The European Union has published new regulations applying to retail Forex, CFD, and the few remaining binary options brokerages in its territory. If you have an account with one such brokerage, the regulations will affect you when they come into force during the late spring and summer. This article will outline how the new regulations will impact your bottom line.
Details of the New ESMA Regulations
In March 2018, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), the financial regulator and supervisor of the European Union, announced new regulations concerning the provision of contracts for differences (CFDs) and binary options to retail investors. It is unclear exactly when the regulations will come into force, but some time in May or June 2018 looks to be the most likely date, and Forex and CFD brokerages located within the European Union (including the United Kingdom, for the time being) will be forced to comply. The regulations will need to be renewed by ESMA every three months to remain in force over the long term.
The regulation concerning binary options is very simple: they may not be sold. In simple terms, this is the end of binary options as a product sold from within the European Union.
The regulations concerning CFDs are more complex but still relatively straightforward. Firstly, there is some confusion as to what exactly is a CFD, with many traders thinking that spot Forex is not considered a CFD and will therefore be exempt from the new regulations. They are wrong: spot Forex is technically defined as a CFD. In fact, every asset you see available for trading at Forex / CFD brokers will most likely be subject to the new regulations.
The new regulations will implement the following changes for retail client accounts (more on who is a retail client; later).
-
The maximum leverage which can be offered will be 30 to 1. That will apply to major currency pairs such as EUR/USD, GBP/USD, USD/JPY, etc.
-
Other currency pairs, major equity indices, and gold will be subject to a maximum leverage of 20 to 1.
-
Individual equities cannot be offered with leverage greater than 5 to 1.
-
Cryptocurrencies are subject to a maximum leverage of 2 to 1.
-
Brokers will be required to provide negative balance protection, meaning it will be impossible to lose more money than you deposit.
-
Brokers will be required to close a clients open positions when the account equity reaches 50% of the required minimum margin by all open positions. This ;margin call; provision can be tricky to understand, so will be explained in more detail later.
-
Bonuses or any other form of trading incentives may not be offered.
-
Brokers will be required to display a standardized risk warning which will include the percentage of their clients who lose money over a defined period.
Understanding the ;Margin Call; Regulation
The best way to understand the 50% margin call provision is to use an example. Imagine a client opens an account with a Forex broker, depositing ;100 in total. The client opens a short trade in EUR/USD, by going short one mini-lot (one tenth of a full lot). One full lot of EUR/USD is worth ;10,000, meaning one mini-lot is worth ;1,000. To find out the minimum margin required to support that trade, we divide the size of the trade (;1,000) by 30, which comes to ;33.33. This is the minimum required margin to maintain the trade. Half of that amount is ;16.67. Now assume the trade goes against the client, with the price of EUR/USD rising above the entry price. As soon as the price rises far enough to produce a floating loss of ;83.33 (;100 - ;16.67), the broker must close the trade out, even if the trade has no stop loss or has not yet reached the stop loss. In theory, this means that a client;s account can never reach zero. Examples involving multiple open trades will be more complex, but will operate according to the same principles.
What Will This Mean for Traders?
The regulations will only apply to ;retail clients;, so you might try to apply to be classed as a professional trader. To get a broker to classify you as anything other than a retail client, you will have to show you have financial qualifications, a large amount of liquid assets, plenty of experience trading, and usually that you also trade frequently. Most traders will be unable to qualify, although it is worth noting that one London-based brokerage, IG Group, has stated that their proportion of clients now classified as recently increased from 5% to 15% of their total customers.
The major impact these regulations will have on traders is simple ndash; the maximum trade size they can possibly make at brokers regulated in the European Union will shrink. Many will say that the maximum leverage limits still offer far more than any trader could need, and I agree. I am wary of leverage and I hate to see anyone using leverage greater than 3 to 1 for Forex under any conditions, or any leverage at all for stocks and cryptocurrencies. Commodities can also fluctuate wildly in value. Too many people forget that the biggest danger in leverage is not overly large position sizing, it is that a ldquo;black swan rdquo; event such as the CHF flash crash of 2015 could happen and wipe out your account through huge price slippage. However, there is another factor that is widely forgotten: why assume that a trader rsquo;s account at one Forex broker is all the money they have in the world? For example, a trader might have $10,000 in the bank. If they deposit $1,000 at a broker offering maximum leverage of 300 to 1, they can trade up to $300,000. At a leverage limit of 30 to 1, that trader will have to deposit their entire $10,000 fund to trade at the same size. In a real sense, that trader might now have to take on more risk to operate in the same way, because if the broker goes bust, while beforehand they might lose $1,000 now they could lose $10,000! Even without negative balance protection, that broker would still have to come after them to try to get an extra $9,000 which they theoretically risk. Yet we saw after the CHF crash that brokers don rsquo;t come after every single client whose losses exceeded their deposit, due to legal costs and reputational issues. This shows that although the stated purpose of the regulation is to protect traders from excessive losses, the story is not as simple as you may think.
