Home Blog Trading Ideas eBooks Contact 5 Deadly Trading Mistakes to Avoid in Forex In Blog January 22, 2023 304 Views 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 Subscribe To My Newsletter Join my mailing list to receive the latest news and updates from me. 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. Email SUBSCRIBE! 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. Previous Post: Forex Trading Journal [Free Template to Download] Next Post: 3 methods to calculate and place your stop loss in Forex with Supply and Demand Related Posts: Examples of Forex Trading Plan 5 Reasons You successful Template for Should Learn strategies based Beginners Supply and on supply and Demand Strategy demand in Forex in Forex Risk Disclaimer: By viewing any material or using the information within this site, you agree that it is general educational material and you will not hold anybody or entity responsible for loss or damages resulting from the content provided here by “TradingFXHub”. If at any time you use any advice or opinion stated in this website and you lose money, this is your fault and you should not hold TradingFXHub accountable. 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