unrealistic Expectations
Trading Without Stops
Not Having a Well-Written Trading Plan
Over-trading the Market
Letting Losses Run
Conclusion
Having Unrealistic Expectations
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Learn to let go of the things you can’t control (the market), and
manage those things that you can (your expectations). By doing
so, you are able to make rational trading decisions, which would
hopefully lead to more wins than losses.
A trader’s unrealistic expectations may potentially harm him,
even if he has a method or strategy that is based on a good set
of tools. To achieve a reality-based perspective, traders must
know in advance the expected returns of the asset they want to
trade. This is what enables them to stay in touch with reality.
If a trader knows that trading a specific asset returns
theoretically 3.54% every year, then his expectations shouldn’t
exceed earning more than 3.54%.
In trading, managing what you expect is of utmost importance.
You can easily alter your view of the market depending on what
price action is telling you.
There is nothing wrong with expecting the market to move to a
certain level, what is deadly is when you are so stubborn to
maintain your view even when price action is telling you
otherwise.
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Be realistic when writing your trading plan. You can do it simply
by looking at recent market reactions and average trading
ranges. You need to avoid holding out for perfection – if the
market has achieved 50% of your expected scenario, lock your
profits and move on.
Remember, your ultimate goal is to make money, not winning a
prize for the best trade setup.
Let’s see which approach is healthier in trading: doing things the
right way even if it means small profits or doing things in
whichever way as long as it potentially promises large profits?
If making money is the trader’s only goal, especially at the early
stages of his trading career, chasing the money will soon become
the very reason for failure.
Chasing money leads to breaking the rules of your trading plan.
Sometimes, breaking these rules for specific trades will lead to a
higher yield. In the long run, however, which is hopefully your plan
for financial trading, it always leads to an empty account balance.
Trading Without Stops
This Forex trading mistake is one of the deadliest that you should
avoid at any cost, especially if you are a beginner.
The Forex market is full of fake moves. There is always the belief
that “the market is going for your stop, and by the time it reached
it, the trend has reversed.”
How many times did you see that happening?
I can tell that this has happened many times for every trader.
Many choose to either remove or widen their stop-loss order
hoping the market will return around.
Failure to stick to the original trading plan is wrong and will lead
to big losses.
Placing a stop loss on each trade helps control risk, and also
keeps you away from “averaging down” your positions, which is
adding additional trades to a preexisting position as the price
moves against you.
The more the price moves against you, the more you add to the
position. While it might work for you a couple of times but in the
long run, it will surely lead to exponential losses.
The stop loss order is there to avoid huge losses to your account!
Markets can be extremely volatile and without a stop in place, the
losses can be catastrophic.
In addition to placing stop losses, traders often keep moving
them to avoid being stopped out. This is almost as trading
without stops. The only reason you should move your stop is lock
in profits on winning trades. And not the way around.
Not Having a Well-Written Trading Plan
Without a plan, you are simply gambling. It is like starting a
business by renting office space and hiring staff but not having a
clear and concise idea of what kind of product you are going to
sell and how you are going to do it.
In fact, most of the successful traders treat Forex trading like a
real business. That shows how serious they are about trading
and how realistic is their vision of making a living out of the
market.
This is, again, one of the most prevalent trading mistakes that
destroy novice traders. Many of these newbies often say they
don’t need to write down a trading plan because they know what
they’re doing, or they will write it later or when they will start
making money…I assure them they won’t go that far in their
trading journey.
For others, the problem isn’t in developing a trading plan, it is in
following it.
If you have a great plan but you are not following it, what good
will it do you? If you have a mediocre plan that you follow to the
letter, you could at least improve it through evaluation. Even
worse are those traders who keep going from plan to another just
because their friends say it did wonders for them.
A trading plan is your best friend, it is designed to help you
achieve your long-term goals by keeping you away from erratic
behaviors and deviating from your original goals. It contains all
the details of your strategy, your trading style and approach, your
risk management rules, and most importantly what to do when
the market is suddenly changing course. It not only saves you
time and money, but it also gives you emotional support while
trading.
Furthermore, trading is about stacking the odds in your favor and
having a well-written trading plan is a must. It not only serves you
as a guide but also helps you to stay on track by not deviating
from your objective. This is very important to improve your
trading skills and your trading system for better performance.
