Teach me, How to increase Confidence?

Looking for help here. How can I increase my confident?

I trading with simple Trendline, Price Action, Chart Pattern with combination of Stoch.

A few thing I spotted that is my most big failure in trading FX.

i) Patience - I always unable to wait for candle closed. I trading H4 TF, and I always too scared of waiting.

ii) Fear of -ve pips - When trade goes against me juz in a small -ve value, I start to thinking whether I am doing wrong. And should I goes out as it is stil in little -ve pips.

iii) Fear of +ve pips - As usual, when I place an order, I sure will set the TP and SL together (all is in game plan including where to scale out). But always, I will exit the trades when I saw some small retracement in 15m TF (Uncontrolable, bad attitude). There is no signal of reversal (Stoch showing OK, Candlestick no reversal, No news coming out), but I juz simply exit my trades bcoz some small retracement in 15m chart.

iv) Lack of confident - I always too afraid to trust my own charts.

I know there is tons of traders may found that this is also what they faced. But I hope some experienced traders could give me a small guide.

What can actualy I do in order to confident, and disciplined more.

I noticed you are from Malaysia and I hope you dont mind if I give you a little help on your grammar? I am not an English major, nor am I too good at grammar myself, but you would use "confidence" in this context. For instance, you could say "Teach me to be more confident." however, if the structure were left the same, "Teach me how to increase my confidence."

English is such a strange language. I was asked just the other day why there is "preach" and "teach" and yet "preached" and "taught". There are hundreds of examples like this comparison that dont make any sense. When you grow up with the language it is a norm, but studying it can cause such...

Anyway, I would like to comment on your post.

i) I think a reason why you may not be able to wait for the candle to close is because you are checking PA on other timeframes? If you were only looking at the 4HR TF everything would be in scale, but when you look at the 15min as stated in iii) you are seeing the surging price run away from you and stealing your profits! Obviously you then get into the trade ahead of schedule, then the price falls and ends up closing on the 4HR candle at a better entry than what you got, correct? The best way to view this is that in the long run it all will average out. The market doesnt know how you want to "trap" it, it doesnt see your trendline and push past it as fast as it can. Therefore waiting wont hurt over the course of 100 trades. After all, what is worse, waiting and getting a worse entry or getting in early and breaking the rules of your system and then the 4HR candle doesnt even close above your trendline? That is assuming to know that you trade the break of a trendline?

ii) Well, I would suggest scaling down the orders a little bit. One issue is that you may fear losing too much money just one the one trade? If it isnt about the dollars then it is your system. If you were confident in your system over the long haul then you wouldn't fear being wrong when the price goes against you ... it is just part of trading.

iii) There is always small retracement on the 15min charts Sadly it is very rare that a trade just goes your way aggressively right after entry. It would be too good to be true if it did. Dont look at the 15min chart unless it is the drawn up part of your system. If you trade trendlines off the 4HR chart just watch that, nothing else. What you could do is instead of watching the 15min go to 3 or 4 more currency pairs and watch them on the 4HR. This way you will get the more action that you seem to crave and still follow the system you want to use. If this wont work, I would give up on the 4HR system and just go to a 2HR version of the same thing.

iv) Dont trust your charts, they are just highs and lows of price that is being surged through huge banks computers ... trust yourself. If you believe that you have a system that over the long haul is good then use it. When you put in a trade and have a -92 SL and a plan to scale out at +46 and then +92 or however it is you trade, then go for it. The worst time to think about your system and whether it is good or not is when you have money actively in it. I am not a pro trader, in fact, I am very average. However, I do know that if there is any truth to trading it is that emotions make me stupid and probably others too.

I hope I didnt overdo it with my post. My number one suggestion to anyone that is worried about any part of their trading is to use smaller positions. It gives you time to stay alive and figure out who you really are and how you really want to trade. If you start with $2000 and before you really figure out how you want to do things you only have $400 left, then you are lost already. However, if you used small orders and have $1600 left, then you still can recover what you lost in a half a year - year or so and then start all over with all the gained experience.

Stay alive.

Best wishes,

StockKJay, I notice you are a from America and I hope you don't mind if I give you a little help on your grammar. I am British and therefore qualified as an expert.

Here you used the word 'overdue';

but I think you mean 'overdo' as in overdone. There were also some errors and missing punctuation marks but overall I give you a 'B' for grammar.

The content, however, was excellent.

