As new traders, itās easy to get lost in the whirlwind of daily trading-related activities. From reading the news (Coronavirus! Trump! ECB!) to looking at charts and maybe even spending time here on the forums, who has the time to stop and think about their trading goals and if theyāre meeting them?
Today, we will make time because weāre doing a 10-second version of a trading retrospective of sorts by asking youā¦
What is the single biggest thing thatās holding you back from your version of trading success?
Weāve put together a poll below that covers some of the most common answers to this question. If you have answer/s that arenāt part of the poll, just respond to this thread - weād love to read about it!
I voted Trade Entry and Exit. I have been trading live for about six months, and my equity curve reached +14% in October, and is now -5%. I donāt feel like I have an entry system that I truly trust, and I lack rules for exiting trades before they reach a target. I sometimes wonder if it is even possible to be a successful trader in the long term, but thatās another story.
For me, the bigger the account the easier it is to be conservative in position sizingā¦the smaller the account the more one tries to leverage up and quickly amplify the account sizeā¦
For traders who are not yet profitable, but have gained valuable experience, the biggest hurdle you face is non of these.
itās actually your own history as a bad trader.
What do i mean?
Your psychology is filtering all your new trades through all your past negative trading experiences or to put it another way like a general who is always fighting his last war.
Itās like revenge trading but not just over one past trade, but your whole trading career so far.
With these mental hangups success will be hard.
For many losing traders, the best thing to do is take a long vacation from trading so all those negative events are forgotten.
With fresh eyes, and all the acrued experience the break you take will be the best thing you have done.
Of course all negative experiences are learnings. Fully agree, I just think that before taking a trading break were often still too close to the action to fully assimilate what weāve learned.
In any discipline coming back to it with fresh eyes can do the world of good.
Trade entry and exit for me which is usually because I doubt myself and sometimes unsure of trades I should take. Iād see a setup and not take it but then watch it actually move according to plan. So basically, profits in my imagination.
Definitely trade monitoring and management. I feel like I have been lacking most on this aspect. But also the āTrade Entry and Exitā option as I do not have this strategy figured out yet.
Totally agree to this one. Iāve been trading for about 2 and a half years, I lost what seemed a lot to me in 2018 (by trying out 1:500 leverage) and Iāve been slowly making that money back ever since, but I still have many doubts about myself and sometimes I get a bit too emotional and lose more than I usually allow myself, but the fact that I havenāt blown another account in 2 years calms me a bit.
Thanks, I think Iāll take your advice and not trade for a month.
Kinda feels like Iām chasing the market, but after a break it would be like starting fresh and seeing new opportunities, not feeling like Iāve missed everything.
I can only give you my personal experience. When I was forced to quit because I blew up my account it took me over a year to get the funds to refund it.
I continued on demo in all that time - and actually got good at trading! Lol
In fact that year I actually started enjoying trading again.
So when I did come back to it with real money itās like my brain had been reset.
I was no longer revenge trading, but now had a database of experiences from my many bad years of trading.
I have not looked back ever since, being forced onto the sidelines worked.
I have no idea how long it would take for anyone else to eradicate all the negative feelings associated with bad trading.
I guess it depends on how long you have been struggling.
For me I was a bad trader for seven years, so the accumulation of poor experiences was large.
But I have now been consistently profitable for over 10 yrs.
Overtrading was my big one. Holding losers I stopped pretty quick. Mine was a death of a thousand cuts rather than a spectacular blow up.
Also I was totally indecisive as to who I was as a trader. One day I was a weekly chart trader, but if I saw a set up on a lower timeframe suddenly I tricked myself into thinking I was now a āday traderā.
My lack of consistency was Herculean.
I even went over 50 losing trades in a row. But I was always good at letting profits run and cutting losses, which just goes to prove how important money management is to staying in the game.
