In need of advice

Hello fellow traders,

I’ve been trading on a live account for the past 5 months, after more than 1y in a demo account.

I started my live account with 1k but now I’ve lost almost 10% and I’m starting to get frustrated.

I’m a conservative trader and I never trade more than 0.02 lots and my strategy revolves around Swing Trading and the usage of Pivot Points.

I think I have reasonable technical and fundamental analysis knowledge but I feel that my biggest problem is the lack of consistency in what I’m doing…

For example: I’ll sit in front of my charts on Sunday and plan the week ahead. I create trade plans according to my fundamental biases and define the areas where I’m willing to buy/sell and the areas where I’ll set my take profit and stop losses.

The problem comes when the week actually begins and I start to feel the urgency to trade what I planned. I feel like I have to enter the market because I’ve studied it beforehand and I tend to make bad decisions regarding my entries (for instance: trade without any trigger, or ignore basic s/r principles), which will lead to bad trades overall and a loss in the end.

Then I get frustraded and I begin to “stalk” a bunch of currency pairs in order to desperately trade something.

What irritates me the most is that I’m writing this post and I know that I’m making all the basic newbie mistakes (FOMO, overtrading, etc etc) but I feel that it gets out of my control very easily.

I’ve lost 100€ and I know that it really isn’t the end of the world but I’m in a state where I feel like it can go downhill from now.

Do you guys ever faced this kind of situation? How did you overcome it?

This bit sounds fine. As they say, “Plan your trades and trade your plan”…but it seems you are only doing the former part and screwing up the latter part?

Sounds like you are probably entering trades at market and even with an element of chasing the price moves as they happen?

One suggestion might be that if you have identified your entry areas and your target areas, then place pending orders instead in these identified areas (with target and stops) and wait for them to be filled. At least that is forcing a discipline on you…and if you continue losing then it is your strategy that is wrong and not your tendency to impulsive uncontrolled trading :slight_smile:

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How long do you keep your orders open?

Perhaps a Grid Martingale strategy might help.

Edit: Take a look at the strategy and adjust it to your style. Then backtest it.

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Yes.

I do enter trades at market but because I do my analysis on the H4 Chart and execute them on the 15m with some sort of confirmation (MA crossover for example), which makes me wait for the trigger to actually be set.

But I’m going to follow your advice in trades where I’m feeling more confident in my analysis and in the areas that I identify as support or resistance.

Thank you.

That is another problem I’m having.

I want to believe I’m a swing trader but I get anxious with my trades, a lot of times.

I tend to hold my positions overnight but they don’t last much more than 1 day. I found out that, sometimes I got into losing trades because my stop losses were too tight and I didn’t allow the trades to “breathe”.

I think that writing about these issues is helping me look at my mistakes more clearly.

Thank you for your advice and I’ll take a look into that strategy.

That is pretty much how I work, too. The danger is starting to take the 15m as the signal itself rather than just the confirmation that the higher timeframe signal is actually now starting to move…

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Why don’t you try to hold your positions for a few hours instead of overnight? Just to see how it goes. Sometimes the trend changes its direction faster than expected and often ruins the strategy. At least this has happened to me several times. I completely agree with Manxx’s advice about pending orders, they definitely can help in such situations.

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take a break, step back from trading, to gather your thoughts, read a book about the psychology of trading, and dont trade until you’ve finished it. You are suffering from the mental problems all beginners face, fighting the demons in your head takes time, and with time will come patience, the fear of missing out is an account killer. There’s no need to worry about a trade you think you’ve missed, trades are like trains, there’s another one coming.
If you see a trade and don’t take it, and it works out, be proud of yourself, not disappointed. Once you’ve read the psychology book, a simple thing to do to beat the demons in your head is to create a checklist, and follow the checklist every time you are looking for a trade, this will generate consistency, which in turn will help with your thinking while trading.
Fingers crossed for you.

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Thank you so much for your advice, guys.

I’ve been struggling but I’m more than willing to work for it.

Summer is coming at the right time, as it will allow me to clear my head and prepare for the next months.

Thank you!

You are most welcome. I agree that summer is the perfect season for a nice break. That way you will have the time to review your strong and weak spots and see what you need to work on.

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Hi JoaoAndre001

To be successful in trading, you must have discipline!

You must test and write every trade you get into, whether you succeeded or not, how did you felt, and what you think you could do differently.

Only after you will have enough data, and you’ll know how to be disciplined and not repeat mistakes, you will start to be profitable.

What you describe happens to most traders, but beware, because most of them do not learn a lesson and continue to lose.

You must decide which group you want to join

I wish you success!