At some point on our trading journey most of us will make trading mistakes that might wreak havoc on our psychology and naturally our trading account. I guess there are traders who started out with mentors (who’s been through it all), or at prop trading firms (or other businesses that have trading desks) where there are proper training and then those who made it all by themselves without too much stress / damage. For the most of traders though, the trading journey is a lonely one via the school of hard knocks and trial and error. The worst part is that most new traders never truly give trading enough of a chance to succeed as their expectations (big and easy money) at the start doesn’t match the reality (not so easy) of trading.
When I started trading I made all the mistakes that could be made in trading and the worst part of course was that I repeated those many, many, many times. I’ve read many books / blogs before started trading but after one too many mistakes I had to go back to them (including finding new ones) to read up more on certain subjects. Only then I reduced (I don’t want to say completely eliminate) those errors / mistakes and so saw some improvement in my trading.
There are many great traders out there the blog regularly, have written great books and appear on podcasts that give brilliant advice. If you read up on them / listen to enough them you will find there is a common thread to the advice that they are giving new traders. Some of that advice is:
- Have a trading plan
- Stick to your strategy
- Always trade with stops
- Proper position sizing
- Don’t revenge trade
- Journal your trades
There are many more that I can mention, but that is not the purpose of this post. The purpose of this post is to tell you to listen to what the great traders out there are saying, to implement the counter measures on that which you find lacking in your trading (that’s dragging you down) and then give it enough time (proportionate to your trading horizon / timeframe) to see how it works. Right at the beginning I thought I knew it all until the market proved me otherwise very quickly and still I fought it and it cost me dearly in terms of money, psychology as well as time. So I started listening and learning (and still are) from the more established traders out there. I only realized then that I would have shortened my learning curve considerably had I done so sooner. And this is what I’m telling you now; that we are not alone with the trading problems we are experiencing, that there are others that have been through it all, that their advice is out there and all you have to do is listen and learn to shorten your learning curve and become a better trader.
Regards,
Trading SOS SOS