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Beginners Forex Education Forex Basics

Here’s How to Take the Stress Out of Forex Trading

Forex trading can be undeniably stressful at times, especially when the market becomes volatile or if you find yourself on the end of a losing streak. Many traders keep going long after this stress sets in, which leads to poor decision making because of clouded judgment. Eventually, some traders even give up because they just can’t perform well enough under all of this pressure. If you’ve also been feeling tense lately, chances are that it’s affecting your profits more than you realize. The good news is that there are some simple steps you can take to make forex trading less stressful so that you can maximize your profit potential. 

Simplify Your Strategy

Are you currently using a complicated trading strategy or one that confuses you? When it comes to your trading system, simple is actually better. It may seem as though more detailed plans work better because there are more components, but these systems are just really good at stressing traders out and causing confusion. If you use indicators, you may want to cut down on those as well. Having too much information to look at is overwhelming and leads us to overlook the most important things, so you can take it easier on your brain by switching to a simpler trading plan and decluttering your charts by removing less useful indicators. 

Take a Break

Have you ever made a bad decision during a moment when you were feeling completely overwhelmed? Forex traders do this every day – they lose out on a trade and frantically try to regain the money by risking more, they enter a trade they shouldn’t because they can’t think straight, they start pulling out of trades at the wrong time because their brain feels foggy – you get the picture. Instead of forcing yourself to keep going when you’re overwhelmed, simply take a break and step away from your computer or phone screen until you calm down. You might worry that you’re missing out on trading opportunities, but you’ll really be avoiding the urge to make emotional trading mistakes. Then you can come back with a clear head without feeling like you’ve been pushed to your limits.

Try a Relaxing Activity Before Trading

If you’re already tense when you first log into your trading account for the day, the anxiety of trading will likely add to your tension, even if you’re making money. The best thing you can do is to start fresh each day in a great mood, so we suggest finding something that helps you relax beforehand. This could be as simple as drinking a morning cup of coffee or listening to your favorite song. Exercise is another popular option that makes people feel good, so consider yoga, meditation, going for a jog, or some other form of exercise to get those endorphins flowing. 

Trade in a Quiet Place

It isn’t a great idea to trade with any type of distractions. Just think, children running around, dogs barking, loud background noise like a television or someone talking on the phone, a vacuum, or any other type of noise is annoying enough on its own when you’re trying to concentrate. Once you add the high-pressure act of trading to the mix, you’re bound to be left feeling stressed out. In this case, you’ll need to find a quieter environment so that you can fully focus and make the best decisions without having your brain jump from one thing to another. Also, don’t discount small distractions if your house is fairly quiet, as even social media notifications can be a pesky distraction for forex traders that are trying to concentrate. 

Don’t Let Losses Rule You

Nobody is ever going to be happy about losing money, but forex traders need to know that this is going to inevitably happen from time to time. The important thing is that you’re making more than you lose and this can be accomplished even if you have more losing trades than winning ones. Of course, losing one or more trades in a row is still one of the best ways to become stressed while you’re trading. If you want to avoid this, you can start by accepting the fact that everyone loses sometimes, even the best traders out there, and promising that you won’t be too hard on yourself when this happens. Then, consider taking certain measures to reduce the frustration you feel over those losses. For example, you could risk less on each trade so those losses don’t hit so hard. 

Be Confident

If you’re constantly doubting yourself as a forex trader by questioning your abilities in general along with every move you make, you’re always going to be stressed out. In order to be more self-confident, you’ll need to ensure that you can trust your trading strategy and spend time learning more about forex trading. If you aren’t confident with your plan, try testing it on a demo account to reassure yourself that it works or for a sign that you should change things up. If you want to test your own knowledge, try taking online quizzes, and research anything you get wrong. In the end, you’ll be more confident once you enter trades, so you won’t be as likely to pull out too early because you’re doubting yourself.

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Forex Psychology

How To Deal With The Pressures Of Trading

Stress and pressure is an unfortunate part of trading, and it is one of those things that is inevitable and impossible to avoid completely. It can be caused by a number of different things from your own trading decisions to things that are completely out of your control such as unannounced news conferences or natural disasters. There will always be pressures, what is important is that you develop and understand different ways that you can cope with that pressure or ways that you can help to alleviate it.

Step away: This method may seem a little obvious, but you would be surprised how many people actually struggle to do it, many people when under pressure will actually start to spend more time at the computer or trying to work out where things may have gone wrong. