New Live Trader thread - What bad habits do you still have?

What bad habits have you not whipped yet and the ones you have beat. How did you do it.

For me, I have these:

The bad -

  1. Over trading - I still have this itch in my side to try and make a trade when I shouldn’t. If I don’t have something going on, I have nothing working. I can’t seem to beat this. Still working on it, most time I take a break from trading now is when I’ve taken a beating. I just say screw it and go fishing now.

  2. I don’t think my trades out all the way. I set my stops too shallow still and my tp’s to deep for profits. Stop hunters still getting me. I still seem to be staying too close to fib markers. My problem is, i think, is that I am staying too tight with some things that are not letting me beat the hunters.

  3. Pipbandit said it best the other night. But he basically said, stop going against the trend. Wait for a pull back and then get in it, in the right direction.

  4. For the love of god, check the stinkin news before any trade you make. Just because you are a TA trader. If you know some serious news is about to come out. Don’t monkey around with a trade. I made a serious mistake on this the other day. It bit me for $50 bucks…

These are the things that I still have issues with.

For the most part, I think I know how to correct all those things.

Positives:
Here are the things I’ve done right that are keeping me in the game. Might only be a couple.

  1. Money management - Even though I over trade, I don’t put myself so far out there that I can’t trade anymore.

  2. Risk & Reward - I can sleep easy at night when I have a trade going and I will know exactly how much I will lose if it goes bad on me. I accept the fact it can happen before I make it.

  3. S/L and TP’s They are always locked in based on my MM and R&R. I know I will still have X trades available at this lot size while my account is here and I know I will have X trades available at X lot size after that. I pretty much got myself lined out to nearly take 40 losing trades in a row before I have to replenish.

Its funny me saying these things and yet I still have alot to learn. I’ve only been trading live for about 4 months. Demo’s for another 4-5 months prior to that. I am still a big time noob, but I have learned. Nothing will come easy.

Anyway, I would love to hear noob thoughts and vet thoughts as well.

Currently in my live account, I am down $130 bucks.

Cheers!,

fi

What? no bad habits?

I had all the usual ones starting out. Hated bring wrong so stayed in losers far too long, widened stops to avoid accepting a losing trade or flat out didn’t use them, cut my winners short to book a profit, over-leveraged my trades, averaged down to try and avoid losers, continuously tried to pick tops in trends, had no real system, over-traded, etc. With the result that with my first live account I quadrupled it in a few weeks and then blew the guts of it on two trades in a couple of days. Bled the remaining bit out fairly quickly after and went back to the drawing board.

Still all a work in progress but getting better in most areas. Threads like the Alternative Technical Templates really helped give me practical approach to identifying and planning trades, trading with the directional bias and defining risk - it’s an absolute gem of a thread. This helped me to cut out the over-trading and trying to pick tops / bottoms - once the results start to show it becomes easier to stick with it. I still jump the gun on entry sometimes but not so much anymore. Cutting my winners short is still a problem for me - trying to work on judging momentum to know when to jump out and when to sit through a pullback. I still get annoyed when I get a trade wrong but I know enough now to just leave things alone and wait until I get over it before looking for another trade.

Anyway, best thing I can think of to try is just try doing the basic things the right way for a while. Once you start getting results your mind kind of becomes conditioned to doing things that way as you keep getting your rewards (on average). Consistently avoiding numerous losses from bad habits and getting fairly decent results helps you keep on track and stay in the game. Then the basic good habits just sort of stick after a while. After that you can work on improving different areas bit by bit that’ll help improve your overall results. I’m only just coming out of getting the basic good habits as a routine myself and I know there’s plenty of areas I need to improve in but in the past 10 weeks I’ve been able to get 8 winning weeks, 1 breakeven week and 1 losing week for an average gain of +3.45% per week. Though I suppose I’d read all about these good habits originally when I started forex but it took me the pain of getting slapped around fairly consistently to finally take them on board. Fighting with your head is definitely the toughest part of this business :wink:

The biggest bad habit is panicing and not sticking to ur plan.

hehe, im past that one. I’m a good loser now a days :wink:

If you’re a good loser, you must be an exceptional winner, lol.

i tell myself not to open more than 2 trades every and i end up opening 10-20 :(. i can’t stop.

you can stop. I’m guessing you don’t have any defined method of what a trading opportunity looks like, and so you’re entering whatever “looks good”. If you worked on trading just one or two defind “setups” and you managed that trade in a consistent manner, you could cut down on your trades. Also consider limiting yourself to 1 or 2 currency pairs.

I think my worst habit these days is posting on this forum. I keep telling myself to stop. So many newbies…so little time

LOL… you stole my thunder! You post what experience has taught you only to get beat up by a newb who’s making 50% a day! LOL

Actually I was just thinking what a refreshingly honest thread its been so far…

My good habits - Patience, I only take high probability set ups, Solid MM and emotionless whilst in a trade.

Bad habits - Still spend far too much time in front of the monitors when either a trade doesn’t warrant it or there are no high probability set ups on the pairs I’m interested in to the ongoing detriment of my family.

You need to go to something like FTA… Forex trading anonomous… I think they have a 12 step program. :smiley:

I actually think that is good, to me that means you are still very facinated by the market, which tells me that you are probably very keen to what is going on.

edit what would bore the crap out of most people, still keeps you glued to it.

Bad habits from a newbie POV - reading so many informative articles about trading, post without applying the ideas and points taken. trading fright?
Good habits - aggresiveness to learn the will lessen the probability of pitfall in the future
:33:

Gun shy are ya? Can’t pull the trigger soon enough on a trade? hehe, I know that one. What got me through that one was Money management and R/R. Once I knew how to set my live trades up, winner or loser. One trade doesn’t have any bearing on whether or not I will survive now. On the flip side, no trade will make me a millionare.

I would say, get into money management and you will be able to take your trades alot easier.

I tend to trade a pretty early session, say 0530-0830, and tell myself that if I make a good few pips then I will take them, shut up shop for the day and go and do something else. Then even on days when I bank some good pips and am very happy, I find myself checking in on the charts at 11am, again over lunch, again mid-afternoon, looking for good setups to make a little more.

I know deep down that the pips I am taking on that first session are giving me a decent monthly return, but if I am around the house (I trade from home) I struggle to resist going back for a few more bites at it. I am fine if I am not at home, but if I am here then I just keep looking.

We are currently renovating our house, and it has helped in that I spend much of the day knocking walls around or whatever, so I am limited to that first session. Too early to tell if I will be cured once the renovation is complete, however. I suspect not…!

ony a week in so tooo many to mention