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Forex Basics

Is Smartphone Trading A Waste of Your Time?

Whether we like it or not, the issue of mobility is something that is very present. Whether checking your emails or the latest Facebook post on your smartphone, being able to join the network with a mobile device is something that grows in popularity every day. But this doesn’t stop at e-mails and Facebook. Many of the forex brokers offer mobile connections to operate in some way and promote it as an advantage. But is it really?

It is true that it might be convenient to have the ability to check your positions and keep an eye on new price movements, but we are not sure if this can be considered as an advantage, in fact, it could even damage your trading performance. In today’s article, we will discuss 3 reasons why trading on the smartphone might not be a great discovery when we talk about managing your operations.

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Size Matters

The size of the monitors with which you operate is important. The most common thing on a computer is a monitor between 18 and 23 inches. Now, compare this to the screen size of your smartphone.

Don’t get us wrong, I’m sure your smartphone resolution looks great, but the small screen size will be an obstacle when you try to analyze your graphics. This can cause a price pattern to look good on your phone but maybe not so much on your computer and vice versa.

One of the benefits of operating the naked price is the ability to remove the indicators that saturate your graphics. These indicators take away much of the place on your screen, so removing them allows you to look at the entire graph.

But using a smartphone to operate, cancels this benefit completely. Even if you remove the chart indicators, the small screen size will be a limiting factor when it comes to identifying favorable patterns and trading setups.

Distraction-Free Zone Required

There are plenty of lessons about various trading strategies on the web. A search will show hundreds of pages with material. But something you’re not used to seeing often in discussions about a proper trading environment.

Two very important elements of that environment are vision and sound. When we talk about the environment in which operate, these factors are the most sensitive. These are clearly the two elements that will greatest impact on your trading performance.

Let’s start with the sound. In general what we need is something that helps us to be in a neutral state of the mind, so that we can always concentrate on our trading, without barking dogs, honking horns, or people talking. This could be some nice music or just silence.

As far as the visual environment is concerned, it is desirable that there be natural light and no distractions for the eye. Another important thing is that this environment does not change. It’s good to know where everything is in your trading environment, which will give you such a level of comfort that you can relax deeply.

Let’s move on for a moment to what mobile trading would look like. What would this environment look like? Nobody knows… It could be a bus, a taxi, or maybe a grocery store. No matter where it is, the visual and sound distractions are endless. It could be traffic noise, people talking or music too loud, all of which will distract you from your main goal: to operate.

Too Comfortable?

We all like comfort, we don’t know anyone who complains that something should be harder because it’s too comfortable. Trading on the smartphone is formed and promoted under the premise of comfort. The idea that you can check your positions, enter and exit the market, or even set pending orders from anywhere sounds great from a practical point of view.

But what if this is too easy? What we mean is, what if trading from your mobile phone is so convenient that it actually discourages you from taking the time to properly analyze a market?

We all know that fast food is not good for our health, but still, this has been particularly one of the fastest-growing industries for several years. Why? One of the reasons is comfort. The possibility that a person has of going with their car, paying less than 10 dollars, and having hot food in a matter of minutes results in a great saving of time. Not to mention he doesn’t even need to get out of the car to get his food.

But even if this saves time, it also raises the question: should we do it? Of course, this decision is personal, however, something that is not so subjective is the fact that fast food is not good for our body. We all know this, but sometimes comfort carries more weight than health considerations.

This brings another question to mind. Who do you think benefits most from fast food, the people who order it, or the companies that sell it? This may be a rhetorical question when you start thinking about it, but to put this in context, what happens if your broker’s mobile platform plays a similar role? What if the platform has become so comfortable that it is harmful to the health of your trading account?

The Solution

The benefit of trading anywhere, or at least what is promoted to forex traders, is the ability to manage your operations when you are away from your workplace. But if operating from your mobile phone is not a good idea, what is the solution to be able to manage your operations while you are traveling?

The first thing you can do is switch to the larger time frames. When we do this, we eliminate the need to be constantly checking your operations every 15 minutes. Otherwise, you’ll just have to check your charts 3 or 4 times a day, and you could possibly do it just once a day.

This change in itself will reduce the time you need to monitor your operations drastically. Another way to avoid having to resort to your smartphone is to always use a real stop loss. This might sound obvious, but the use of stops is one of the things that is most overlooked when it comes to security when trading in forex.

A “real” stop-loss differs from a “mental” stop in the fact that the first one is placed as an order on your platform, while the second one is only in your mind, and you must execute it manually. Using a real stop there is no need to check your open positions on your mobile phone, if the price moves against you the stop will do its job without you being watching it.

Finally, the appropriate position size is also important. If you know that your market exposure is minimal and within the parameters of your trading plan, there is no need to constantly monitor your positions through your phone.

Final Words

The idea of being able to operate while traveling sounds fantastic. After all, you’re not going to be sitting in front of your computer all the time to catch every opportunity that comes along.

But the disadvantages of mobile trading may outweigh the benefits. The environment in which you operate needs to be without distractions. It will have to be an ideal place where you can make yourself feel very relaxed so you can concentrate on your tasks, something that mobile trading does not allow.

The main goal of your broker is to operate because this is how they make money. That’s why it offers you the convenience of operating from your mobile phone, which generates more operations for them. But, as with the fast-food example, we doubt that you can find more benefits in this practice than your broker can find by offering it to you.

We are not saying that mobile trading is a bad choice for all traders. In the end, it is a personal decision and only you can make it. But just because you can do something isn’t always gonna mean you should do it.

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