2 of 4 Specific Trader's Behaviors That You Have To Be Aware Of - Deep Discussion of Trading Psychology Part 3

The Perfectionist – some traders are like this. They don’t want a negative trade in their account history. I’m not saying that it is not achievable. Actually, an account history with full of green colors is possible, but you’ve got to have a very good trading plan and you’ve got to have a high level of discipline to follow the trading plan. Some traders resort to not using Stop Loss (SL) on their trades.  Yes, it is possible to trade without SL but you’ve got to know what you are doing. I keep telling this many times to my Forex students that trading both with SL and without it is equally risky if you don’t know what you are doing.

Here are basics on how to use both:

(a) Trading with SL – Limit the percentage of the fund that you are willing to risk on each trade. This doesn’t mean that you are not going to be careful on your entries. You still need to figure out the best entry set-up that you can find in the chart. The SL will only try to minimize your loses in case your entry is wrong.

(b) Trading without SL – This one is very tricky. You’ve got to find first the true range of the currency pair that you are going to trade. You will use the true range of the pair in your calculation of the lotsize. In some situation this is not enough and you may still lose some fund, so some traders double the true range in their calculation or the safest ways are use the lowest lotsize possible or calculate the lotsize with a very long range that the fund can handle. If your fund can handle 5,000 Pips or more, trading without SL is like a walk in the park. You can sleep soundly at night. This is true as of this writing but may change in the future, if Forex Market reaches global daily transactions of more than US$6 Trillions. Surely, sometimes, you will experience that a trade is open for a long period of time. This is the point that trader is stressed with confused judgement and felt the need to take any action that leads to the ruin of the fund.

Note: Take note these are just the basics of doing these trading styles. You need to do more research, or join a coaching group, to know the details and advanced components of the methods.

To correct this behaviour: 

(a) You have to realize that it is also a part of a traders’ life to lose some money in spite of a good trading plan especially if you are using SL. Keep this in mind on every trade that you make and prepare your trade strategy on losing an acceptable amount of money on each trade. With this in mind, you just need to have a trading plan with high probability. If your Take Profit (TP) Pips are always higher than your SL, a 50%-50% chance on your strategy is profitable. If your method has a bigger SL than  TP, you’ve got to have a higher chance of profit with your strategy, bigger than 50%. A 70%-90% strategy is possible. You just to look around the internet, ebooks, webinars or seminars.

(b) If you really want to stick with no-SL method, you can still do this but you need to have a big fund. US$5,000 or more is ideal. If you have US$25,000 or more, it is better. Once you have this amount of investment, the next thing that comes in your mind is profit percentage. See how to handle this in the ebook section “The Percentage Minded”. In this no-SL method, you still need a high probability strategy because it will make your profit faster. Surely you can trade without analysis with this kind of approach because your fund can handle a reversal 5,000 Pips or more, but if you don’t analyze, the time you hit the profit will be longer therefore will delay the increase of your fund. And if you don’t analyze, 5,000 Pips reversal will be still possible to hit and eventually you will lose your big fund. If you are going to do this method, be sure that you are prepared mentally to handle reversal for a long period of time and will not intervene with the trade by trading more or cutting big loss. Some successful traders I know that use this no-SL method, they still keep an SL in mind, or they cut loss at a very specific time. (e.g. if after 15 minutes that the trade is still open, it will be closed regardless of the amount of the loss and proceed on the next trade). This is the time that you can trade with no-SL with a small fund but you have to be strict and you really follow your imaginary SL, or cut-loss time. Discipline is the key.

For Forex Trading with less emotion, use a Forex Robot. A good one is called Solomon's Chest PRO that can possibly give you  a conservative profit of 3% to 20% a month with less than 20% drawdown.

