Psychology

I'm in a very fortunate and unique situation where I've been able to move my work to other hours allowing me to study forex every single day during NY session. I've been studying the markets for a year and a half now.. every.single.day. Like.. 8+ hours a day. minimum.
I've invested in education, I have a great understanding of how price moves.. I know what I'm looking for in terms of structure... volume.. price action. I feel really confident. But.. every single trade I place is a loser. 98% of them!! In the past if I caught a winner I could capitalize on it and make back something.. but as time goes on and my confidence goes down.. I'm losing that ability. I'm risking less.. making less.. it's getting stupid and it's driving me to breaking point.. Like this week in EU.. I wanted to sell on Tuesday.. lost. watched the whole move. My aversion to the M1 got the better of me and my strategy played out there instead of the M5 and M15 where I was looking. Wednesday I wanted to sell the mitigation.. lost again. forex factory tells me there's news on AUD and NZD last night.. tried to look for sells late night.. couldn't find something solid enough.. woke up and they've both sold off including the EU trade I wanted to sell at the start of the week. like.. this is a repeating pattern, week in.. week out.. and today is the first day where I'm feeling really f8**9in bad about it. I've invested so much money.. and I just can't click the button. What is going on!!!!
please tell me there's more people out there like this. I'm going mad.

Look, I'm not in this mood, but I was in something like this, and I can write here what worked for me in order to get out and advance.

When I was there, I thought also that I have the knowledge ( which was about true, I had SOME knowledge ) but, obviously, I couldn't translate that knowledge into profit, so in material terms that knowledge was useless. Moreover, I couldn't retrospect my trading activity without hard feelings, and my goal was just this : to integrate trading in my life in harmony, with good feelings. And my common-sense told me that it's useless to continue to invest time and energy in something that brings me a useless knowledge full of hard feelings. So I detached completely from trading for some months. No trading applications, no chart, all the money back in my bank account ... I opened myself more to other aspects of life.

After some months, I arrived by hazard on some news about gold, if I remember well. I looked on the chart offered in the news, and I visualized by the instinct how the chart would look like with my set of indicators. I realized that I have no more hard feelings about the past, only seeing it as an adventure which gave me some good lessons. And I realized that investing more and more time in learning and practicing isn't healthy: like this, I became attached to this activity, I started to believe that my knowledge is good enough and should be right all the time, and in this state of attachment my inner mental couldn't arrive at solutions to the profitability problem. So no, investing more and more time isn't good at all - there should be an equilibrium there. There is a certain amount of time which should be invested, but anything above that isn't healthy. In my new state of detachment, I started to simplify my knowledge. After that, I started to have no loosers, but no gains either - a sort of oscillation of the balance, without gains, without looses. Well, I started another period of detachment, after which I have been able to see my mistakes - mainly pshychological, like occasional overtrading, or oversizing, or revenge trades, or wrong timings on charts ... So, on short I had about four or five detachment periods until I stabilized myself.

In conclusion, for me time was the key - over-timing trading activity put me in attachment state, which affected my own perception about what I am or what I do.

Hope this helps.

Ahh thank you for this detailed reply.
You're totally right, it should be a harmonious activity. Not this trudge through mud. I really do need to get better at detaching and switching off. I believe the current global state has had a big effect.. a touch of cabin fever maybe. All the more reason to focus inward. Slow down. Zoom out and look at the bigger picture.

Is not the market. Is u. Rmb the market is always right.

It’s easy to believe that you’ve a very good understanding of the forex market when you complete your detailed study. However, the real test to learning is when you apply your knowledge to the real market. I’ve been through the same situation when nothing worked as I supposed it to. As the past results were not in your favor, you’ve now become fearful to take any move. I would suggest you to keep making small profits over time as they will build your confidence. Moreover, take this time to work on your psychology.

When trading goes well, it feels like the easiest thing in the world but when it goes badly, it's just horrible.

I like your analogy of walking through mud! You're right, when we are in harmony, it just feels "right".

It's a journey. Take some time off, as long as you need, then come back trading small, to build back your confidence.

All the best
CT

I looked on the graph presented in the news, and I pictured by the intuition how the outline would look like with my arrangement of pointers. I understood that I have not any more bad sentiments about the past, just considering it to be an undertaking which gave me some great examples. What's more, I understood that putting increasingly more time in learning and rehearsing isn't sound: like this, I became joined to this action, I began to accept that my insight is adequate and ought to be correct constantly, and in this condition of connection my internal mental couldn't show up at answers for the benefit issue. So no, contributing increasingly more time isn't great in any way - there ought to be a balance there.

equilibrum
accepting time invested will not return
find others stuff or games that will give you return ( hapiness ) , in my case im playing online games invested real money also but it gives me consistent contentment not like forex, in-short for me its the same you invested in game you will loose at the end when you stop playing..
its not easy to move on as heavy invested was put on, the alpha instict was raging ( you should not give up ), but accepting forex is just a past-time will help you move on and exel on other aspect of life, example: invest in fitness, make a child etc, life is about wasting your time the way you like it and love it.. thats the lesson i gain yrs of experience consistent loosing on the world i call EARTH , you have to love lossing... or else you wont gain any

yes there are a people like you otherwise none will lose money.

let me put this way:
you can learn how to shot, disassembly and reassembly a gun.
you can do it in dark
you will hit bullseye in every single shot.

question is; can you do it while bullets flying around you???
market is same story (obviously none will shot @ you) but losing money have the same effect - emotions.

if you have a plan that work in "demo" than stick to it.
when order is executed trading is over it will close in profit or loss.

