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Reasons Not to Compare Yourself to Other Traders

This is all about distractions and is relevant to any aspect of life. People often look at others to see how they are doing, are they doing better than me? Are they making more money than me? Do they look better than me? The main question we should be asking is “How am I doing?”. It shouldn’t matter what others are doing or what trades they are taking, so why are we obsessed with comparing ourselves with them?

There are those of us that look to others for inspiration, this is not a bad thing within itself, gaining inspiration can give you the motivation to try harder, to work harder and to achieve more, but at what point does that become an obsession or when does it start to turn unhealthy? Generally speaking, when we gain inspiration we begin to try and mimic certain things that they are doing, in regards to trading, it may be the trades that they are taking or to try and mimic the profits that they are making.

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The thing that we forget is that they have years more experience than yus, they also most likely have a much larger starting bank, so being able to mimic them is impossible, you won’t be learning about why they are making the trades, just blindly following. So what would happen if they stopped? You would stop too and you would have no knowledge or experience to fall back on, this is why it is important to learn along the way, and not blindly follow.

Some may look to others for competition, there is nothing unhealthy about a little competition, you and your friends want to see who can make the most pips, the most profits or to just have the most accurate trades. This in itself is not bad, however, if you are a very competitive person, you may start looking at the results of your competition and then doing things outside of your proven strategy to try and beat them, taking extra trades, larger trade sizes or anything else, these can lead to disaster and take away all the hard work that you have achieved. Stick to your own plan, even ina competition, it has worked for you before and it will work for you again.

If you are observing others who are making tons of money, more than you can imagine, it can have both a positive and negative effect, we spoke about the inspiration, but there is also the negative elements of jealousy or demotivation. Seeing someone else do well can make you want to give up, “Why can they do it but I can’t?”. This can lead to either you giving up completely, or taking rash and dangerous trading experiences.

All of these things are important reasons why you should concentrate on your own trading, don’t worry about others, its fine to look around and see what people are trading, but it is important that you understand why they are trading it and not just what they are trading. Stick to your own plan, has it been working in the past? If yes then there is nothing to change, it does not matter how someone else is doing, as long as you are working to your own strategy and improving your own abilities, that is all that is needed.

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