Nervous when making a trade

Reduce your % of capital at risk per trade until you reach the “sleep” threshold - i.e. the level at which you can go to sleep at night and not give a moment’s thought to the market might do.

Nervousness in trading could come from rational concern and irrational one.

Mine was irrational. My way to tackle it now is through music listening. However, instead of listening to the typical calming instrumental musics, I listen to upbeat, happy-go-lucky kind of music.

The reasoning is this. If you go with the calming one, it’s like you’re trying block and downspeed a strong river flow with just a few rocks. It’ll be very unlikely for you to be successful with that. Your rushing stress hormones, i.e. adrenaline and cortisol, just won’t be tamed so easily that way. If you have tried that, you know what I’m talking about.

Hence, I suggest we go with the other option in which we won’t try to block it but try to ride and have fun with it. So what this do is trying to change stressful hormones to happy hormones, be it endorphins, dopamine or serotonin. The first one was trying to change stressful hormones to empty, emotionless feeling. Which one do you think would be more fruitful for you?

Now comes to technicality. It’s simple really. Here’s my favorite upbeat, happy-go-lucky Playlist produced by Alumo. When I feel nervous or other negative feelings, I just listen to them and put a smile on my face. I don’t have to force my feeling to be happy, calm and content. I will feel those eventually pretty quickly while listening to the musics.

So hope that helps for ones who have irrational nervousness. If you have a rational one, start by tackling the problems first, then go with this approach.

Cheers,
Wibie G

We need to avoid such emotions if we wanna make some good money online, else it would lead us to the total Loss. It is also a good idea to take a bit break, if your trades aren’t working out.

Emotionally-driven trading is almost always going to end badly. But emotions start to have an effect even before you open your trading platform.

Anyone on demo or just starting with tiny trades, please ask yourself -
Why did I choose day-trading rather than longer-term?

Then ask yourself honestly -
OK so that was my reason for day-trading - now is that an objective reason based on evidence and statistics?

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In my case that’s more often than not 0%. :blush:
All joking aside, I do that, actually. I keep only short-term positions and go to sleep without having any positions open.

I think in order to be calmer you just need to be more confident about your deals. For that my advice is before opening the deal look at analytics more and try to publish the analytics yourself.

You mean, post them in a forum? So you a trader can discuss the analysis with others?

Generally, you are not confident in the strategy that you are using which had resulted you in being nervous. Or, you had a bad past which haunts you today and it highly affects your trading psychology because you are afraid of making mistakes.

No worries, this is absolutely normal for every traders. I would suggest you to demo trade more, participate in a demo trading contest or anything relevant to it. Don’t target for the championship, but rather targeting to be producing a consistent results in the process of trading. (How much you are able to produce instead of having the mindset of winning every trades and be turn down by a minor loss) (Always take note, loss are part of the game just like how you play video games x)

With that being said, if you were swing trading, once you found a potential set-up, place your SL/TP/Risk Management, and closed your chart. Re-read the chart once or twice a day to check if there is any changes. Always remember to detach your emotions off from the charts/markets, don’t be too immerse into it. Remember why you are trading? Trading is there to provide you an alternative: Freedom (Escaping the 9-5) job. Read something else/Do more research afterwards. It helps to soothe down your mindset/mentality.

All the best in trading !

Best Regards,
C

I would agree to what you say, and there are many strategies that you need to learn if you ever gonna make some good bucks into the Forex Trading. Thus a good amount of practice would be needed if you cringe to become a successful trader.

I think one needs a lot of theory and practice to be a successful trader, but as far as strategies are concerned, one or two that work are usually enough. There is a point where the more complicated one’s trading is, the more there is a possibility to make a mistake.

Practice is eminent, but I would prefer to have more practical practice than that of the theoretical ones. A demo account, if done with seriousness, would be a great choice to get along with the Forex Market, as it will give an insight of the Real Trading and that too without any risks of losing money.

Fear is natural, even healthy. It makes you cautious when you otherwise might be too careless with your money.

But trading forex - like anything and everything else - isn’t about “not being afraid.” It’s about controlling your fear, and using it to your advantage. It means being a smarter trader, and knowing when your fear is telling to to take a step back and analyze what you’re doing before you do it.

Not being afraid at all is, IMHO, reckless. Just don’t let your fear paralyze you into doing nothing.

I am not even sure whether lacking fear altogether is even possible, unless one has some serious psychological disorder. And that would, as you said, turn people reckless. It’s not exactly a positive trait.

No, I don’t suggest you to close your chart after opening a trade! But, you can use back testing service to overcome your fear! By the way, what’s your demo experience?

How does backtesting help with overcoming one’s fear? I am not entire sure I understand your point.

By using Back testing service with your strategy, you will be confident enough! Now you are fearing, because you haven’t enough experience with it (your trading strategy)! Hope now it’s clear to you.