Trading can be an addicting thing, both in a good way but also in quite a negative way, it can be in your head no matter what you are doing and you can wake up in the middle of the night wanting to trade, these are signs that may be trading and forex is taking up just a little too much of your life.
This is quite a common thing, especially for newer traders, so we are going to look at ways that you can tell that trading is taking over your life.
You wake up thinking of trading.
When you wake up in the morning, what do you normally think about, it is normally about needing to use the toilet or something that you have coming up in the day or over the next few days. If you suddenly start waking up and are constantly thinking about the markets, what you can trade, or what a certain currency value may be, then you’re probably getting a little addicted to trading. What is even worse is if you manage to wake up in the middle of the night, for no other reason than to think about trading, not a great sign and not something you will be thanking your brain for.
You dream of trading.
So waking up thinking about trading is bad enough, but when trading starts to invade your dreams too, you know that things may be going a bit too far. You will dream of wins, you will dream of losses and you will dream of different ways that you are able to alter your trading plan and strategy to be a little more successful. When it gets really bad, you may well begin to dream of trading pretty much every night, this is the stage where you need to find something else to think about, surely it can’t be that healthy to think about it every time you dram, but then again, at least it means you are interested and it is actually something that you enjoy. Dreams can also give you an unconscious view of how you are actually feeling about your trading at that point in time.
You start to check the financial sections of a newspaper.
If you are a newspaper reader, there is probably a section of it that just makes you roll your eyes, for most that would be the financial section if you have no interest in it, it doesn’t really mean much, it’s just a bunch of numbers and statistics or news about things that really have no effect on your life. Now that you trade though, you are finding yourself looking through that section for things of significance, things that could give you an idea of what you could be trading next. It still might not be interesting to you, but you will constantly find yourself checking it out whenever you have a newspaper in your hand.
You take note of the exchange rate in a currency exchange shop windows.
No doubt you have walked past hundreds of currency exchange shops, you know the ones on the high street allowing you to change your funds from one currency to another. They always have an electronic board pointing out that shows you the currency exchange rate that they are offering, most of the time you take no notice of it whatsoever, but now that you’re a trader, you take note of the exchange rates being offered. Of course, they aren’t the most accurate considering the shops are adding on quite a hefty spread in order for them to make any money, but you still take note of anything that may look out of the ordinary and can use that to research things once home.
You always think of trading.
The last time you watched a film, what were you thinking of? Probably the film right? Well not anymore, now you will be thinking about trading and thinking about trading no matter what you are doing. Watching a film, cooking dinner, washing the car, no matter what you are doing you will be thinking about what your next trade could be or that you hope that the markets will begin to turn soon. It will begin to creep into your thoughts no matter what you are doing, it can be a little annoying at times, especially when the thoughts just won’t go away. You will need to try and distract yourself with something, but that is far easier said than done.
You overthink your trades.
This one is actually about the trading part of trading when you start out, you probably take a while to place your trades, just because you are being so careful. Then you get a bit quicker at it and each trade only takes a minute or so. What can then start to happen is that you get to learn a lot more in-depth things about trading, and so you start to think a lot more about your trades, you may have the perfect setup but then you think of something and so want to check it out. This can add a lot of additional times
You talk to your friends about trading.
Let’s be honest, the majority of your friends have no interest in trading and the majority of them probably don’t know anything about it either. So now that you have learned a bit and have some experience, it is natural to want to talk to people about it, unfortunately, your friends are not the people to be talking to. They have no interest, so anything you say will go right over their head and it could also create a few awkward periods of silence here and there. You should stick to talking to them about things you all have in common, keep the trading talk to those that actually trade, although we don’t blame you if you keep on trying.
You use your trading rules in other things you do.
When you started trading, you would have created a trading plan and a trading strategy, this would have included a number of different rules. When you have been trading for a while, those rules would have been cemented into your mind, so much so that you start to implement those same rules into different aspects of your life. It can make your decisions a little slower to make and could also have absolutely nothing to do with the decision or choice that is being made. You just seem to naturally think of the same rules that have been burned into the back of your mind.
So those are a few of the things that can show you that trading may well be taking over your life. It is natural to have these thoughts and occurrences when you are really into something, learning new things and generally just enjoy doing something. So if trading is getting a grip on your life, don’t fret, just try and limit the amount of it that you are thinking of.
