Much like anything in life, trading offers a lot of variety and so there are a lot of different people doing a lot of different things, meaning that we all have different experiences and abilities. Due to this, there are a lot of things that can be considered a faux pas. Things that traders will look back at as embarrassing, things that they probably would like no one to remember, but these things happen and they happen to all of us. The thing is that a lot of them are actually okay to make, regardless of what others may think. They could potentially benefit you and your trading or at least not have the negative effect that some people may presume. So let’s look at some of the faux pas in trading that are actually ok to make.
Blowing An Account
Let’s be honest, the worst thing that can happen to you as a trader is to have your account blow. Many people believe that this means that you are a bad trader, you do not know how to use proper risk management, you do not know how to trade or you are just bad at it. This is completely untrue. In fact, if you look at any successful trader today, we can almost guarantee that the majority of them would have blown their accounts at some point. The question is though, do you think that they are embarrassed by it? Most likely not.
This is simply due to the reason that it is something that nearly everyone will do, those that do not blow accounts simply have not traded for long enough. It will happen, it’s inevitable and it will most likely happen near the start. It can feel embarrassing but it really shouldn’t be. Instead, the blown account should act as a fantastic learning opportunity. They allow you to see exactly what you did wrong and what you can do to help prevent doing anything similar in the future. There is nothing wrong with a blown account (apart from the lost money) and it certainly does not mean that you are a bad trader. Use them. Learn from them and you will most likely not blow another one in the future and you will end up as a much safer trader in the long run.
Not Understanding Something, or Anything
Forex and trading as a whole can be incredibly complicated. There is so much information out there, far too much for any one person to even think about learning all of. In fact, you probably won’t ever learn more than 2% or 3% of what is out there. Due to this, you should never feel embarrassed that you do not understand something or in fact not understanding anything. We have all been in that situation, especially when we first started out as traders. We didn’t know a thing, everything that we read or watched was confusing, all these new words and meanings that we had never heard before.
So you should not feel embarrassed. Everyone has been in the exact same situation. Instead, you should ask what things mean, you should ask how to do things and you should question things that you do not understand. No one will hold this against you, in fact, the trading community is more often than not a very helpful one. People will be willing to help you to understand, they will explain things and help you to understand. Just know that absolutely every trader has been in the same situation and even those at the top of the game will still come across things that they do not understand, they are not embarrassed by that, and neither should you be.
Becoming Stressed
Stress can get the better of a lot of us. It is an emotion that the majority of traders will go through and is completely natural. If you are feeling stressed, do not try and keep it inside. Instead, you need to take action against it, you need to step away and you need to take breaks. Do not feel bad that you are needing to step away from the terminal because you are feeling a little stressed. We all have to do it at some point as do the world’s best traders. They take breaks because things are getting too tense and so should you.
Forgetting Stop Losses
Stop losses are vital for anyone to be trading in a safe way, but when you do something with every single trade. There will of course be times where you may forget to place them, and of course, the time that you forget is the time where the markets go against you and you lose a much larger chunk of your balance than you were planning for. It happens, you know you should be using them and so you feel embarrassed that you lost a lot more simply because you forgot to place it. Do not worry, use that as a learning experience and as you feel bad about it, it is much less likely that you will do something the same again. You need to learn from this mistake, we still do it from time to time. But each time we do it, there is a long period of time where we never forget to place it. Simply because we are remembering the losses that we took before. So do not feel embarrassed that you forgot the stop loss, just use that feeling as a reminder so you do not forget again in the future.
Not Having Enough Money to Trade
Trading can be expensive. It takes money to make money. At times in our lives, other things may come up, a broken boiler, a broken car or a wedding. These things cost money, and you may need to take money out of or even all of the money out of your account in order to pay for these things. Now you have no money to trade, that is fine. The other parts of your life are more important at that point in time, and the forex markets are not going anywhere. If you need to use your trading funds for things then use them. In the future, when you get more money again you can start to trade again. Do not make your life suffer just because you don’t want to be in a position where you cannot trade.
Those are some of the things that people find embarrassing about their trading or the things that they have done. It is important to remember that these things should not embarrass you. We all go through them and millions of people will go through them in the future too. Use them as learning opportunities or simply talk to others, you will discover just how common they actually are.