Beyond having to deposit more margin, and automatic margin calls, the other major change for traders will be that they will enjoy negative balance protection. This is a positive development which hopefully will make brokerages focus more heavily on the risks they are taking with their business model in the market. At the same time, a possible side effect of the new regulation is the potential increase in average deposits, leading to brokerages being more stable and better capitalized with client funds. Two final notes: brokerages will have to report on their websites the percentages of clients who are losing and making money, although the period over which the statistics must refer to is currently not clear. This will help to shed light on the debate over what percentage of retail traders are profitable, although some brokerages have already released what they claim to be accurate statistics showing that clients with larger account sizes tend to perform better as traders. Additionally, bonuses and promotions will be banned. I welcome this, as not only do they trivialize the serious business of trading, they are almost always a trick offering the illusion of free money whilst preventing traders from withdrawing any profits until a large number of trades are made (read the fine print the next time you squo;).
What If Yoursquo;re Not Happy Remaining in the EU?
Traders with accounts at affected brokers who cannot obtain professional status classification and feel they really need higher leverage than the ESMA limits outlined above might look for a solution by opening accounts with brokers outside the European Union. The most obvious destination would be Australia or New Zealand, where it will still be possible to find reasonably well-regulated Forex brokerages offering leverage in the range of 400 to 1. A recent development that is not talked about much is the growing difficulty of transferring funds to and from Forex brokerages in less tightly regulated jurisdictions. You might decide to open an account with a brokerage in Vanuatu, but you may find that a bank within the European Union might just refuse to send your money there for a deposit. This means that going far offshore, depending upon where you live, may not be a feasible option. In any case, the new regule impossible to live with, and overall there is a compelling case that they are a net benefit to any trader, so why migrate?
Ten Psychological Trading Tips to Win | Trading Forex
It is said that the psychological challenge makes up 90% of the struggle in achieving consistent success as a Forex trader. Can this really be true?
Yes and no. Many great traders that have written about their experiences have talked about how their own inner psychological struggles have caused them losses, even when they “knew” that whatever it was they were doing was wrong. There can be no doubt that psychological factors are of huge importance in the game of trading Forex or speculating in anything.
Mastering your trading psychology won’t make you money in itself, but if you are not aware of the tricks your own mind is trying to play on itself, you will probably find yourself losing even if you are a good trader and are basically right in your trading decisions. There are a hundred ways that a trader can quietly sabotage him or herself. There is a “physical” aspect to trading.
Hopefully it will help you in your trading journey to be aware of several tricks traders often get themselves caught up in psychologically. Sometimes you just have to experience something yourself in order to learn from it: nothing teaches like direct experience. Hopefully some of these points will either give you a new understanding of trading mistakes you have already made, or will warn you in advance of mistakes you have not yet made. Try not to blame yourself when you make a trading mistake: get your “revenge” instead by learning your lesson and not making that mistake again.
