What was your biggest Forex mistake ?

Some one once said "i dont make mistakes,because i learn from others", smug git,but i''d like to know what your single biggest mistake or oversight was when you started forex trading.
It might give me and other noobs something to think about ,and it would be very valuable in pointing us in the right direction

Regards Alb.

Not setting a stop loss/limit order immediately upon opening a trade. I went into the kitchen to get a snack and suddenly the lights went out (a car wreck down the road took out a power line). By the time they came back on, price had moved from my buy price up over 50 pips, down over 30 pips and was right back at breakeven. The trade wound up being profitable, but the anxiety my imagination put me through during that time was terrible!!

Now, no matter what, I set a limit and stop loss as soon as the trade opens. Granted, the stop loss is typically 100-150 pips as a worst-case scenario, but it is always there. There is no worse feeling than being without power/internet in a trade with no boundaries, especially trading GBP/JPY!!

forgot about a news release, and got into what I thought was a great long setup on gbpjpy and no sooner had I clicked the buy button price dropped 90 pips and proceeded to drop another 70, so I am down 160 pips, and had didn't have the opportunity to even get my standard 30 pip sl in place. Luckily price typically retraces after huge drops like that and I got out of the trade in profit. Certainly a nerve wracking event when your biggest loss has never been over 30 pips.

My biggest mistake so far was trading on NFP friday. I saw the EU shooting up like a rocket, like a fool i went and bought and i was down almost 50 pips in about 90 secs. i felt like trash, but i was only 2 months into forex. Its a good thing i learned my mistake early.

Cheers

Yea, stay away from paid services, I joined one when I first started trading and soon realize most if not ALL the "forex" information can be found in books libraries, internet, schools, etc...for FREE...you just need to "DO THE HOMEWORK" yourself. You will realize this as you continue on your quest.

best

best

Not completely understanding the market before risking my own hard earned money.

Would you like a list, which I would try to put in order, from the worst to the least worst?

buying lots of stupid $97 ebooks

Used wrong fund allocation proportion among strategies.

Thinking you know what you're doing when in reality you don't. I personally think the longer you spend in front of charts and get comfortable with your pairs, the better the trade you'll become.

I had no idea what was going on when I first started but after a few months I'm settling in and slowly learning the characteristics of the pairs I trade.

starting!

max

How long have you being trading forex smikester ?,and how would you rate yourself now ? i.e,are you making money ?

Biggest mistake: pushing the sell button instead of the buy button during a massive move up. too busy lol.

I was playing the news two years ago with an FOMC announcement
-- there was a lot of talk about a rate cut and I was ready to buy
both the euro and the pound for a quick profit...with the intention
of immediately going short once it went back down.

(Note the assumption in italics. It was based on erroneous information,
or just plain self-delusion.)


I bought euros and pounds just a split second before
the announcement was made. There was an FRB rate cut.
Instantly the two currencies leaped skyward. I was elated at
my quick profit and once my long orders were closed I tried
to place my sell orders as fast as I could...


...But the EUR/USD and the GBP/USD were not coming down.
The prices spiked up and down like a seismograph, and I got in
at the bottom of what looked like a consolidation level. But the
pound and the euro were still going up. They were finding new
ranges with new support/resistance levels; they were not
"returning to normal", as it were. My sell orders quickly ate up
all the profits I had made literally ten minutes before and I closed
at a loss for the day.

when you enter or exit when you shouldn't
when you don't enter or exit when you should

... no, there is no biggest mistake, every day you could make a bigger mistake than before, there are infinite possibilities to make a mistake, its like a chart, a mistake chart, it could go up, it could go down and stay down for years, then it could break out and make new highs every day. so watch your personal mistake chart.

Not all are specifically Forex:

1. Believing that there is a holy grail (reading Market Wizards should dispel this. the secret is to find a method what works for yourself).

2. Not understanding that risk management and position sizing are the most important critical success factor.

3. Not mastering your own psychology.

........ wasting my first two years testing dozens of turn-key (mainly indicator based) systems, and hopping from system to system immediately I found that one didn't meet my expectations of profitability.

My current view is that there is no substitute for spending hours watching charts, and getting a feel for how price moves through different areas, for different pairs, at different times of the day....... relative to abstracts like trend, S/R, momentum, volatility, etc. Then identify elements of patterned behavior, and devise a system of entries and exits to exploit those patterns. Indicators, line studies, candle shapes, etc are nothing more than tools, useful only in that they summarize price behavior in a way that makes the task of identifying profitable patterns easier.

As a programmer, I started out looking for quant-like solutions, but I've found that my approach has become progressively more discretionary. I'm not saying that quant trading can't be profitable; in fact, my ultimate goal is to take the key aspects of my eventual strategy, reduce them to a mathematical model in so far as it is feasible, and write an EA to automate the process.

Another mistake that I made was to take to heart too much of what I read in forums, instead of having the confidence to progress my own ideas, however contrary to mainstream views and cliches they might have seemed. I've come to realize that there are a million possible approaches to trading, and that for every view expressed on a forum, there will always be a contradictory one posted somewhere else.

For me, the only real way to conquer the psychology aspect is through having a comprehensive feel for what is more likely, or less likely, to happen. Maintaining discipline is all about having confidence in what one is doing, and confidence is the product of knowledge and experience.

Just my 2c worth.

I made a ton of pips in the 2 weeks of demo and then went live. First trade was a nice 50 pip winner. Figured I could take this kind of profit any time I wanted. So I took a breather and of course never repeated those kind of results again. I struggled to maintain break even. Then I knew this was going to require lots of effort.

Failing to understand losses as part of the business, failing to acknowledge that this is a business and therefore needs a solid plan, and thinking like most still do, that they can turn there measly capital that is overleveraged into more money than they can count in less than 1 year (some think they can do it every week).

Trading is more than just trading, anyone can execute a few orders and get a few bucks and think to themselves that they now qualify as trader but in reality they are just a lucky fool. Time sorts out the traders from the fools.

Razor

My biggest Forex Mistakes, were to trade with USA/NFA brokers, 4 of them to be exact.

NFA brokers have rules enabling them to remove and/or modify trades in their favor by changing the rates it was opened/closed, by instituting additional fees retroactive to trades made weeks ago, by deleting positions claiming/accusing i/trader deleted the trade 30 seconds after the trade closed on TP (with profit)...