Doctor “My arm hurts as I do this”, as he quickly rotates his arm at the shoulder. The doctor quickly and forcefully replies “then don’t do that.”
Below you find a list of 10 mistakes new traders make that are totally avoidable should you take my advice and don’t do them.
- Trade with scared or timid money.
- Trade without a written detailed trading plan.
- Trade without proper education and adequate study.
- Trade using lagging indicators as a basic for your trading system.
- Trade “live” before a consistent winning percentage is achieved in a “live demo”.
- Trade based on confidence secured by paying large sums of money to gain expertise.
- Trade lacking understanding of your brokers trading platform.
- Trade with little to no understanding of margin and leverage.
- Trade more than one class of instruments at the beginning.
- Trade with a black box or a for pay call service.
I was asked to attend with a young college friend, a special 1/2 day seminar that was to introduce Forex trading basics. Turns out to be nothing more than a captive 4 hour subtle but highly effective sales presentation that led me to have an opportunity to secure the necessary training from these reputable people for the nominal sum from between $9950 and $47,500 and these were today only prices. My young friend caught in the excitement and visuals handed over credit cards to secure a midlevel package. Me, well after a was accused of simply being to “scared” to invest in my future was escorted from the offices as being disruptive to their seminar after suggesting that there had been 23 minutes of information and 210 minutes of commercial and sales pitch.
They did not know I was already a successful trader with a rather long history of success. The young fellow after about 3 months contacted me to suggest he had blown his account and asked if I would help him. Today that young man is successfully studying Forex trading as a self directed autonomous learner. He has programmed “away his demons”. He will be trading live I predict in about a year.
He is researching why he should never do these ten things. He researches one topic each week and presents a two to three page written response. Every other week he reads a book from a list of top quality trader’s outlets that I provide and he selects.
How does this help you avoid these mistakes? Well here is my recommendation to you. Do what I told my young friend to do. Research why these actions should be avoided. If you submit the written reports to me at my home I will gladly review them and send you a list of great authors who know trading.
Now before you ask “why would I do this” I will answer because if this article is read by 1000 people 1 perhaps 2 will submit. You see most people do not have the essential elements that allow them to become successful traders. They are rarely disciplined, possessed with great patience, and willing to take a long road home.
Closing this brief list is with a bright hope.
There are three locations of free education that are worthy of your time. This is not by any means an all inclusive list but a great set of choices for investigation. Trading forums and education platforms, and free e-books. Do not use any service that has a profit motive. Reputable on line educators exist that have a Google type revenue structure where the consumer pays nothing and advertisers pay to have the educators students eyeballs on their ads daily. Three such services are Babypips.com, forexfactory.com and Acegazette.com. Each has advantages and disadvantages. Since I am not getting any financial windfall here I will remain like the father with three lovely daughters who simply states. “I think they are all wonderful” Why not get married to one and see how she fits.