Common Mental Trading Mistakes
Not Believing in your Methodology
It is surprising how many people trade without being convinced they can make money, or at least sure that they have a good chance of it. Even if you think you do believe in what you are doing, are you sure you don’t have big doubts hiding just beneath the surface? The answer to this problem is to test your methodology. For example, if you follow trends, take the time to back test on a lot of historical data. Does it show good results most of the time? Is it based on a solid concept, like mean reversion, or momentum? If the answer to these questions is yes, you should believe in what you are doing and don’t forget that you believe in it either.Not Making a Plan and Sticking to It
This one sounds very obvious. It is not just about making a plan, it is about having several plans and leaving some flexibility there too. For example, if you are day trading, you should have a method you use to decide each day which currency pair or pairs you are going to trade. However if the pair you select goes nowhere, while another pair takes off, you might want to be able to reconsider your decision instead of just “sticking to the plan”, say by allowing yourself the option to change your mind every 1 hour. This is a “plan”, but a plan can include some structured flexibility too.Not Appreciating the Difference between Planning Something and Living It
It is quite easy to make a plan that works on paper, but it can be something different entirely to live that plan in real time. A good example is making a plan to take hundreds of trades over a year or so, and expect your account to be in a drawdown of -20% as you go through a run of 20 consecutive losing trades. You might work through this back test in a day or so and decide such losses are acceptable. You are likely to feel very different when you spend weeks or even months losing real money again and again while watching your account balance shrink. There is no good answer to this dilemma, you just have to be aware that running through months of time in an hour or so is not necessarily good practice psychologically for bad trading times.Being Afraid to Take a Trade or Too Eager to Take a Trade
These are the opposite sides of the same problem. The best way to overcome this is to tell yourself every day that you are prepared to take either several trades or no trades at all, and that what you do will depend entirely upon the condition of the market instead of the condition of your wallet or your mood. There will be days with no action and days with plenty of action. You have to adapt to the circumstances.Making “Deals” with the Market
Telling yourself that if the price goes up another 10 pips you will get out of the trade, or if doesn’t go up in the next hour you will exit the trade. This is just your mind running with its anxiety and talking nonsense. Ignore it, hold firm, and only exit trades according to your plan.Itching to Take a Profit
You see a profit on the table and think how nice it would be to just take it and stop trading for the day and bask in the glow of a profitable trading day. This is laziness and self-indulgence and has to be fought. The only reason for taking a profit should be because you have a real reason to believe it is probably not going to go much further in the desired direction. Let that market demonstrate that to you: don’t anticipate.Bailing Out on a Loss Too Early
This is really the same as itching to take a profit. It might be that you need to reconsider your risk management strategy.Letting Losers Run
There is a simple way to avoid this: always use a hard stop loss and do not ever widen it.Not Taking Responsibility for Your Trading
It is so easy to make excuses. If I hadn’t missed the bus / been distracted / been in a bad mood then I would have handled that trade better and made money instead of losing. It is your job to make sure that you don’t miss the bus or get distracted or fall into a bad mood. Once you take responsibility for all your trading, your mood can lift as you see there is a way for you to make things better. It is a marathon journey, not a sprint.Endless Chase for the “Holy Grail”
You do some testing and devise a strategy that makes 20% per year on average. But wait! You try something else and find it makes even more, say 25%. Is there something better out there? Maybe, but this searching and testing process can take a long time. Consider this: if you spend 6 months testing instead of trading in a committed way to find a way to make 25% instead of 20%, you just lost 10% and it will take you another year to make it up! By all means continue searching, but don’t let it affect your trading. As long as you have a fairly solid methodology, it doesn’t have to be perfect!Source
Ten Psychological Trading Tips to Win | Trading Forex
It is said that the psychological challenge makes up 90% of the struggle in achieving consistent success as a Forex trader. Can this really be true?
Yes and no. Many great traders that have written about their experiences have talked about how their own inner psychological struggles have caused them losses, even when they “knew” that whatever it was they were doing was wrong. There can be no doubt that psychological factors are of huge importance in the game of trading Forex or speculating in anything.
Mastering your trading psychology won’t make you money in itself, but if you are not aware of the tricks your own mind is trying to play on itself, you will probably find yourself losing even if you are a good trader and are basically right in your trading decisions. There are a hundred ways that a trader can quietly sabotage him or herself. There is a “physical” aspect to trading.
Hopefully it will help you in your trading journey to be aware of several tricks traders often get themselves caught up in psychologically. Sometimes you just have to experience something yourself in order to learn from it: nothing teaches like direct experience. Hopefully some of these points will either give you a new understanding of trading mistakes you have already made, or will warn you in advance of mistakes you have not yet made. Try not to blame yourself when you make a trading mistake: get your “revenge” instead by learning your lesson and not making that mistake again.
