Lost, or never had the nerve

[daydreamer65]

how to prepare.

Get a "system" that works for you in demo mode.

Then when it comes to fronting up with real money
in a live account your "system" should be honed so that
you can take the psychological step to that level.

It also helps in a live aacount to start with an amount which
you are comfortable with, ie should the worst case scenario
occur & you lose X amount of trades on the trot.

That seems to be the cold turkey piece

Have confidence in your "system" & this should not even be
a consideration.

[Teslor]

Thanks! I appreciate your time.

[kangi]

Skouser

Thanks for sharing that personal story about the WTC. Really cool people still are out there, that have a moral conscience.

I still get pretty upset when I see videos of WTC with people trying to show some conspiracy and busy looking at whatever their point is in the videos. And so consumed with a puff of smoke that they overlook the video shows people jumping to their deaths. Really sad.

[Skouser]

My apologies mastergunner99, I didn't mean to imply anything. It's just that the other guys did not mentioned anything about Gambl... err, games of skill and calculated risk (there’s no short way of saying that, is there?) And the allusion to my housekeeping was in response to your enquiring whether or not I was using scared money.

I wish you well with the Poker and your sport’s punting.

Tony.

[Harry]

Originally Posted by daydreamer65

Can only re-iterate what Tony has said, only use the account level
you are willing to lose.

Great example for those who ask the question "what's the difference
between demo & live?" Psychology. In demo it ain't yours.

Relax & have fun.

:wishes:

I liked your approach that use the account level that you are willing to lose but it is the human nature that you do not want to loose anything but gain everything. Every profits have equal risk with it.

[faqcya]

There is nothing wrong with being afraid to place a trade. I wish that when I first started trading I had your fears. Instead I started out all wrong, I opened a demo account and within a couple of days a broker called me and convinced me to open a real account immediately. Obviously i had no clue what I was doing and needless to say I blew up that account and the next one before I figured out that it was tougher then I originally thought and I started to have my own fears of the market. I'm not the type of person that scares easily I've been through a lot in my life shot,stabbed, jaw broken with a baseball bat, flipped an ATC and landed on my head with no helmet on, and yet I don't fear being physically hurt as much as I do the market especially after a horrible week. At times I have to back off because I find that these are the times when I make my worst mistakes. Generally after I back off I come back and turn in some of my best performances. I recently had a day when I lost 10% of my account only to come back and be up by 17% by the end of the week. Trading is not for everyone some people seriously cannot deal with losing any money at all and these people make horrible traders and quickly get out of trading for whatever reason, there are a ton of different mistakes they can and do make because they are fearful of losing any money. Simple fact noone is right all the time you will take bad trades accept it, don't be afraid to lose money and let your winners run all the way to your takeprofit, this will offset your losses. Calculate your risk before you place the trade. Dont look at a trade and say if this works I'll make mucho bucks, instead look at the trade and say if this doesn't work how much am I willing to lose. If your not willing to lose don't trade. If you are willing to take a loss define how much of a loss your willing to take babypips recommends 1% I define my risk slightly differently but thats me, however I no longer take trades without predefining my risk and I always determine a value of how much I am willing to lose on a trade idea. Adjust your lot size accordingly if you are using a broker that has a minimum lot size of 1 lot I recommend getting another broker that allows you take much smaller lot sizes, at times I use a .01 lot size other times I use 2 or 3 lots depends upon the strategy . But to be honest different people have different reasons of being fearful, some have the fear of being wrong, but you've already figured out that not every trade will be a winner. I deal with my fears of losing money by placing a trade and going to find something else to do whether it be looking for new trades, new strategies, learning how to write EA's anything to get my mind off the trade. My trading partner hides his profit.

[jmmac]

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

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.

[sivanisky]

Same opinion here. I do understand what happened to you in 2001 and if I had made big money due to the attack I would have probably done the same thing you did, however, It would have been as an act of giving to those who were affected by the tragedy rather than feeling I had cashed in somebody else's tragedy. Because the Dow was going to drop no matter what you did and if you didn't cashed-in the tragedy someone else did and they didn't really care. So who better to take that cash than you to give it back.

I do myself stop to think about the world very often and trust me, we do so many more things in our daily life that contributes so much to other people's disgrace, you would not believe it. How about all the imported clothes and electronics that are made overseas for cents and sold here for hundreds, where the employees make just a few dollars a day. How about abusive free trade agreements that destroy other countries economies and local businesses. Because you don't get cash out of it, but you can afford to buy new clothes every week or replace broken electronic instead of fixing them just because they get paid very little, so how is that not benefiting from someone else's disgrace? The difference is, we don't see it live on TV

This are just a couple of examples

We are all guilty of that when we promote them by buying those products and the worst is, there is no choice. So my thing is, cash-in on everything you can, despite what causes it but never forget to give back. Whatever way you choose to do that.

Just my imperfect-human-being kind of opinion

[Skouser]

I have read, carefully, everything that has been said.

Once again, I thank you all for your advice.

I will keep this thread informed of progress.

Tony.

[rtb]

Hi skouser,
Recently joined the site and understand to some degree how you felt with the buy or sell button. I too was in that situation when I lived in Canada for 30 years and I was dabbling in stocks before I even knew about forex when I returned to the UK.
The long and the short of it is that I wanted to buy a tech stock in 2000 called RIM which was trading at $65 share. Being a type 'A' personality (a nutter) I decided to buy 1000 shares ($65,000 plus commission) - I only earned about $80k a year as an engineer. Anyway I thought about it all day without making a move and into the night and the next morning when I said to myself 'it's now or never' (or words to the effect of) and so I hit the buy button - no turning back now!

Within minutes it had dropped to $58 share so I was down but not out $7k and ready to pull the plug but a little voice inside said hold on as it was only a pull back and 20 minutes later it went up to $75.60 and I hit that sell button faster than 'you know who' and made myself over $10k in 20 mins.

Great eh? not really - because I had got ****y and lost it again some days later with the same stupid stunt.

In other words if I would have bought a stock with money I could have afforded to lose at a more realistic share number level then I would not have felt nervy as you did (putting aside the 9/11 situation).

Anyway, I'm rambling so I will bow out and wish you future success.
By the way I assume you are a fellow Liverpudlian even though you can't spell scouser - ha!ha!