I do believe my trading is starting to come together

After 10 months of trading (and actually making a tiny little bit of money, which seems quite a result after reading lots of other posts ) I have possibly started to crack it.

I´ve realized that I bought a lot of psychological baggage to trading which has been holding me back;

1. Believing I couldn´t take a loss. I use to be a biker and in that take risk mitigation was as close as possible to risk elimination; just one accident could kill me. But trading forex is more like climbing a greasy pole; you will slip down, you just have to move up a bit more. I tried all sorts of bizarre hedging strategies all because I couldn´t bare to see my balance reduced. Now I aggresively close losing positions; the market has told me I´m wrong so why wait to find out how wrong?

2. Scarcity thinking. As kids we all probably at some point competed with brothers/sisters/friends for the last biscuit or sweets etc. so we have it ingrained that we have to take opportunities as soon as possible. I took this into forex and every time the market moved I felt I was missing out, tempting me into breaking good entry rules. Now it´s dawned on me , the market isn´t going to ´run out`! It will always be there 24/5 with plenty more opportunities coming along. Missed that 90 pip move? Don´t sweat it, another one will come along and the law of averages means eventually you´ll catch one. It´s a never ending party, so go in and dance only when you see the really nice girl.

3. The need to innovate. In most business it pays to be different, have a USP, stand out from your competitors. But in the market you want to be doing what everyone else is doing! Why try to guess to top of a rally? Let some other mug call the top, then join the stampede on the way down. Falling market should be finding resistance? Well then let it really find it before going long. Market choppy and indecisive? Go and put the kettle on. Same goes for strategies. Found an amazing new strategy using unique indicators? Why on earth use something unique in the pack mentality of the market? The strategy I read most about is using support/resistance and price action, so that´s what I´m going to use. If it was using star signs and wind direction, I´d be using that.

Anyway, thanks to FF for the cartharsis of forum posting, and I hope this is useful to someone.

I thoroughly agree with you on this point Hertz. I went live early this year when GBP/JPY was around 129 and it was truly easy pickings. I made as many trades as I could, and the pips were flooding in.

But from June I realised and actually saw that kind of trading is really bad for the pocket, things will not always work out. I've now got a one trade in fairly high!! Wish I could cut it, but I don't have the heart and as long as it is not endangering my account let it stay there. I can only say that when I started I only decided to start with micro lots but added more than enough cash to my account so I will never wipe it.

But I'm glad it happened as it taught me a good lesson, only trade when it looks good and don't break your rules. The Forex train stops at so many stations that it is easy to get off and even get back on again later.

glad to hear things are getting better..

why dont u have a proper money management style?

this will help with your trading in future..

u can read my article on MM.. hope it helps

http://www.thegeekknows.com/2009/07/...grail-for.html

Thanks for your link. I do in fact only risk 2% per trade already although I do often close trades earlier than that. I also move my stop loss to break even as soon as possible BTW and let trades run when they do go my way. My point was that my way of thinking led my to think of ALL drawdowns as avoidable, which of course can´t be done.