When thinking of forex trading tips that aren’t your typical answers you’ll find repeated a millions over the internet, the first one that came to mind was don’t stress. This is in part inspired by my article on my daily routine where I discussed a fellow trader who often takes his dog for a walk during the more stressful and tense times, and it works for him.
Now you’re probably scratching your head in confusion if you’re new to trading, and the older traders are probably rubbing their collective chins and nodding sagely at this advice.
This is the importance of finding a way to relax while trading, even when things go wrong. When you start getting stressed you start getting tunnel vision. Any forex trader, new or old, will have had the experience when they’re having a bad trading day or perhaps two days in a row. You start worrying about hitting your weekly or monthly target. You start wondering if throwing your computer out the window will actually make you feel better.
You start looking at more and more currency pairs in every possible timeframe. You start telling yourself that there “MUST be a trade there” and blaming yourself for not finding it. You start bending the rules of your strategy to make yourself believe in a potential trade entry. You place the trade, and it goes horribly wrong.
The tunnel vision is really kicking in now. Staring are the forex charts and watching your trade go further and further in the wrong direction, you start telling yourself that the market must change direction. Further and further it goes until you decide to finally lose the trade. Two minutes later, it swings around in your favour.
I’m sure you’ve all had that experience at least once in your life, and its not pretty. The good news is that it is a lesson you only have to learn once if you’re smart about it. And there are two important things to take away from an experience like that.
- The market doesn’t HAVE to do anything. It is a wild and difficult to predict beast that cannot be tamed.
- The only reason to enter a trade is if your strategy tells you to. If you haven’t placed enough trades for the day, week or month, that is not a good enough reason to place a trade.
My advice when you’re getting deeper and deeper into this hole is to walk away. Be like my trading buddy, take your dog for a walk. Or better yet, take a cat for a walk and see how many people laugh at you.
Do whatever it takes to get your mind off the problem, and come back fresh. Every forex trade needs to be treated as a new trade and should have nothing to do with previous ones regardless if they were winners or losers.
You’ll find as soon as you sit down again with a fresh mind, you’ll start seeing the mistakes you made. Learn from them, move on, and keep at it.
