What's something you think traders don't talk about enough?

Hey @tommor - one thing that seems to happen to me quite a-lot when I do this is that when my pyramid eventually reverses against me I’m left with the worst losing position right at the top (or bottom) of that pyramid!!

It can take a hell of a lot of trial and error to get the right stop-loss distance. It needs to be far enough out to not be hit by normal volatility, but not so great that the opportunities to pyramid are very few. Its quite possible the optimum balance varies from market to market, and also with time within the same market. ATR would seem to be a useful tool for gauging SL distance as it is continually adjusting for volatility.

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Does that end up being 3 separate trades running, or all under 1 trade, just more units? Sorry for the confusion.

I don’t have the option to add units, so I simply open a new trade of the same size and with the same stop-loss distance.

In my opinion traders talk less about the importance of trading psychology.

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I think that successful traders need to be more candid about their ROR and account size and small-time traders who perhaps are not-yet profitable need to declare this as well. This would lead to a general cooling down of rhetorec on forums such as this and people would say fewer things that are left-of-field, to put it mildly. It would help newbies if they were reading about someone saying they’ll turn $1 into $1000 in a month, or some other such hyperbole if they could know whether that person was actually a profitable trader or someone starting out with a $10 account and no successful track record. I do not think all opinions should carry equal weight. Call that undemocratic but people are here to learn rather than listen to opium fantasies and pipe-dreams. Of course would be impossible to get anyone’s credentials reliably, so I guess I’m doing what I accuse others of, which is posting fantasies…:rofl::rofl::rofl:

I think one common thing most traders don’t talk about is how lonely it gets.If a trader stays for a long time in the forex market, and is consistent and dedicated with their strategy, they will definitely start making profits. However, it surely gets lonely when you are midway. When you are a beginner, you have that zeal to perform better, and you maintain a good social life as well. But a few months in, if you over indulge yourself in trading, you will find struggling in work-life balance. At this point of time, if you do correct your own mistake, you can easily end up losing your friends and social life, and exhausting yourself with forex trading.

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i think traders dont talk enough about how the forex market is designed. eg The house always wins. The odds are 10000:1 against a trader. every trader who trades is trying to get a piece of the billions/trillions flowing daily but why are 70-90% always losing. Obviously the lessons,indicators and the like do not work neither do the trading educators who themselves dont usually trade. So what really is the solution.

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it does get lonely, the price we pay to be in the 10% who actually succeed in trading. good tht there are forums like this

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This is interesting. :open_mouth: I’ve never really thought about this cause I have this community, and I’m surrounded by my friends and family. :open_mouth: Maybe it’s also because I only trade forex on the side? But it’s striking to know some traders experience this. :frowning:

The majority of traders lose because they do not learn how to trade before they trade, and they then take high risks on low probability trades.

The losing percentage of currently active traders is 70-80%. That figure would be just the same in any other field if new people jumped in without learning what to do and then took big risks. Trading is not exceptionally risky or difficult compared to other activities.

Well I think there’s always a subject that some trader has asked about and sone dude have answered that. I think problem isn’t just knowledge in these days cause as you said some maybe teenager from a far far contry from britain do know the news about London Stock Exchange and even can read about great traders opinions through forums. So it’s probably easier to gather knowledge in comparison to like 50 years ago.
The problem is i guess there is sooo many information that traders (specially new ones ) get distracted fron market itself and concentrate on magical fake things. Just like how I started

I think traders talk about everything but not have a talk about their actual profits. I don’t know but I think traders hide their trades profits.

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Another suggestion from me would be percentages.

% is the way to measure performance, gauge risk, account for volatility and set targets. % is the mother of compounding, which, not pin bars, is the true route to wealth.

I just think many people don’t understand percentages.

In my opinion, traders usually don’t talk about their profits and losses.

You could set an example here and talk about yours.

But I’m joking - I believe talk of actual figures achieved in £ or $ or EUR isn’t helpful. What is more constructive is to hear how a trader pinned down the causes of their profits and losses and understand how they developed.

I think trader’s do not want to discuss their failures and profit/loss because they feel vulnerable.

Well we have so many success stories (though not every success story is genuinely a success story, some of them are scams trying to lure traders by giving them false hopes) but not a single story of failure.

Traders who lose just disappear. They don’t care to talk about the reasons. This is why till now, we only have numbers that 90% traders lose but we don’t have valid reasons why such a large number of traders can’t make it. We only assume the possible reasons and that’s it. If we could know from the real experience of traders it can really help us especially newcomers to avoid those mistakes

Traders do not talk enough about set-up patterns, their focus is too much on chart entry patterns or indicator entry signals.

Set-ups are not dramatic. They can take a long time (as in a large number of bars) to develop and they can stay relevant for a long time. And even a well-defined persistent set-up might not contain any classic entry signals.

But set-ups control your risk - they get you into high-probability trades, they keep you out of risky markets, they keep you out of risky trades, they keep you in cash at risky times, they encourage traders to use perspective and to consult higher time-frames, and they discourage impulsive trades. Sounds all good to me.

In my opinion, traders don’t talk enough about importance of stop loss.