newbie rant... and 'experience' share
I've also made some of your mistakes and was almost close on opening a live account because I've also seen some posts of people stating that is better to go live from the beginning. Thank god I didn't do it. I've opened like 3 demo accounts already. Haven't seemed to gather my trading plan yet, however I've improved since I began. I'm not on a hurry to go live yet, just to practice and get all the possible knowledge from the market and forex world.
There are too many others mistakes we couldn’t avoid it. Even the list could be too long, now, thanks for your post, can be good list to avoid some mistakes. I want to add another mistake, following feelings, that’s a bad mistake for everyone, don’t feel good or bad to trade, just see the market and trade depends of the market, that’s it, you don’t need to feel lucky or bad lucky or whatever, you just have to understand Fx and get in the market, nothing else to do.
Well trading without emotions, it's kind of hard. I mean when you sit in front of your pc to trade you can't just vanish emotions away. What is recommended, as far as I've read, is to trade when you're feeling down. Because that may have some negative effects on your analysis and on your trades of course. But I've read that people state that the best moment to trade is when you're full of energy and happy. That way you're encouraged to analyze more the market and be aware of the risks and place a better trade.
Thanks to post that in here, I agree with Reggie59 emotions are not help for trading, not even when someone is trading of real.
I ALSO made some mistakes, those were to disappointed to me, because I thought I was a bad trader, but after so many days trying, I knew could do the best everyday learning.
My 2 cents.
You are not the only one who ended like that, don't dispair. Beginners at first don't fail. There is a fairly known weird advantage all beginners have on expert chartist traders : Beginner luck. Unfortunately at some point they loose all their capital, sometimes in one shot.
I have followed up numerous retail traders and I have found to my surprise that at first they make a LOT of money, then they start overanalyzing the market by stockpiling hundreds of indictators, and this where comes the big clash.
My humble advice would be:
When your trading style fits and you start by winning money, just keep doing it the way you started with, dont bother trying to do better.
This means basically that you are able to trade naked charts because you have the feeling of the market, like a pianist or a guitarist can feel a song.
Correct me if I am wrong:
When on demo you trading based on your feeling
When you switched to live you started massing up charts and overanalyzing them ?
My advice would be to rely on your intuition first (this requires from you to stick at your screen and monitor price action fore some time before inputting a trade) and always work with a medium to large stop (at least 20 pips).
Hope that helps and good luck with your trading.
This is a great post, even no-beginner people can learn too much about this, cause when you start a new strategy or with a new demo, you can be a kind of beginner.
For me it was a little bit different. I have been trading for a few months now and I haven't been able to perform price action on my strategy. I don't know whether is fear or maybe I feel more comfortable using indicators. However I find pretty helpful your 2 cents I guess you get to develop a guts instinct to make your trades more profitable. I'm working on it. 
I have to say it, Great post!!! I think you have to write more something about this, I like so much. I keep in mind this post.
For me every single mistake has been a great lesson. If I were trading with real money up to this point I guess I would be selling my house. Hopefully I won't be making the same mistakes when I go live.
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hi all. forex n00b here.
been trading like 2 months and lost 50% my capital today.
i began live trading almost immediately after double /tripling my demo account in a month (which is easy since i'd have no problem putting an INSANE 10/30% stake on a single trade)
now that i look back at it, i shouldn't be asking what i did wrong. because we all knew the answers. but apparently the mistakes doesn't seems obvious when i was entering the trade (whisper: just this one time. followed by: WTF?!) i'm refering to 'predicting reversals', high stakes, revenge trading domino effect here
so thats mistake number 1: lack of trading discipline & money management
as for number 2: inability to stick to a trading plan.
well, being a newbie i cant resist the temptation of trading on all sorts of strategy, profit loss ratio, indicators .... its a circus (but what do u expect? i'm hungry for knowledge)
for this, i had to thank/blame the internet with its information and dis-information overload. i'm talking about 1 site suggesting a 50/50 profit loss ratio, while another site argues why it should be 1/2.5 instead. thats just the basic, not yet the 'best indicator' camps with its parameter configuration and different time scales 'debates'
ultimately it about finding the best strategy FOR YOU.
mistake number 3: borrowing money. nuff said. i dont wanna talk about it.
off to number 4 then: setting the wrong expectations. i actually believed i could make 100% capital returns in 1 month trading... (because my training instructor told me so). thinking i could quit my day job in 1 month time.
what really got me rushing into live trading was over an article (online article, sigh) that states the fastest way to learn is always from 'the real thing'... not theories (hey, it applies to swimming, driving, bowling rite?)
and... i still believe in that statement. that is if i could swallow the fact that learning does not necessary mean 'winning'. the same way u'd get hurt the 1st time u learn to ride a bike.
when learning means loosing a few grands of borrowed money. its hurts... a lot. 10 lots... ok, lets not get carried away
i'm at a crossroad, joined this forum in hope of greater wisdom from all u pips. err... peeps... as in you people. *hick*
no i'm not drunk but probably could use one right about now.
i've decided to give it a few months rest from live trading, but will trade a demo acc, for a couple of hours on daily basis... using a simple EMA-Bollinger defensive trading strategy with daily targets.
for a 1st post/rant i've just 1 question: i'm not asking for 'the perfect ratio' just asking if the idea of trading intraday on 5M/1M timeframe with 1/2.5 profit loss target is a recipe for disaster? cos currently for me at least it seems like the only thing that 'worked'.