Here is a link where you can download a demo version. https://www.mql5.com/en/market/product/15388

Here is where you can find the track record of the bot... http://www.myfxbook.com/members/okpinoy/solomon-chest-pro/1732850

3 Tips On How To Discover Your Own Successful Forex Trading Strategy

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This month marks my 14 years and 5 months as a forex trader. The first decade is almost like a schooling period with failing grades :). Once you discover your very own strategy, your account history will be your School Transcript and Diploma. The proof that you made it. Well, you don't have to show and brag it to everybody. It is just something that is fulfilling to see even if you are the only one who sees it.

There are many ways to be successful on Forex trading. Finding one that fits to your psychology and mindset is usually the most difficult part. The good strategy of one successful trader may not be good for you. You may have a different behavior on handling pressure, greed, and fear compare to the other traders.

So how can you find the trading strategy that is right for you? Here are some tips on this...

1) Do not give up - This usually applies to all traders. I will tell you this - If you don't like Forex trading and you are doing it just for the money, you won't make it. You should be fond of the thought of doing it every moment of the day. (But it doesn't mean that you have to do it every moment of the day hehe). In short, you have to love what you are doing, because if you don't it will be very hard. Forex success is a journey and not a one point destination. There will be huge struggles along the way. Most of the people beside you will think that you are insane for pursuing it and will tell you that it is not possible so you've got to stop it. But if you love it, you will be tough enough to survive.

2) Tough trial-and-error mindset - If you tested a method and it didn't work, it doesn't mean it won't work. That's one of the best lessons I have learned after a decade of continuous learning the Forex industry. Every method and EA strategies I developed and have tested before that failed, I set them aside for awhile. Once in a while I go back to try them again with a few tweaks. You won't believe it but the best performing Forex robot that I have right now is a combination of trading plans that I've had five years, 2 years, and a year ago.A combination of the 6-Forex-Trading-Secrets, Price Trap Strategy, etc.

You also have to be prepared for a lot of thousand times trials and errors.This is true. I've got to go through to all this failures before coming up for the best strategies I have today. Literally, more than 10,000 times of failures and program bugs before coming with my best performing Forex robot.

3) Do not limit the use of indicators on what the experts are saying about it. - You can use all indicators in any way that you can think of. Some tricks can be look crazy at first but sometimes the crazy approach is the one that you are looking for to improve your strategy; so do not underestimate any indicator, and do not reject any idea that comes into your mind. Test them all.

There are also other tips and tricks that you can learn to come up with the best strategy that fits for you. These 3 are just what I have in mind right now. :)  

1 of 4 Specific Trader's Behaviors That You Have To Be Aware Of - Deep Discussion of Trading Psychology Part 2

1 of 4 Specific Trader's Behaviors That You Have To Be Aware Of

To get in touch with other Forex Traders, please join our FB Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/FXFlight/ 

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The Bored

Impatience is the behavioral problem that is common to all traders but only few are aware of it. Most of the time, they even deny it and give different justification to protect their ego. Well, to tell you the truth, whatever the trader’s reason is, he is still IMPATIENT, period.

If it’s taking too long for a good trading setup to come up and you still trade it in spite of incomplete chart information. You are IMPATIENT regardless of any reason you have for doing it.

If you are aiming for a certain profit percentage every month and you will trade no matter what the situation of the chart or you waited for a good setup but traded with humongous uncalculated lotsizes, because you have to achieve the monthly profit percentage you are aiming for. You are IMPATIENT regardless of any reason that you have for doing it. This attitude will ruin your fund.

This behavior is triggered by greed to gain profits quickly and fear of not achieving your goal quickly.

To correct this behaviour:

Do not focus on the goal, which is to profit quickly or the monthly percentage. Focusing on the goal make you miss your path to the goal because you keep looking at the goal. You have to focus on the process on making the profit regardless of how big or small the profit will be. You have to look at the path to the goal. FOLLOW THE RULES. FOLLOW THE TRADING PLAN. Ironically, when you follow the process, that’s the time you will gain big profits, sometimes even bigger than your original goals. It will take some time to perfect this so you have to practice it. You will thank yourself in the future once you get used to it.

