Went long on the NZD/USD 1 contract last night after planning for a move up.
The spread put my break even point at 0.71287
I watched for some time while it went up and down towards positive territory but lost my nerve when it started backsliding and closed the trade for a loss of $74.
Woke up this morning to see if I had of left it open overnight I would have been up around $500 as it did go up and reach the target.
Do you use stop/loss or take profit? You could use those settings to leave a trade open while you are away, minimizing risk and guaranteeing some profit, it not all.
If I look at your chart correctly, it looks like the pair had further lows than your exit in the consolidation period before the rise.
I’ve just been in demo for a few weeks and I am making sure I have a pre-set stop/loss with every trade. On more than 1 occasion I have had the direction right but entered too early.
That was only a 5 pip backslide. Were you rattled due to the loss of $74.00 more than anything?
I’m sure you’re aware that with 1 std contract, each pip move is worth $10, but if you had traded 1 mini contract, each pip move would have been $1, and instead of showing $74 loss, it would have been a $7.40 loss. Would that have unnerved you enough to close the trade? I’m thinking not. 
Spot on.
I was looking at the dollar amount and that was putting me off.
As soon as I opened the trade it was -$60 due to the spread and it was going up and down and then I got nervous as I thought the signal maybe failed and it would reverse.
I was expecting it to go up sooner than it did and thats when I started sweating about it being a failed signal.
I had a stop on and should have realized that you have to risk some for the chance at a lot more.
I think if it had reversed my stop may have cost me $200ish but if I had of left the trade open and closed it manually this morning then I would be up $500+
If a frog had wings, he wouldn’t bump his A double S when he hops.
I can’t tell you how many times the same thing happened to me on the learning curve. Get in a trade, have my stop loss sat up correctly, but get the fear bug, and close it out too early, only to watch it turn around and make a move in the right direction.
Sweet P is correct. Downsize your position, get used to watching price action move around like that, and then trust your trade.
It’s tough at first, especially trading full lot sizes, but you’ll get the hang of it.
Cheers!
Cheers guys
As long as you trade a small fraction of your account (which you should be doing anyway), then all trades will generally be the same as far as emotion goes.
It happened to me sometimes, my SL has very good defenses so I learned to do not close most of my positions, even if it almost hits my SL, as I make good SL points it often makes some kind of price pattern like double top/bottom and goes back all the way to TP, there is something like an NFL defense, protecting my SL, lol.
Hope it helps