What Just Happened?

#1

Can someone explain to me what the hell happened today? I’m a new Forex trader on a Demo account so no harm no foul in my real life, but coming into the day all I’ve heard is how DXY was going to soften…if it crossed below 91.5 it would drop further. USD is softening as a whole. All the technical indicators looked as such.

I had a standing short order to trigger at 91.5 which hit this morning. Early in trading it was looking good and then bam, out of nowhere it turned on a dime. DXY went up, my $200 profit turned to what is currently $1000 loss and counting. I normally would have stopped out by now, but I moved my stops back to see how this plays out since is fake money…

The US stock market had a tough day, is that why USD strengthened? If so then why.

Again, I’m not upset since it’s all pretend money, but I’m treating it like real and I want to know what happened.

Any insight would be very appreciated!

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#2

We live in volatile times, and the USA is suffering the most from economic outlook and Covid 19. Fundamental updates appear to carry market sentiment from pillar to post. Expect daily long and short shifts for several more months.

What I’m doing is to severely lowering my lot size if trading USD pairs, and only trading two at any one time. Or you could hedge, e.g. going long on USD/JPY, EUR/USD & shorting EUR/JPY.

As for your DXY event, it’s important to trade demo accounts as though it was live, or you won’t be mentally prepared to handle money management. To see how it plays out is an error most unsuccessful traders make and is the shortest path to losing all your capital.

I discipline myself to cut losses and forget about it, as there are always other trades.

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#3

i think the biggest lesson you can take from today is not to have too many preconceived ideas of what the market will do. Trade what you see not what you want to see. There are lots of unknown forces that can act on a market at any time. Maybe read Mark Douglas Trading in the Zone. Its perfect for new people

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#4

It was a cheap couple of important lessons -

  • anything can happen at any time
  • the worst thing you can think of can happen
  • always keep a stop-loss set to risk only 1% of your capital
  • trade what you see, not what you think (and never what others say they are thinking)
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#5

that s the worst thing u can do lol, what u don t grasp yet is even it s paper money u are developing habits everytime u hit buy or sell, and when u analyse the market. learn to take a loss and move on and protect ur profits by moving ur SL to BE. sometimes even the most great looking setups will fail, that s just the nature of the ever changing market conditions…plus maybe there was a level there u didn t pay attention 2…
anyways, do not move ur SL again if u ever wanna progress in trading

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#6

I’ve tried trading with news events and somebody else’s “analysis” a lot and sometimes as my only criteria for a trade (I know, very dumb). Didn’t work out to well on the majority of trades.

Interest rate reports did the same to me when I tried to trade those. Even if everything went along with the analysis, 9 time out of 10, the complete opposite happened.

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#7

DING !

Learning experience !
REVERSE YOUR BETTING !

#8

Do the opposite of my brain! Yes!

#9

Which part of your “Brain” ?

But you have the evidence - you posted It :rofl:

#10

Probably my medulla oblongata. :rofl:

#11

I agree with you :slightly_smiling_face:

#12

Going to amplify this point, I think it’s important. I remember trading a really nice Aussie retracement in a longer term down trend and closing it out early because some analyst said the it was “coming to an end.” Well it continued for several days after, and I was a sad panda.

Being aware of the news is better than not being aware of it — it can help pre-position for future successes — but my successes in short term trades (typically intra-week) so far came from reading the charts properly, not from knowing the latest happenings or reading some other FX dork’s analysis.

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#13

gonna be honest I had ‘sense’ so I didn’t perform trading at all until I finally abandoned ‘sense’ and decided to change my frame of thinking since my brain obviously was not geared towards money making.

once I flipped that, I started understanding what was happening because I was doing it first :slight_smile:

#14

Thank you all for the great feedback!

I learned a great lesson with this DXY trade. First, as you have all pointed out, don’t go strictly by what you read from the analysts. They may be good to identify something, but make sure to get the proper research done.

Second, don’t panic. After my major hit yesterday I woke up to DXY dropping. I set it to close me out at my original open of 91.5 if I got there to break even and call it a day on that trade. I should have realized that if it got back to 91.5 from 92.008 which was where it was that there was probably a major move down happening and now it’s at 91.1.

Yes, I closed out with no lose, but I also missed some major profit.

Biggest lesson from this is I let my emotions get the best of me(AND I WASN’T EVEN USING REAL MONEY).

#15

It is very good that you realized this sooner than later. Also, do remember that we are currently dealing with COVID19 situation. I believe US is having the worst which is why it is reflecting on trade as well. It is important that you have to pay attention to not just indicators, but also to real world news. Some of them may impact larger and some of them may impact smaller. At the end of the day, forex trading is volatile in nature.

Very good once again for realizing that. Keep your head up and keep practicing and remember to single out those mistakes.

#16

Hey that’s great. Not losing is winning as much as winning is winning!

Yea, constant struggle for me too.

#17

Making profits in the forex market is not an achievement. But an achievement is when you make profits consistently. Trust me, it won’t happen easily. You will have to learn and practice a lot to make the most of the market situations. Try to learn from your mistakes and it will all be good.

#18

Hey. Try not to worry much since the financial market is highly volatile and things like this keep happening for everyone. You can’t really predict it. Keep working hard.