I think our basic nature was born with us. Of course, it's different for everyone. This can never be changed.
but we can change our perception, our outlook on life.
so I think we can change anything but our basic nature.

by that I just want to say that if you are really serious about learning, you will succeed in achieving your goal.

I was in this situation as well and that's what brought me to more higher levels of trading because I always tried to get better.

When it came to a point where you can't optimize your strategy any longer, that means you have to change things since it begins to psychologically influence you (as you had written).

I can tell you one thing, trading the lower TF can kill your account and your soul, try first to trade the daily, 12H, 8H (you can get it via MT5), if you won't be profitable in the daily FT you can be 100% sure you won't be on the lower TF. 1M chart moves way more faster than the higher TF, you have to be quick with your moves and mind, otherwise you will fail.

It’s better to take a break and start everything from the beginning if nothing is working out. As you said that most of your trades are losing ones, you should be more careful in managing your risk. I would advise you to start with a small capital. When numbers are small you can better focus on the issues that are making you lose.

We have all been there. When we make money, we have good things to say about the market. But when we make losses, it feels like we are not capable of doing anything. Being humans, it’s just common to go through such emotions but those who know to what extent they should feel bad or good about their trades, conquer the market.

Hi, I have been in a similar situation. It can be a struggle to find your way out to more positive trading. It's been some time since your first post I was just wondering how your trading journey is going now?

Hey Dean, thanks for the comment. Thanks everyone for all your comments
I'm actually a funded trader now! Getting a live account has been great for development.. but it has been in drawdown since day 1.
Right now I'm using this down time to study, my prior knowledge has led me to go deeper into wick fill theory. Something else for my bag of tricks. I would say the biggest thing I've learned is;

There are a lot of techniques you have to learn to be a well rounded, capable trader. Every time you learn something new, however small it is.. it can feel like I'VE CRACKED IT!! This is when I lose the most. Stay humble and remind yourself you're probably gonna have to learn something new in the near future. Test with small position sizes on a small live account. Keep going!

How's your trading going?

I see you have progressed somewhat from the time you made this post.....

......but I recognise the pattern.

For me, I discovered a new fangled method, which seemed to work really fkn great, at first...but then didn't. But despite having extensive market experience and understanding of how price moves, I would stick to 'the system', because that is what 'they' say, we must do, right? "If the system gives you signals, then a trader MUST take the trade". Problem is, the market is far too complex for a rigid but simple algorithmic approach to reliably work over the duration.

I remember being good/profitable....

.....and then I remember being unprofitable.

What happened in between is I watched some YouTube videos on an RSI Trendline breakdown strategy, decided to adopt it, got a few winners, and ran with it, and proceeded to fucking suck, for ages and ages. Did I drop 'the strategy'? Eventually. But not before spending countless hours dicking around with it, tweaking it, back testing different parameters etc etc....I sat out a few really fucking good Big Time trades (and advised others to do the same) cos The System, did not give me my signals, when every other sense in my body is screaming at me to "BUY FKN GOLD NOW"!

I am now generally profitable again, and have a much more flexible approach to how I apply my trade entry systems. A human trader cannot compete on an algorithmic basis, with the actual computerised algos, devised by whole teams of quant pHd's. The advantage that a human trader does have over the algo's, is intuition. That can be real intuition, where the trader knows his position is good, 'just because', or it can be just having a feel for the markets from thousands of hours in front of the screens, studying and analysing them and just knowing how to act.

In nutshell, a good trader, in my view, is a discretionary trader. Sure he will have his rules of engagement or setups. But knowing when and where to apply them is largely discretionary and cannot be defined by any hard and fast binary rules and any trader who adheres to their setups too rigidly, is going to go through these periods when the market stops allowing the setup to work.

That’s definitely to do with your psychology. I’ve been through the same where I put all my attention in improving my skills and I never considered that emotions can be a hindrance. I was sure that my knowledge was good enough but still I couldn’t use it the way I should have. It was hard to realise the actual problem. At that time, it was very disturbing that the thing I thought to be important got be started from the basics once again, but I can say that it helped.

Well, as far as I concerned, lots of traders face daily issues which are connected to psychology and it's okay. We're living beings and it's impossible to imagine our life without any emotions. That's why traders from time to time have a burnout and face overtrading. However, there are some techniques which can make you much less susceptible to bad thoughts which come to your mind during trading session. For example, meditation. If you're a day trader and you open about 10 positions daily and work for 4-6 hours, then it will be enough for you to take a 5 minute break every 1-2 hour in order to meditate. It's really helpful and helpe me lots of times.

Trading the forex or other markets doesn’t have anything with pain, psychology or improvement: the only law is: if you know, you win, if not you lose! The proof: your results and abandon your thread.

You who have already lost everything and are looking for a way to get your money back, stay away from all the EA’s, indicators, softwares as Metatrader, Jigsaw, Sierra, Bookmap and all other. Understanding the options on the futures is the only thing that will help you efficiently. You ‘ll never find anything to help you on forex website.

Finally, think about that: universal access to financial markets is a huge opportunity to get rip off millions of naive people! YOU JUST GIVE LIQUIDITY TO THE MARKET MAKERS VIA YOUR BOKER !