What’s the harshest lesson that you’ve learned in trading?
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Not to open 13 different trades in one day that resulted in 13 losses. Or risk more than two correlated pairs at one time. My beginner mistakes that took me 8 months to get back into profit.
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My man, glad I wasn’t the only one to open a wild amount of trades in a day. But never got to 13, well…I don’t think.
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To focus on quality of trades than quantity of trades. When you are trading on multiple instrument at a time you tend to confuse yourself which leads stress and wrong decisions. Thus, the best thing is to select the ideal trades at a time and give your 100% on them.
The hardest lesson for me has been learning to resist the temptation to chase the price. Even after many years of trading I still have to fight this instinct.
I think it is only natural when one already has an expectation of a move in a certain direction and then sees price shooting off without you that one jumps spontaneously on the wagon, only to see it slip right back on the next candle. This does not necessarily mean the trade direction is wrong, only that it ends up being a bad level to have entered at. But if it is a wrong direction then the cost of the mistake can be substantial.
I can recall a couple of occasions in the past where I have ended up having bought the high of the day!!!
My methodology involves entering on pullbacks and I have to always remind myself of that and not go chasing the white rabbit.
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“The market is always right.”
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Ouch. What’s good is you were able to work it out and learn from it. I honestly still tend to make the same mistakes hoping a different outcome would happen.
I agree. I’ve done this a lot of times under the guise of diversifying. Sometimes I also tend to force trades.
Shiny ball syndrome!
For years I jumped around chasing the next best thing. As one strategy went into drawdown I immediately thought it was bogus and started looking for the next one.
In hindsight if I just stuck to one, back tested the sh** out of it, forward traded it for a year, documented and reviewed my trades religiously, optimised and adjusted my approach and repeated I would have been 6 years ahead of where I am now.
But you learn these things 
That’s normal. Don’t beat yourself up about it. Your emotional expectation is that it’s a winning trade and you keep on hoping throughout that you’re right until the market proves you wrong - and that causes pain. About 90% of traders follow that route and are in danger of never being successful long-term.
Try this top 10% trader tip instead: open every trade with the assumption that it is a losing trade, and let the market prove you’re wrong. Hopefully, you can see your mindset expects you are going to lose, which ‘it is what it is’ psychologically.
Do that on every trade and you’ll see it works - hell, you’re even ‘happy’ when you do lose because that is your expectation, and ecstatic when the market proves you wrong by showing you a winning trade.
Best of luck. By the way, every single trade must follow your strict process always - treat them as robots engaging with the market.
Hope that helps.
Yes, absolutely, diversifying your risk is good but when you excessively diversify, things become complicated and difficult to manage.
there is nothing 100% in Forex trading, so our strategies does not work for all time . we have to be experienced in good money and risk management, otherwise, trading life can be more complicated.
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You took the right decision…and yes we learn with time…