I totally agree about reducing position size, and as your confidence builds then step up your position size as and when you feel comfortable. If you have no confidence at all, then maybe you need to execute your trading plan in demo for a while and prove to yourself that it is the best way for you to trade. Judge yourself not on the immediate performance of the days trading, but on how well you followed the trading plan and then look to the long term gains that the strategy will yield if you stick to it. If you are having a hard time believing in it then perhaps on some subconscious level you are not satisfied that it is the optimum strategy and you need to develop it further.

Keep a trading journal for a couple of months and see if that does not help.

You pretty much answered all the questions in your own post. You know what you are doing wrong. The next step is to get some discipline and stop doing it. It can be as simple or as complicated as you make it for yourself.

As Jim Horning said:

"Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment."

Also take a look at the Sun Tzu quote below and think about what that means in the context of trading.

Good luck anyway mphpopular.

Perhaps it was the knowledge that the library called yesterday about the overdue book that led to the obvious error? Actually, to be completely honest, I dont know if I have ever even written the word "overdo" before? I hope I didnt sound bitter at all, I dont wish to come across as a Grammar Nazi that parade around other forums. Thus my reason for stating I wasnt very good at grammatical precision myself. I just wanted to clarify the thread's title, I know many appreciate subtle corrections. If the correction werent made the mistake could live on.

oops!! Bill Gates's MS Word marked it in red. LOL

I was just messing with you mate. I think they call them 'eggcorns', when a word or phrase is misspelled or confused with a fusion of other words. I thought duct-tape was actually duck-tape for many a year.

You're right though, the English language is fairly ridiculous and I take my hat off to anyone who has made an effort to learn another dialect.

I was clearing my throat.

Shuld bee capitolised.

Finally normalitè ist back hier

yae; it wŭz gitin kinduh weerd,

OK - back to business.

Personal opinion.
1. I try to have stops that I can manage. If I lose, it does not bother me.
2. On my longer term trades, place it and don't stay in front of the PC. Just like you buy bonds & stocks and you just leave it there. Could be left in there for a few months or a few years.
3. Short trades, I rely on audio alert indicators to call my attention. JUST DON'T STAY IN FRONT OF THE PC TO WATCH.
4. I scalp. I scalp only one or maximum two trades per sitting. I leave the screen in between scalp sittings so that my mind is void from the data from the last move. TRADE WHAT I SEE AND NOT WHAT I THINK IT WAS HEADING TO. To stick to this discipline, I just bought two houses with farming land. I am refurnishing and renovating it myself. I will only be trading after a small task done renovating or gardening. That will limit any NEED to trade out of boredom. This and no stops are account killers.

Try out with watching and trading less. Should earn more and have a more normal life. I am fooling around in FF today due to the 50cm of snow preventing me from working.
Good luck

once u set ya TP and SL, switch off ya pc..sleep

ive always found the less im infront of my computer the more i make... i get worried and over think it if im at my comp.... set and forget TP and SL for a few hours or so or whatever tiemframe you work off...

maby even utilise semi-automated trading perhaps

I didn't want to just pop in here and post the usual cliches - (trade the trend, open and manage trades in one time-frame etc.) but at the end of the day they are simple truths, not just cliches.

I'll try and give my thoughts on each point raised.

1. Patience - I always unable to wait for candle closed. I trading H4 TF, and I always too scared of waiting.
   Until you master this you're on the road to nowhere. If you have a plan based on the price action on the 4-hr chart and your rules say that the candle must close then that's what you must do. A plan is only a plan if you know it's going to work over the long term. Anything else is guesswork and hope. Hope has no place in trading!
2. Fear of -ve pips - When trade goes against me juz in a small -ve value, I start to thinking whether I am doing wrong. And should I goes out as it is stil in little -ve pips.
   This has all the hallmarks of poor stop placement. Most newcomers have no idea why they are putting their stops where they are. This may be allied to bad money management as well. If you have set your stops correctly (based on something solid like Support/Resistance levels or prior candle lows) and you have adjusted your position size to minimise your loss to a comfortable level, such as 1% of your open equity then let the trade run, good or bad. After a long series of trades you'll know if your trade plan is correct or not. If you end up with positive expectancy (please search for that term) then you can set your stops and feel confident in your trades.
3. Fear of +ve pips - As usual, when I place an order, I sure will set the TP and SL together (all is in game plan including where to scale out). But always, I will exit the trades when I saw some small retracement in 15m TF (Uncontrolable, bad attitude). There is no signal of reversal (Stoch showing OK, Candlestick no reversal, No news coming out), but I juz simply exit my trades bcoz some small retracement in 15m chart.
   The answer to this is much the same as the answer to #2. Because you aren't comfortable with your stops you can't be comfortable with your wins. Again, trade the one time-frame until you have mastered it. The movements on the 4-hr Stochs will be different to the ones on the 15-min Stochs so ignore those lower TF twitches. If your 4-hr Stochs and your 4-hr candle patterns give real cause for concern then tighten your stops, but let the trade run. Going down to lower TFs will always scare you out of a longer TF trade, unless you have a lot of screen time behind you. In time you will look to see if there are opportunities to add in to your winning position. But that's all in the future.
4. Lack of confident - I always too afraid to trust my own charts.
   Why? If you are using one of the well-established methods from this forum then go back and re-read all the posts and ask more questions if you can't find the answers.