Common Mental Trading Mistakes
Not Believing in your Methodology
It is surprising how many people trade without being convinced they can make money, or at least sure that they have a good chance of it. Even if you think you do believe in what you are doing, are you sure you don’t have big doubts hiding just beneath the surface? The answer to this problem is to test your methodology. For example, if you follow trends, take the time to back test on a lot of historical data. Does it show good results most of the time? Is it based on a solid concept, like mean reversion, or momentum? If the answer to these questions is yes, you should believe in what you are doing and don’t forget that you believe in it either.Not Making a Plan and Sticking to It
This one sounds very obvious. It is not just about making a plan, it is about having several plans and leaving some flexibility there too. For example, if you are day trading, you should have a method you use to decide each day which currency pair or pairs you are going to trade. However if the pair you select goes nowhere, while another pair takes off, you might want to be able to reconsider your decision instead of just “sticking to the plan”, say by allowing yourself the option to change your mind every 1 hour. This is a “plan”, but a plan can include some structured flexibility too.Not Appreciating the Difference between Planning Something and Living It
It is quite easy to make a plan that works on paper, but it can be something different entirely to live that plan in real time. A good example is making a plan to take hundreds of trades over a year or so, and expect your account to be in a drawdown of -20% as you go through a run of 20 consecutive losing trades. You might work through this back test in a day or so and decide such losses are acceptable. You are likely to feel very different when you spend weeks or even months losing real money again and again while watching your account balance shrink. There is no good answer to this dilemma, you just have to be aware that running through months of time in an hour or so is not necessarily good practice psychologically for bad trading times.Being Afraid to Take a Trade or Too Eager to Take a Trade
These are the opposite sides of the same problem. The best way to overcome this is to tell yourself every day that you are prepared to take either several trades or no trades at all, and that what you do will depend entirely upon the condition of the market instead of the condition of your wallet or your mood. There will be days with no action and days with plenty of action. You have to adapt to the circumstances.Making “Deals” with the Market
Telling yourself that if the price goes up another 10 pips you will get out of the trade, or if doesn’t go up in the next hour you will exit the trade. This is just your mind running with its anxiety and talking nonsense. Ignore it, hold firm, and only exit trades according to your plan.Itching to Take a Profit
You see a profit on the table and think how nice it would be to just take it and stop trading for the day and bask in the glow of a profitable trading day. This is laziness and self-indulgence and has to be fought. The only reason for taking a profit should be because you have a real reason to believe it is probably not going to go much further in the desired direction. Let that market demonstrate that to you: don’t anticipate.Bailing Out on a Loss Too Early
This is really the same as itching to take a profit. It might be that you need to reconsider your risk management strategy.Letting Losers Run
There is a simple way to avoid this: always use a hard stop loss and do not ever widen it.Not Taking Responsibility for Your Trading
It is so easy to make excuses. If I hadn’t missed the bus / been distracted / been in a bad mood then I would have handled that trade better and made money instead of losing. It is your job to make sure that you don’t miss the bus or get distracted or fall into a bad mood. Once you take responsibility for all your trading, your mood can lift as you see there is a way for you to make things better. It is a marathon journey, not a sprint.Endless Chase for the “Holy Grail”
You do some testing and devise a strategy that makes 20% per year on average. But wait! You try something else and find it makes even more, say 25%. Is there something better out there? Maybe, but this searching and testing process can take a long time. Consider this: if you spend 6 months testing instead of trading in a committed way to find a way to make 25% instead of 20%, you just lost 10% and it will take you another year to make it up! By all means continue searching, but don’t let it affect your trading. As long as you have a fairly solid methodology, it doesn’t have to be perfect!Source
Ten Psychological Trading Tips to Win | Trading Forex
It is said that the psychological challenge makes up 90% of the struggle in achieving consistent success as a Forex trader. Can this really be true?
Yes and no. Many great traders that have written about their experiences have talked about how their own inner psychological struggles have caused them losses, even when they “knew” that whatever it was they were doing was wrong. There can be no doubt that psychological factors are of huge importance in the game of trading Forex or speculating in anything.
Mastering your trading psychology won’t make you money in itself, but if you are not aware of the tricks your own mind is trying to play on itself, you will probably find yourself losing even if you are a good trader and are basically right in your trading decisions. There are a hundred ways that a trader can quietly sabotage him or herself. There is a “physical” aspect to trading.
Hopefully it will help you in your trading journey to be aware of several tricks traders often get themselves caught up in psychologically. Sometimes you just have to experience something yourself in order to learn from it: nothing teaches like direct experience. Hopefully some of these points will either give you a new understanding of trading mistakes you have already made, or will warn you in advance of mistakes you have not yet made. Try not to blame yourself when you make a trading mistake: get your “revenge” instead by learning your lesson and not making that mistake again.
