List here the WORST advice for traders you have ever heard

Trading Discussion
1

Only trade with money you can afford to lose.

Close your winning trades as quickly as possible.

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2

To ensure your success, you should never use a demo account…

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3

…it will take 10,000 hours of practice to achieve mastery of Swing trading…

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4

That its a get rich quick scheme / other side of the coin some will say it practically impossible to earn a living as a retail Day Trader

5

Take everything the market gives you even if its a pip…Completely wrong as you are consistently in negative RR

6

Omg lol I always say this hahaha why is this the worst :sweat_smile:

7

Many reasons why this is bad advice - which we have all heard from respected sources.

But to sum up, if a trader correctly knows its possible they will lose all their money in the next 10 days or 10 minutes, then they just aren’t ready for trading yet. And if the person giving the advice also knows this, then they should be telling them they aren’t ready for trading yet and here’s what to do about it.

8

Nah, don’t agree. Nobody knows for certain whether they would win or lose any trade - unless you are a time traveller. That’s the reality.

Therefore it makes sense to focus on managing risk, instead. So a revised positive statement could be: If you risk more than 5% of your account on open trades, you could lose more money than you can afford.

9

In order to make money, newbies should take Prop firms’ challenges.

However, those on this site and elsewhere who are profitable traders managing ‘small’ accounts could find the challenge suitable, although tough.

I have found one firm who suits me just fine when I have a minimum £299 to ‘invest’ which is refundable when passing the initial stage trading a 5K account. There are higher starting account sizes. Here are the essential conditions:

  1. Make a profit of $300 while not losing $200.
  2. Must trade 29 days, while not being allowed to keep a number of trading 0.01 lot sizes if making £300 quickly.
  3. Upside is no end date. There is no time limit. Take as long as you like to reach either goal.
  4. The first stage is on a demo account, however with the ‘prize’ of being refunded it doesn’t matter.
  5. A repeat of the above on a live account and receiving 65% of profit target.
  6. After, a jump in account size for every time a 10% profit is made.

I have no connection to the firm or wish to solicit anyone on this site. I’ve added it, because there are alternative options for profitable traders with low account sizes.

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10

The advice to trade only with what you can afford to lose is usually aimed at new traders to tell them how much capital to fund their account with. In this regard this advice is useless and that’s the context for my post.

But in the case of an individual trade, yes of course the maximum risk per trade must be affordable.

11

What bugs me is when brokers offer a ridiculous small entry amount to a live account. Which is just as bad advice, made even more so because they should show a modicom of morality.

12

“Do not demo trade. Go live as soon as you can.”

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13

"It’s never wrong to take a profit"

This might sound good but encourages taking profits prematurely - which is the quickest way to dilute one’s strategy risk/reward - which, in turn, will destroy overall profitability over time.

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14

Oh ok so you’re saying don’t give this advice to absolute newbies because it is for certain they’ll blow their accounts anyway? :open_mouth:

15

Ah ok this is the context.