When trying to trade online it's easy to listen to the hype and get carried away with how easy it's going to be to make money. From newspaper ads to internet sites, everyone claiming to show you the easiest way to become rich beyond your wildest dreams.
Here I will list the three things that will cause you to fail as a trader if you are just starting out. Remember that our goal is to stay in the game, if you lose all your money out are out.
1. Risk Exposure
This is simply risking too much money on a given trade, it's not rocket science yet most novice traders want to start earning the big bucks right away. If you start off with $1000 in your bank, and you risk $200, all it takes is two or three losses in a row and you are down 60%, after that you need to make over 100% just to get back to even again - Reduce your risk per trade now.
2. Being Emotional
Your emotions will cost you a LOT of money in this game if you don't get them in check early. So you open a position at $10.00 and say to yourself ( or you may even set a stop loss ) that you will exit at $9.00. Next day the stock opens down after some bad news, it opens at $8.50. Now you know that it's value is over $10, so you decide to hold on and wait for it to recover - you are being emotional. At this stage either it continues to go down and you continue to convince yourself that it's worth more and you lose more money or even worse, it rebounds and rewards your emotional behaviour. Why is this second outcome bad you say? Well completely by chance it has rewarded you for not having a plan, so now the next time when you have more money on the line you will do the same thing again, only this time the stock continues south and you lose a fortune. Writing out a trading plan and STICKING to it is the most important lesson in trading.
3. Expectations
I know I suffered from this. I had unrealistic expectation when starting out. This incorporates both of the above mistakes. You need to slow down. If you are losing money stop trading straight away and change over to a demo account. The markets will be there tomorrow, next week, next month so don't worry about that. Forget about missing that big move and focus on learning one system, perfect that in the demo account then start small and you will succeed.
beginners forex trading pitfall
No comments:
Post a Comment