Post your mistake here - warn others

My biggest mistake was having opened trades before and during a significant economic announcement on one side of the symbol.

Even if you're a technical analyst who rejects fundamentals, you should be very wary about exposing yourself when people like Ben Bernanke are about to open their mouths.

Sometimes that news is unannounced, but for all the recurring news distribution I use the currency meter from newsprofiteer.com It is free and he posts the major news announcements of the day, the time of the release, expectation, and the actual. It also includes a 5 minute alarm. He will also send you emails with his analysis of that day's upcoming news releases. It works outside mt4 in its own window on your computer. He also has a few tutorial videos should you desire to use the meter for trading.

For me, it frees me up from having to read, list, sort, or worry about fundamentals and just concentrate on all the knee jerk reactions.

I'm not getting very far on pure technical analysis, so I'm trying to add fundamental analysis to my skill set.

I've made a number of mistakes but my biggest one is definitely opening trades during being economic announcement and then opening more in a panic in an attempt to compensate for the first mistake.

The holidays are killing because I had some fixed monthly profit goal in mind and there's several days of no trading so I felt all this pressure to make up for those days and over traded. And the trades all mostly went bad. I wanted some extra money to pay off some christmas bills etc.

I made mistakes 2, 3, 7, 8, 9. I know better than this. I was doing so well too and then I doubled my position sizes, messed around with my stop losses and got rid of them. I added to my losing position. I did everything because I started panicking and that's really not the way to go.

I'm going to go back to my original plan and reduce my position size back to what it was before. I'm writing all these things down so I don't do it again next month.

Having weekly and monthly profit target goals are a bad idea. There's so much pressure to hit them. So my advice is don't tell yourself that I have to hit a certain percentage profit or a monetary amount or that I need to make $4,000 or whatever amount it is because you "NEED" that money to withdraw. That's a bad idea. Have some kind of savings cushion and don't quit your full time job until you have enough capital and savings and you know what you are doing.

Not really a mistake but definitely a warning message to pass around.

Beware of trading mentors who show their trading performance through

1) Microsoft word, excel, powerpoint, their own website etc
2) Screenshots of their trading profits, testimonials etc

Why? Because they can be easily manipulated to fool you.

Instead ask for their trading performance over the last 6 - 12 months on a month by month basis. It can be in the form of

1) 3rd part website like myfxbook for forex trading
2) Monthly brokerage statements for stock/cfd trading

These are harder to manipulate and give you a good gauge of their trading method.
Do be cautious with your hard earned money because trading courses don't come cheap.

fartist

DO not rely on indicators. The moment I start to think about trading without indicators, my trading improves. If you youtube some old videos on forex trading, you will be surprised that there are no charts at all - just a quote machine. Now, you have to find out how you can trade without indicators. This will be the best starting point for your trading journey.

I would have to say that my biggest mistake was not using the demo accounts before. I know that I talk about them a lot on here, but it's very important because they can really help you if you know how to use them. They really help because they can give you the help that you need when you're first learning. But something that's not good is replying on it too much because the results achieved with a demo account, mostly because such achievements are emotion-free. Since you don't risk real money in a Forex demo account, even with the best Forex trading platform, your results won't be reflective of what you could achieve under similar circumstances with a live trading account. That is why I was always so careful when I got this advice from someone else. I want to make sure that I'm making a profit, not losing money.

I think the 2 biggest mistakes for me and my other friends who are full time traders is

1. Risk management (this applies to everyone) - I am still trying to refine this

and

2. Sitting on your hands and not taking a trade for the sole purpose of trying to make money every instance, but the this is the opposite for some people who don't take enough trades even though their strategy or order has triggered

My mistakes:

1. Reading others' opinions on FF
2. Taking notice of so-called professional opinions and analysis
3. Getting hung up on news announcements
4. Believing you have to follow a system.

Now I do none of that

Here are the things I've learned from what little experience I have.
Stick to your plan. Be patient and Don't trade in panic.

getting into forex ...

When I thought I could make a living off forex rather than buy a new car.

According to me margin levels should never be less that 2200% unless ur using a startegy with a very high winning percentage

My biggest enemy is my own ego and it makes me do the biggest mistake for my trading activities : Revenge an Order

My recommendation : Better to close your platform when you got yourself in an uncontrollable ego, take a break for few hours (combine it with a cup of green tea, it works for me ).

Dont think you are smart and know everything when you close your first ever trade with profit.

Sure! Pride and overconfidence filled yourself after it, and that's a bad habit for new traders.

My biggest mistake is thinking that demo and live trading behave the same way. I was so successful when I was trading for the first time with a demo account, and then I switched to the live thing - it was such a dissapointment for me. So my advice here would be: starting with the live trading, don't spend a lot of money at the beginning; just learn and get used.

My ten grotesque mistakes ...

When I first started off, I did everything wrong that one can possibly do wrong - and more too: things that other people wouldn't even have found ways of doing wrong.

(In my defence, (a) I was only 14 when I started the learning-process, and although I had expert tuition available, my "expert tutor" felt that learning things the hard way, given the lack of hurry as I was under-age for trading a real account for the next 4 years anyway, would be beneficial for me in the long run; and (b) statistics and probability can certainly be very counter-intuitive!).

This list won't be exclusive or exhaustive, but the major mistakes I made included the following ...

(i) Underestimating the frequency and scale of black swans

(ii) Underestimating dealing-costs and slippage

(iii) Greatly overestimating what I could achieve quickly while also greatly underestimating what I could achieve gradually (almost everyone does that, don't they?)

(iv) Imagining that web-based "information" was equal in overall quality to that found in peer-reviewed publications from orthodox, mainstream, respected, professional sources

(v) Not appreciating that in a field of endeavour with overall success-rates as low as those in forex-trading, the overall "consensus of opinion" among people discussing it online was always likely to be a fairly deeply mistaken/misguided one

(vi) Not knowing how to prove that a proposed system had a genuine "edge" (net positive expectation)

(vii) Imagining that high win-rate systems were more likely to be profitable overall than lower win-rate systems (ouch)

(viii) Confusing "entry methods" with "trading systems"

And of course the two big ones ...

(ix) Having a hugely distorted perception of "the things that add up to successful trading": specifically, I thought that "knowing when to enter a trade" was really what mattered, and I had no idea at all that trading is about 60% money-management (including position-sizing), 30% psychology, 8% trade-management (including stop-losses and exits) and only 2% entries

(x) Imagining that price-derived "indicators", which appear instinctively easier to understand and monitor, can themselves give valid trading signals or information equivalently valid to that derived from learning to study and interpret the prices themselves.

great

my mistake was that i thought there are systems that work and that does not. also did not know anything about the art of losing - how to deal with the losses and concentrated only on winning.