Now I'll trot out the cliches.

1. Trade the trend - there is always one pair that is in some sort of trend. Look at the higher TFs and have a clear idea of what direction it's going in. If it's not clear at a quick glance, move on to the next pair. Avoid trading counter-trend trades at this stage and you'll start to see immediate improvements. If a pair is in an obvious down-trend then wait till it retraces to a Resistance area and then look for your signals to go short again. If you try to trade against the dominant trend you need to be quick and be ready to close out early. But again, wait till your signals tell you that the run is over. If you are trading with the trend there is a better chance that small retracements are simple profit-taking by smaller traders and the move will continue after taking a small breather.
2. Take some time to fully understand Support and Resistance. Look at a Daily chart and mark areas where price has reversed before. Once you scroll out a bit these become easier to see with practice. Alternatively, set some horizontal lines at round numbers (X.0000 - X.1000 etc) and see how price respects them most of the time. These areas are only potential Support and Resistance areas but combined with your other indicators can guide you on the likely direction price may take after arriving there. For example, if price is in an up-trend and has retraced to a Support line then you wait for your signals to line up to show if the up-trend will resume from that point. If your signals are unclear then you wait. End of story.
3. Look into your Money Management. If you don't feel you can handle the emotions when slipping into a -ve situation during a trade it seems reasonable to assume you are over-leveraged. Search for the term 'True Leverage' and understand the difference between this and 'Broker Leverage'.

There's a thousand things I've probably missed out on but these points should get you started.

Good luck and keep the faith. I've been where you are today and I'm still here, still learning but I'm comfortable with what I do now.

Thanks for all the advice. That is really helping me much. Re-read again and again right this moment.

It all boils down to trading psychology, scaling down your positions and going for a run are practical methods to help you keep your mind away but you must begin by recognizing that every trade you take has a random outcome and formulate a different belief of the market.

If the outcome of every trade is random, the market is random. Therefore, you will have no opinion, or rather no need for an opinion or expectation of how price will move. When you have no expectation or opinion, when you no longer try to hang on to a belief that price will move in a certain direction you predicted since the market has a random outcome, there will be no disappointment, and ultimately, no fear. Confidence will naturally build up and you will execute your trades based only on your trading rules.

This is a difficult concept to come to terms with and it all boils down to your understanding of mathematical statistics and expectancy. A good analogy will be the operations of a casino. Every card dealt in a game of poker has a random outcome, as with a die throw. But the casino is able to ultilise limitations on betting positions or other factors to turn the expectancy of the winnings in their favour. Such is the same as your trading. Even though the market is random, and each outcome of ur trade is random, but if your trading plan has a positive expectancy over a large number of trades, you will be profitable.

Just my 2 cents. And btw, these concepts are what I have learnt from the book "Trading in the zone" by Mark Douglas. I was struggling with what you are going through now a couple of months ago and I could not have been more thankful to have come across that book. My trading has improved tremendously as I begin to take the fear out of my trading... and it began by changing my view of trading.

Should have mentioned it myself. This book turned me around as well .

I heard someone say this a while ago, and whilst it was certainly tongue in cheek there are some useful parallels for trading:


You need to be the dog for yourself, when you stray and get creative with the system then give yourself a good kick up the ass, punch yourself in the face, poke yourself in the eye, whatever. If you do not write it down and learn from it, then the self-preservation instincts and natural response to avoid psychological pain will mean you find it very difficult to learn from your mistakes. When it is in black and white and you have been truly honest with yourself, it eventually gets harder not to see the truth of it.

It gets a lot easier when you believe that the control system (ie your strategy) will do the job,. This can only come through really proving it to yourself. Nobody can instill this confidence in anybody else, these personal beliefs through observation over a period of time and hard work must become a part of your character. Of course, it is a huge catch 22 in that you must have some success to have the confidence in the strategy, but the success of the strategy is also a function of the confidence in it.

I have confidence in trade when i am mechanical in entry and exit, and also i cover my stop loss when i'm in profit. I also wrote down mistakes and tweak my system as to not let same mistake happen again.

Remedy for failure. Had been through there,