You may be tempted to ignore it, but if you really take the time to
develop it then you should have faith in it being the best-suites
approach for you.
If you fail to plan, well you are simply gambling. It is impossible
to know what you are doing right from wrong.
Obviously, a trading plan doesn’t guarantee success, but a good
plan that is followed will help you stay in the Forex game longer
than traders who don’t have a plan.
Over-trading the Market
Over trading has two main figures: trading too often and trading
too many positions at once.
When you trade too often, you always open and close trades the
same day wanting to take advantage of every single turn in the
market. Thus, you end up with more losses than your gains.
Trading too many positions at once is very dangerous because
your trade starts to show some green, you decide to throw on
some more positions of the same asset to increase your profit.
But what happens if the market suddenly changes its course. You
will end up with more losing trades that your account can’t
handle.
I’ve seen so many traders over trade their accounts, not only they
increase their stress level, but also they reduce the available
margin making their account vulnerable to any adverse
movement.
Over trading not only causes you stress, but it also can deplete
your capital in only a few days or weeks! This would be difficult to
recover from, not only from a financial standpoint but also from a
psychological perspective as well.
Trading often with tight stops and tiny profit targets is actually
not that safe and provides an only very minimal profit. Instead,
look for trades that give you at least a 1:2 risk-reward ratio. That
way you can increase your winning probability and lowering your
risk of price hitting your stop-loss order.
Again, it is wise to trade with proper stops, simply because stop
loss orders take care of closing your losing trades making you
less stressed and nervous so you can focus on finding better
opportunities.
Also, be careful about correlated currency pairs and overlapping
positions.
Here’s an example: a long USD/CHF position can be the same as
a short EUR/USD or GBP/USD, while a short EUR/USD and a long
EUR/JPY position net out to be the same as being long USD/JPY.
Letting Losses Run
This is a very common Forex trading mistake among traders.
They tend to hold losing trades for too long and close winning
trades as soon as they show some green.
In general, cutting your losses is the most difficult task to do in
trading. There are very few traders who abide by this rule. This is
one of the reasons the percentage of losing traders is so big.
Traders are not cutting losses when they should be cut!
No one is right all the time. The sooner you’re able to accept
small losses as part of trading, the sooner you will be able to
concentrate on finding profitable opportunities.
If a trade is winning, don’t touch it. It is often tempting to close
out at a small profit. But sometimes we see that patience can
result in greater gains.
After all, what is the purpose of having a trading plan if you are
not able to follow it?
Easier said than done, right?
The overall purpose of a trading plan is leading to disciplined
trading behavior and account growth.
If the market has moved against your expectations, it means you
made a wrong trading decision. Realize it and move on. There is
no reason to continue with the wrong trading decision.
This is what discrete amateurs from professionals.
But if the solution is so simple, why traders are still losing? The
answer is human nature.
When trading, it is more important to be profitable than to be
right.
In fact, this is not all limited to the trading technicality. Human
behavior has a lot to do in trading psychology. Understanding
human behavior towards winning and losing bares significant
findings. These findings explain why traders have difficulties
closing their losing trades when they should.
Let’s take an example to better understand the concept behind it:
Let’s say I offered you two choices. Choice A means you have a
50% chance of winning $1,000 and a 50% chance of winning
nothing. Choice B is a flat $450 point gain. Which choice would
you choose?
Choice A makes sense. The expected gain of $500 is greater
than the fixed $450. But many studies have shown that people
consistently choose choice B.
Let’s do it again, and this time we can expect to lose less money
via choice B. Results have shown more people choosing choice A
over choice B.
We can conclude that people are willing to avoid risk when taking
profits. And willingly seeking it if it means avoiding losses.
Other studies in psychology have shown that people take more
pain from losses than pleasure from gains. It feels good to make
$200 rather than $600, but losing $600 hurts too much. Many
traders are willing to keep losing trades run and hope the market
will turn around and move in their favor.
Make sure you read my article about the 7 common
psychological challenges of trading Forex.
Conclusion
Trading is not easy, it requires patience, dedication and hard
work. In order to succeed as a retail trader, you need to about
these 5 Forex trading mistakes so that you avoid them by any
means.
For that you must start developing good trading habits and stay
focused and disciplined no matter what happens on the market.
Having a well-designed trading strategy or using a fancy trading
platform won’t guarantee your success on the market, as long as
you keep doing these trading mistakes again and again.
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