Trader Psychology

As they say, trading is 90 percent Pyschological.
I agree 110 percent with that statement.
I would like to share my experience with you all, and I am looking for some feedback. I am interested if my current trader psychology is similar to other beginners.


It has been 2 weeks since I started researching forex.
I despise paper trading, I feel that one can learn the most if real money is risked. Naturally I began small with $25,000. So 1 PIP = $2.5.
I have $5650 in my portfolio, of which $5000 is in an equity.

I am currently testing the 4hr trading system posted by Philip. It uses MACD signals. I feel comfortable placing 50 pip stops with this system.

Anyways the plan was to make a trade at night, place my stop, go to bed, and see what happens in the morning.
However. I am getting some anxiety, and stress. Althought I planned to check only a few times a day, I CANNOT remove my eyes from the monitor.
For example I placed an order last night, long EUR. I didn't go to bed untill 3 AM and I got up at 9 am to watch my order. I didn't sleep very well either.

I feel that I need more confidence. And that my current anxiety/stress is a result of my inexeperience. (only two trades)

I want FOREX to be on the BACK of my mind. However I think about it alot during the day. I hope through time my desired trading psychology will develop as it did with trading equities. (I experience 100 times LESS stress in Stock market trading, even though I am risking the Same amount of money).

Anyways I thought I would tell you guys about my experience, and I would like to hear about yours, did you experience similar negative mental states when first startingt out?

I feel this is the most important part of trading, no point in trading if it's going to create a large amount of stress in ones life.

Cheers.

-Can Yorgancioglu

Mate your solution to your stress could be this. Instead of trading 4hr charts, try weekly or daily charts. That may help take the stress away. This way you can check your chart once daily, or once weekly.

All the best in your trading

I mean this in the nicest possible way, but your anxious because you know you have no idea what you’re doing. More than likely you are not utilizing the same skillset that you use for trading stocks and as a result lack the confidence in your decisions.

Your also way over leveraged for your experience/capital base. Even if you had all of your capital in a forex account, you would still be risking over 2% on a single trade. With the $650 you have liquid, your risking around 19% on 1 random thought you have about price movement.

You need to dramatically cut back your risk per trade until you have a clearly defined system that you feel confident about. Even if you don't want to play demo games, you should still learn the craft with an insignificant amount of real money. I would take your $650 or whatever your committing to forex and setup an account at Oanda. They allow you to trade in increments of $1 or $0.0001/pip. Read the threads in the beginner section about money management and trade with 0.5% of your account at risk per trade. Once you have a few profitable months and have a better grasp of what is going on, you can bump up your risk to 1-2%.

If your thinking the forex is going to make you rich over night, better just quit while your ahead. You would have much more fun (and for longer) playing poker or the lotto.

Luck be with you.

First up, welcome .
Darkstar has summed it up as well as possible. I would take it maybe one step further. Take the fund and divide into 3 tranches. Stick the 1st tranche into Oanda, or any of the borkers allowing micro-lots (0.01 or less). and play your time out with that whilst learning what this FX is all about. From other stuff I read, it's not a natural prgression moving from equities to FX, so any previous experience may not sustain you in the short-term. If the 1st tranche gets blown out, re-fund with the 2nd tranche, etc.....
If you stick to the longer time frames, and learn proper Money Management, as DS says, you'll last long enough to get over the first of many hurdles.
Don't be afraid to ask any question in FF, we are all here to help you survive.