Common Mental Trading Mistakes
Not Believing in your Methodology
It is surprising how many people trade without being convinced they can make money, or at least sure that they have a good chance of it. Even if you think you do believe in what you are doing, are you sure you don’t have big doubts hiding just beneath the surface? The answer to this problem is to test your methodology. For example, if you follow trends, take the time to back test on a lot of historical data. Does it show good results most of the time? Is it based on a solid concept, like mean reversion, or momentum? If the answer to these questions is yes, you should believe in what you are doing and don’t forget that you believe in it either.Not Making a Plan and Sticking to It
This one sounds very obvious. It is not just about making a plan, it is about having several plans and leaving some flexibility there too. For example, if you are day trading, you should have a method you use to decide each day which currency pair or pairs you are going to trade. However if the pair you select goes nowhere, while another pair takes off, you might want to be able to reconsider your decision instead of just “sticking to the plan”, say by allowing yourself the option to change your mind every 1 hour. This is a “plan”, but a plan can include some structured flexibility too.Not Appreciating the Difference between Planning Something and Living It
It is quite easy to make a plan that works on paper, but it can be something different entirely to live that plan in real time. A good example is making a plan to take hundreds of trades over a year or so, and expect your account to be in a drawdown of -20% as you go through a run of 20 consecutive losing trades. You might work through this back test in a day or so and decide such losses are acceptable. You are likely to feel very different when you spend weeks or even months losing real money again and again while watching your account balance shrink. There is no good answer to this dilemma, you just have to be aware that running through months of time in an hour or so is not necessarily good practice psychologically for bad trading times.Being Afraid to Take a Trade or Too Eager to Take a Trade
These are the opposite sides of the same problem. The best way to overcome this is to tell yourself every day that you are prepared to take either several trades or no trades at all, and that what you do will depend entirely upon the condition of the market instead of the condition of your wallet or your mood. There will be days with no action and days with plenty of action. You have to adapt to the circumstances.Making “Deals” with the Market
Telling yourself that if the price goes up another 10 pips you will get out of the trade, or if doesn’t go up in the next hour you will exit the trade. This is just your mind running with its anxiety and talking nonsense. Ignore it, hold firm, and only exit trades according to your plan.Itching to Take a Profit
You see a profit on the table and think how nice it would be to just take it and stop trading for the day and bask in the glow of a profitable trading day. This is laziness and self-indulgence and has to be fought. The only reason for taking a profit should be because you have a real reason to believe it is probably not going to go much further in the desired direction. Let that market demonstrate that to you: don’t anticipate.Bailing Out on a Loss Too Early
This is really the same as itching to take a profit. It might be that you need to reconsider your risk management strategy.Letting Losers Run
There is a simple way to avoid this: always use a hard stop loss and do not ever widen it.Not Taking Responsibility for Your Trading
It is so easy to make excuses. If I hadn’t missed the bus / been distracted / been in a bad mood then I would have handled that trade better and made money instead of losing. It is your job to make sure that you don’t miss the bus or get distracted or fall into a bad mood. Once you take responsibility for all your trading, your mood can lift as you see there is a way for you to make things better. It is a marathon journey, not a sprint.Endless Chase for the “Holy Grail”
You do some testing and devise a strategy that makes 20% per year on average. But wait! You try something else and find it makes even more, say 25%. Is there something better out there? Maybe, but this searching and testing process can take a long time. Consider this: if you spend 6 months testing instead of trading in a committed way to find a way to make 25% instead of 20%, you just lost 10% and it will take you another year to make it up! By all means continue searching, but don’t let it affect your trading. As long as you have a fairly solid methodology, it doesn’t have to be perfect!Source
Ten Psychological Trading Tips to Win | Trading Forex
It is said that the psychological challenge makes up 90% of the struggle in achieving consistent success as a Forex trader. Can this really be true?
Yes and no. Many great traders that have written about their experiences have talked about how their own inner psychological struggles have caused them losses, even when they “knew” that whatever it was they were doing was wrong. There can be no doubt that psychological factors are of huge importance in the game of trading Forex or speculating in anything.
Mastering your trading psychology won’t make you money in itself, but if you are not aware of the tricks your own mind is trying to play on itself, you will probably find yourself losing even if you are a good trader and are basically right in your trading decisions. There are a hundred ways that a trader can quietly sabotage him or herself. There is a “physical” aspect to trading.
