They say greed is worse because it gets you to act in ways you shouldn’t while fear prevents you from doing something - anything. But I feel like if you have fear, then you’re just frozen too - you may not even start trading!
If you had to pick between one or the other which would you choose to have?
0 voters
To my mind, greed is worse too. If your main trading feeling is fear, it would just make you to close your positions with the small profits or to avoid new trades at all. Anyway, you would no loose huge amount of money. At the same time, greed may make trader to hold the position without any reason just because he wants it to make him money. After seeing large paper profit, such trader would hold even loosing positions thinkning that it “must” get him those money back. This is the most common problem of the greedy traders that would be better to avoid.
For sure, too much fear could also cause underperformance. Even experienced trader influenced by the fear could miss great traing opportunities one by one. Another point is that closing positions too early could influence the risk-reward ratio that requires profits to be larger than losses.
Both of these feelings are negative. Trader need to be able to change his behaviour from agressive to conservative depending on current market conditions.
Id also agree. Greed is not a good trait to have in your locker when trading, myself and i bet most of traders out there have been greedy at least once when trading. I have also had fear too and missed opportunities when the trade went my way.
Just hurdles we have to overcome with trading forex, which i guess only comes with time spent on the charts and in the markets
If probably go with fear. If I got greedy I know I wouldn’t stop until I was either loaded or had lost everything!
i would choose fear as well, it’s better to be fearful for the trades placed than losing everything over greed.
Great question!
I would definitely choose fear as on balance it is likely to keep you out of the market - a place where you are much less likely to lose all your money!
There are many ways to win the game but the only way to lose it is to get knocked out.
Fear keeps you in the game, greed can get you knocked out.
to me fear is worse. You won’t be able to accomplish or succeed in anything if you’re fearful of it. You have to make yourself uncomfortable in order to become successful. But, I believe you can control your greed, just like in trading. Newbies tend to chase after the money when they first get into trading, not realizing that learning the skill is more important than the amount of money you make. Then what happens? they wipe out their account. So, fear to me is the ultimate demon in my opinion
Yeah I suppose fear can keep you longer in the game vs. greed which can easily wipe out your account.
If you had to pick, you’d pick fear too?
Zactly.
Wow. Looks like everyone’s picking fear too!
fear can also steer you away from even starting the game lol but can go both ways
I guess you need greed to start you off and then once you’ve started, get rid of it and replace it with fear lol. If only emotions were that easy to manage!
well…yeah! that works too lmao and trading is what, 80 percent psychology and 20 percent technical? Imagine, just learn how to control our emotions and we’ll kill the market lol the technical to me is not hard at all
Both are hard for me lol so at least you’re finding ease with one thing at least! Just a few more decades (!!!) and maybe I too can kill the market!
Yes id choose fear anyday, at least that ay your not losing anything if youre not in anything. We all know sometimes it better to not be losing anything on your account then being in trades for the sake of it
Great way to put it!
i agree with most traders above. fear is far better than greed. no good comes out of greed.
Well, of course we all agree that both of those innate emotional behaviors is bad. And, needless to say, we all know that the absolute best way is being objective. Now…given all that as a prerequisite, and to enter in deeper, past all that most obvious way we should be…I would have to say I would pick greed. Why?
Well, one reason is, that I feel the market acts mostly out of greed. So it would be like you would be more in tune with how it flows than you would with fear. I’m just saying that in that respect.
Another reason is, that I think you would have a better chance of learning something, actually anything, coming out of a greed mentality than a fear mentality. I mean, it is all about whether we learn or not. Also whether we can learn or not. And as I see it, if you are coming from a fear aspect, chances are you might not get to the learning ideal.
They say it’s easier to steer a ship once it’s moving. I would equate greed with the ship moving, likewise fear with the ship not moving.
And, again, to wrap all this up, I would have to remind us that nothing is better than to be objective, see both sides of everything. Cause if you want to know about probabilities, which I feel is the best way to go about it, then you absolutely need to be objective in the first place. Right?
Anyway. For this question…I tried to be objective about my conclusion.
Mike
I was ‘fear’, for sure… just feel that greed would do more damage. But really ideal would be to overcome both, or should I rather say learn to control those emotions in order to be a better trader 
Greed, my first word on this forum. Very bad. That is the feeling that make you loose the total amount of your account. Too big size for a position. Too much risk. Too long wait for a winning trade. Too much expectation of a day of trading.
Fear is very important. We must feel the danger, feel the heart beat and take care of what we are doing, go back to risk management, follow the rules. Avoid to loose too much too fast.
Fear is a natural feeling, while greed is only a negative attitude of many people.
I need fear to stay alive.
Both!. ’ Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful’ - Warren Buffet .In other words, buy low and sell high.#Dow Theory