Deep Discussion of Trading Psychology (Part 1 of 7)

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There are many things in our life that we behave inappropriate to what is expected from us that are considered normal or correct by most people. At a certain level, we are all guilty of this. We keep on eating unhealthy food in spite of increasing weight. We smoke even if it’s bad to our health. We are still attached to money in spite of the knowledge of the Law of Attraction, even breaking some rules or promises just for the money. We judge, blame, and complain of so many things even if it’s just a waste of energy. We sin even if we pray and go to church every week. Most of us, we are not aware that we behave these ways, and we even fight for them, and formulate different alibis just to justify them.

All of these behaviour are triggered by 2 emotional traits that human have; GREED and FEAR. We are all GREEDY for happiness, money, power, acceptance, control, the need to be correct, and the need to convince people of our point of view.  On the other hand, we are also FEARFUL and doubtful of so many things. Most of the time, our irrational behaviour is caused by the mixtures of the two; GREED and FEAR.

These two behaviours are also the main problems with Forex Trading, on both manual and automated trading. Let’s go straight to the point on how we can resolve this issue. Three steps are necessary.

3 Steps On Correcting Trading Psychology

1. The first step to a successful trading is to admit that you have these two behaviours and be aware whenever they attack you. The most important of all, even if after you have done something wrong already, you just need to analyze and admit to yourself that you have done something wrong. The usual attitude we have after doing something wrong is to look for someone or something to blame. If you can not control this attitude, you will not get ahead in Forex Trading and you will not achieve the success that you are aiming for. You have to catch yourself having those behaviours and admit them once you recognize them. You have to say “I’m guilty of these”. Four specific scenarios will be given in the next series of posts, applicable on trading situations. 
2. The second step is determining how to resolve these behavioural issues that you are going through. Awareness is not enough. You’ve got to find a solution and ACT on it. Otherwise, awareness and knowledge about the situation is useless. Knowledge is not power without any appropriate ACTION. I repeat; it is “USELESS” without any action to correct them. No books, ebooks, seminars, mentors can help you, if you don’t take action. Don’t expect a positive change in your life if you are not willing to take action to change something in your life and if you are not willing to get out of the situation that you get used to, a behavioural comfort zone.
3. The third step is to PRACTICE on taking actions on the resolution. No one can change their behaviour overnight. It will take some time to overcome it. You have to practice it over and over again until it becomes a part of you. You can start with small actions, one by one, step by step, then proceed to bigger actions, until you get used to the new behaviour. It’s like programming yourself. These is why some Forex traders took years to become consistently profitable. If we don’t have the kind of human emotions that we have, after knowing a strategy and a money management method, you will surely be profitable consistently with Forex right away. Some traders resolve a part of their psychological issues by using a Forex Expert Advisor (or Forex Robot). A Forex robot, semi-automated or full-automated, can only help you partially. There are still a lot of psychological problems when using a robot.  Some of these are the following…

• If you don’t have the patient to wait for the robot to open a trade and if it’s so long for it to take a trade, you will open a manual trade while waiting. 
• If the robot got negative results after the first few trades, you will stop it. Then you will over-analyze what happened. Then, you will re-run it again. You continue this bahavior like a merry-go-round; stop-run-stop-run… and so forth. A robot is usually design to run 24/7 so that it will not miss an opportunity. If you keep stopping it from time to time, there will be a great chance that you will miss the best opportunity that it is waiting for.
• If the robot got negative results after the first few trades, you will stop it. Then you will re-optimize it again or manually change the parameter inputs before running it again. This behaviour will not just make you lose opportunity but it will lose the best set-up on a any given moment. Re-optimization is usually done only once a month or every other month. You will only do re-optimization when the current parameters are no longer doing well on backtesting.

In the next post, I will discuss the three behavioural patterns that all traders should recognize in themselves...

(This post is an exerpt from the Ebook:  Forex Trading Psychology Insights)