Hopefully it will help you in your trading journey to be aware of several tricks traders often get themselves caught up in psychologically. Sometimes you just have to experience something yourself in order to learn from it: nothing teaches like direct experience. Hopefully some of these points will either give you a new understanding of trading mistakes you have already made, or will warn you in advance of mistakes you have not yet made. Try not to blame yourself when you make a trading mistake: get your “revenge” instead by learning your lesson and not making that mistake again.
Common Mental Trading Mistakes
Not Believing in your Methodology
It is surprising how many people trade without being convinced they can make money, or at least sure that they have a good chance of it. Even if you think you do believe in what you are doing, are you sure you don’t have big doubts hiding just beneath the surface? The answer to this problem is to test your methodology. For example, if you follow trends, take the time to back test on a lot of historical data. Does it show good results most of the time? Is it based on a solid concept, like mean reversion, or momentum? If the answer to these questions is yes, you should believe in what you are doing and don’t forget that you believe in it either.Not Making a Plan and Sticking to It
This one sounds very obvious. It is not just about making a plan, it is about having several plans and leaving some flexibility there too. For example, if you are day trading, you should have a method you use to decide each day which currency pair or pairs you are going to trade. However if the pair you select goes nowhere, while another pair takes off, you might want to be able to reconsider your decision instead of just “sticking to the plan”, say by allowing yourself the option to change your mind every 1 hour. This is a “plan”, but a plan can include some structured flexibility too.Not Appreciating the Difference between Planning Something and Living It
It is quite easy to make a plan that works on paper, but it can be something different entirely to live that plan in real time. A good example is making a plan to take hundreds of trades over a year or so, and expect your account to be in a drawdown of -20% as you go through a run of 20 consecutive losing trades. You might work through this back test in a day or so and decide such losses are acceptable. You are likely to feel very different when you spend weeks or even months losing real money again and again while watching your account balance shrink. There is no good answer to this dilemma, you just have to be aware that running through months of time in an hour or so is not necessarily good practice psychologically for bad trading times.Being Afraid to Take a Trade or Too Eager to Take a Trade
These are the opposite sides of the same problem. The best way to overcome this is to tell yourself every day that you are prepared to take either several trades or no trades at all, and that what you do will depend entirely upon the condition of the market instead of the condition of your wallet or your mood. There will be days with no action and days with plenty of action. You have to adapt to the circumstances.Making “Deals” with the Market
Telling yourself that if the price goes up another 10 pips you will get out of the trade, or if doesn’t go up in the next hour you will exit the trade. This is just your mind running with its anxiety and talking nonsense. Ignore it, hold firm, and only exit trades according to your plan.Itching to Take a Profit
You see a profit on the table and think how nice it would be to just take it and stop trading for the day and bask in the glow of a profitable trading day. This is laziness and self-indulgence and has to be fought. The only reason for taking a profit should be because you have a real reason to believe it is probably not going to go much further in the desired direction. Let that market demonstrate that to you: don’t anticipate.Bailing Out on a Loss Too Early
This is really the same as itching to take a profit. It might be that you need to reconsider your risk management strategy.Letting Losers Run
There is a simple way to avoid this: always use a hard stop loss and do not ever widen it.Not Taking Responsibility for Your Trading
It is so easy to make excuses. If I hadn’t missed the bus / been distracted / been in a bad mood then I would have handled that trade better and made money instead of losing. It is your job to make sure that you don’t miss the bus or get distracted or fall into a bad mood. Once you take responsibility for all your trading, your mood can lift as you see there is a way for you to make things better. It is a marathon journey, not a sprint.Endless Chase for the “Holy Grail”
You do some testing and devise a strategy that makes 20% per year on average. But wait! You try something else and find it makes even more, say 25%. Is there something better out there? Maybe, but this searching and testing process can take a long time. Consider this: if you spend 6 months testing instead of trading in a committed way to find a way to make 25% instead of 20%, you just lost 10% and it will take you another year to make it up! By all means continue searching, but don’t let it affect your trading. As long as you have a fairly solid methodology, it doesn’t have to be perfect!Source
Ten Psychological Trading Tips to Win | Trading Forex
It is said that the psychological challenge makes up 90% of the struggle in achieving consistent success as a Forex trader. Can this really be true?
Yes and no. Many great traders that have written about their experiences have talked about how their own inner psychological struggles have caused them losses, even when they “knew” that whatever it was they were doing was wrong. There can be no doubt that psychological factors are of huge importance in the game of trading Forex or speculating in anything.
