When I first learnt to trade, I had no clue what I was getting myself into. As I was searching the internet for the wide range of forex material available, I noticed two main things. The first one was 'Forex is the hardest easiest money you will make' and that 'Over 90% of Forex traders fail.'
Well, now, as I've been trading forex for some time now and mentoring people how to trade, I realised the 3 biggest mistakes I made while learning to trade.
1. Overtrading
I would jump on the charts at the London open, do my analysis on 6-8+ pairs and place multiple trades at once. This happened every time I jumped on the charts, I ALWAYS thought there was a trade to be taken. I remember feeling like a real professional at the time, watching my multiple positions tick up into profit but eventually hitting my SL and closing me out, losing 2-3% a night.
Obviously just starting out, my trading psychology wasn't the best and this often resulted in emotional trading. I would open up bigger positions to make up for my losses, which often resulted in even greater losses. One trade, I lost 2k in a matter of minutes which was 40% of my account at the time.
Do I regret any of this? Absolutely not. This helped me to build the current mindset that I have today. When these BIG mistakes occur, you have to remember that you are in this for the long haul. I would tell myself that 2k will be nothing when I am trading a 100k account in the future. LEARN from your mistakes, do not make them again, and then move on.
I found journaling and back testing EVERY trade I took to greatly help this problem of overtrading as the more trades I took, the longer I would be spending on the weekends studying all my trades.
2. Not understanding the importance of Risk/Reward and Risk management
I didn't understand how important risk reward ratios were when I first started trading. My mentor would always tell me not to take any trades that were less than a 1:2.5 RR but I struggled to find these trades as I was always just taking random trades when I hopped on the charts.
Once I finally understood, through experience, that trading is a game of probabilities and to have an edge over the market and therefore gradually grow your account, you need to ensure you are taking trades with a good RR. I would be watching the charts and when price was coming close to my entry price, I would execute a buy/sell, not realising that the few pip difference made a massive difference to my RR. I found the use of pending orders to help this issue greatly as it removed my fear of missing a trade and executing at a worst price.
3. Trading multiple pairs
As I mentioned before, I would hop on the charts and analyse 6-8 pairs to see if there were any trades to take. If no trades grabbed my attention, I would continue to skim all 6-8 pairs until I forced a trade to come to my attention.
Trading multiple pairs was terrible for my trading at the beginning. I always assumed that all pairs have the same qualities and move the same but how wrong I was. Reducing the number of pairs that I traded to only 1-2 helped my trading greatly. You notice certain qualities that each individual trade has, such as EURUSD not pulling back as much as GBPJPY, for example. You learn the language of the pair and how it may react at certain S/R or to certain news.
