Hi Tony,
I don't have much to teach anyone about Forex, I’m just starting, but, what you describe is a traumatic experience that has little to do with Forex. You seem to associate placing a trade with real money to what happened in the WTC, and with earning 'dirty money'. You now have an irrational, emotional, uncontrollable reaction every time you try to trade.
What you need to do is dissociate trading from your terrible 2001 experience. You must retrain your brain. Phobias function in a similar way, we could even say you have a trading phobia.
I can recommend that you see a professional, maybe try CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy), it's used to treat many different types of traumas and phobias. Or you can try to work with this yourself. It is essential that you confront your fear but in a controlled manner. You could try to trade very very small amounts of money (like it is possible with Oanda). You must tell yourself and understand that you are not making 'dirty money' with forex and that you are not responsible for what happened in 2001 and for profiting from the crash. It sure will be a progressive thing, as you dissociate trading from your bad experience.
Be careful with psychological maneuvers that you may create as a consequence of your experience. Only trade serious money after you have tested yourself with real money for some time and are confident that you are over this. Our mind is very complicated.
I wish you the best of luck!
Jaime
Quote:
Originally Posted by Skouser
Well first off I'd like to say what a great bunch of people you are. Thank you a million for taking the time to write your messages of advice and support. I really do appreciate them and I will try to act on them, but I'm not sure if I will be able to. I think my inability to trade might be more psychological in nature. I'll explain what I mean in a moment, but first I'd like to say this: I was not over stating how I felt or using an exaggerated figure of speech when I said I felt sick to my stomach when I tried to trade; I did feel as though I was going to throw up. A little melodramatic you might think. Okay, I had not intended to go this far, but as you have taken the time I feel it is only right that I should. I think the rest of this message will begin to make things clearer.
I don't know about the rest of you, but unlike mastergunner99 I don't consider myself to be a gambler (and I'm not about to play with the housekeeping). I don't play fruit machines or buy scratch cards and I don't go to casinos or back racehorses. However, I do know something about Spread Betting.
When I said I'd been paper trading with Forex for six months or so that did not mean that I was new to the concept of Spread Betting. Some years ago I began futures trading on the Dow. As with the Forex, I paper traded before opening my bank with £500. I had made a moderate increase to my initial £500 and had been watching the downward trend when I decided to short the Dow on a December future for £10 a point.
Bloomberg television had just switched from the London office to New York when the first aircraft struck the WTC. I, along with you and the rest of the world, watched in horror as the announcer confirmed what had happened - and I watched in disbelief as the Dow dropped, like a stone, to around 150 points in seconds and then began to creep up again. Then the second plane hit the WTC and the Dow took another dive, not that far this time, but far enough for me to make £800. I panicked at what was happening, I just wanted everything to stop, so I hit the Buy button.
That was what I meant earlier by psychological. I had made a lot of money and a lot of people had died horribly. I spoke to my wife and we both agreed the money was 'dirty' and we could not keep it. We gave it to a Childrens' Hospice that we support.
I never looked at Spread Betting again until somebody sent me a sales pitch for a Forex 'this will make you millions' software system. I knew enough to know that such an animal did not exist, but it got my curiosity up enough to check out what the Forex was all about. And so, here I am.
Once again, thanks.
Tony.
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