Mastering your trading psychology won’t make you money in itself, but if you are not aware of the tricks your own mind is trying to play on itself, you will probably find yourself losing even if you are a good trader and are basically right in your trading decisions. There are a hundred ways that a trader can quietly sabotage him or herself. There is a “physical” aspect to trading.
Hopefully it will help you in your trading journey to be aware of several tricks traders often get themselves caught up in psychologically. Sometimes you just have to experience something yourself in order to learn from it: nothing teaches like direct experience. Hopefully some of these points will either give you a new understanding of trading mistakes you have already made, or will warn you in advance of mistakes you have not yet made. Try not to blame yourself when you make a trading mistake: get your “revenge” instead by learning your lesson and not making that mistake again.
Common Mental Trading Mistakes
Not Believing in your Methodology
It is surprising how many people trade without being convinced they can make money, or at least sure that they have a good chance of it. Even if you think you do believe in what you are doing, are you sure you don’t have big doubts hiding just beneath the surface? The answer to this problem is to test your methodology. For example, if you follow trends, take the time to back test on a lot of historical data. Does it show good results most of the time? Is it based on a solid concept, like mean reversion, or momentum? If the answer to these questions is yes, you should believe in what you are doing and don’t forget that you believe in it either.Not Making a Plan and Sticking to It
This one sounds very obvious. It is not just about making a plan, it is about having several plans and leaving some flexibility there too. For example, if you are day trading, you should have a method you use to decide each day which currency pair or pairs you are going to trade. However if the pair you select goes nowhere, while another pair takes off, you might want to be able to reconsider your decision instead of just “sticking to the plan”, say by allowing yourself the option to change your mind every 1 hour. This is a “plan”, but a plan can include some structured flexibility too.Not Appreciating the Difference between Planning Something and Living It
It is quite easy to make a plan that works on paper, but it can be something different entirely to live that plan in real time. A good example is making a plan to take hundreds of trades over a year or so, and expect your account to be in a drawdown of -20% as you go through a run of 20 consecutive losing trades. You might work through this back test in a day or so and decide such losses are acceptable. You are likely to feel very different when you spend weeks or even months losing real money again and again while watching your account balance shrink. There is no good answer to this dilemma, you just have to be aware that running through months of time in an hour or so is not necessarily good practice psychologically for bad trading times.Being Afraid to Take a Trade or Too Eager to Take a Trade
These are the opposite sides of the same problem. The best way to overcome this is to tell yourself every day that you are prepared to take either several trades or no trades at all, and that what you do will depend entirely upon the condition of the market instead of the condition of your wallet or your mood. There will be days with no action and days with plenty of action. You have to adapt to the circumstances.Making “Deals” with the Market
Telling yourself that if the price goes up another 10 pips you will get out of the trade, or if doesn’t go up in the next hour you will exit the trade. This is just your mind running with its anxiety and talking nonsense. Ignore it, hold firm, and only exit trades according to your plan.Itching to Take a Profit
You see a profit on the table and think how nice it would be to just take it and stop trading for the day and bask in the glow of a profitable trading day. This is laziness and self-indulgence and has to be fought. The only reason for taking a profit should be because you have a real reason to believe it is probably not going to go much further in the desired direction. Let that market demonstrate that to you: don’t anticipate.Bailing Out on a Loss Too Early
This is really the same as itching to take a profit. It might be that you need to reconsider your risk management strategy.Letting Losers Run
There is a simple way to avoid this: always use a hard stop loss and do not ever widen it.Not Taking Responsibility for Your Trading
It is so easy to make excuses. If I hadn’t missed the bus / been distracted / been in a bad mood then I would have handled that trade better and made money instead of losing. It is your job to make sure that you don’t miss the bus or get distracted or fall into a bad mood. Once you take responsibility for all your trading, your mood can lift as you see there is a way for you to make things better. It is a marathon journey, not a sprint.Endless Chase for the “Holy Grail”
You do some testing and devise a strategy that makes 20% per year on average. But wait! You try something else and find it makes even more, say 25%. Is there something better out there? Maybe, but this searching and testing process can take a long time. Consider this: if you spend 6 months testing instead of trading in a committed way to find a way to make 25% instead of 20%, you just lost 10% and it will take you another year to make it up! By all means continue searching, but don’t let it affect your trading. As long as you have a fairly solid methodology, it doesn’t have to be perfect!Source
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