Am new to the Forex, have completed my education in Pipsology, have been running demo accounts with FX Solutions, UK, using the Cowabonga (Or variations of) for about 3 months. Have finally opened a real account on Monday…found that I am scared to death to make a real trade… was wondering.
How to make the transition from paper to capital? I seem to be looking for the perfect trade and not doing anything. But I always see what I “should” have done after it is too late. What gives? Is this normal? Am I being too careful here or do I need to just pull the freakin trigger? By the way, as a result of my late entries (If I enter at all) I have managed to amass 6 pips all week…any thoughts?
If you are usinv the cowabunga system, then wait for your entry signal and make the trade. You arent required to make large trades so just trade a small amount of your capital. You will develop confidence over time.
It might be worth trying to figure out what your afraid of, is it fear of losing money you cant aford to lose, or fear of failing, or lack of confidence in the system.
If its money, start with a tiny account at Oanda and trade for pennies. If its lack of confidence in the system, then you need more back or forward testing. Fear of failure or a need to be right is a far more complex problem and a tough one to crack without professional help.
Not afraid to fail, no underlying complex, not trading my grandmother’s Soc Sec check… just a big difference between my money and fake money. I have only been trading real money for 3 days, a total of 4 actual trades. I just wanted to know if it was normal to feel unsure at first. I believe I am over analyzing the trade and need to simply get in when the signals tell me to. Thanks for the advice Viper5…
Just like anything else that is high risk and hard to predict you train like you fight. This is as much a mental thing as physical or anything else. I have 13 years in the military and about half of that either training for the fight or actually in it. The trick is to get your mind in the training as seriously as if it were real. I just recently switched from demo to live trading and the transition was seamless for me because of my mental preparation for the real thing. The training was “real” in my head complete with the fears of losing and hesitation brought on by those fears so when the real thing came, I was mentally ready.
I guess that was the long way of saying, if you feel this way too much then you didn’t train properly mentally. It should pass though because I do think that what you are feeling is normal to a point, if it doesn’t get better then I recommend going back to the demo and getting your mind right before risking real money. Just trade the way that you trained and you’ll be fine (if it was working before, of course;-)
“The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in battle”
Wow…Ok…thanks for the pep talk. But getting back to trading…as I said before, I was simply over-analyzing my trades. I just had a simple question concerning waiting too long to enter a trade and if that was normal in this process of learning to trade the Forex. My question was also designed to stimulate conversation and help me meet people here, but I see it can easily be an invite to soapbox potentates. I don’t take anything lightly, evidence of that is my over-analyzing the trades, but I don’t see the correlation between sitting at my desk trading and a real firefight…Its over romad7, you’re home now…
Thats all it was, a pep talk, you seemed hesitant to “pull the trigger” so I made the correlation to show the relationship between training and live trading. I find that real life examples can help shed light on things that seem daunting at the moment (works for me at least). Combat and training for it is full of lessons that can help people handle real life, one of them is being able to execute the plan in stressful or uncertain situations. Just have to be able to separate
I am far from a “soapbox potentate” and I did answer your question, so relax. If you would like, I can use kinder, gentler examples like a correlation between trading and dating or something nice like that. And, YES, your hesitation is a normal thing now stop it and get to trading!
“All The Way”, it would seem to me that they guys in the 82d would relate combat lessons to everything, but I could be wrong…
Well I think 4 trades in your first three days of trading shows that your are willing to pull the trigger. I don’t know if you would want to place more trades than that.
The market will always be there and the next signal is always just around the corner, so if you miss one, no big deal cause there will be another opportunity.
I only made two trades all week… and only 3 last week… and I am 7 for 7
One of the big reasons for a high failure rate in FX at he begining is because new traders tend to over trade… patience is the key to this, so waiting for the right price / signal is a good thing so get into that habit.
Very true, I would definitely never recommend overtrading, my own record show the folly in that! The hardest part is waiting hours for the market to setup, that’s when I have the temptation to force a trade but that usually ends badly.
To make the transition easier trade rediculously small lots. Like 1 cent a pip if your account allows it. Once you start to see similar results to your demo trading and feel you can follow your rules, then slowly size up.
Make sure to test your trading plan over a good sample size, like 20 -100, trades, to develop a good win/loss ratio. At the very least backtest.
If trading real money makes you nervous it might be a sign that you are risking too much or overleveraged. At the least, make sure your first dozen trades do not risk more than 3% of your account. And never move your stop after you are in, because it looks like you may be stopped out…you’ll just lose more.
Also, you should realize that ALL trading is speculation, which is a form of gambling. No matter how good a set up or method or indicator is, all it does is show a tendency for the market to behave a certain way when x,y & z, happen… a tendancy, not a guarantee, not a certainty.
This means all the best methods do is say that a certain behaivor happens more than it does not. So when you enter you are betting the tendancy will happen. You never know when it won’t out of x times or when it will. Which is why you have a SL that is in a reasonable place that says the event is not panning out.
This is also why, when you see your paramaters line up, you can not hesitate unless you have a good reason, not a hunch or because you are afraid. Because, if you don’t trade based on your set up you may miss the good trade that makes up for the losses and gets you profit.
Learn to take and welcome repeated small losses, and let the winners run.
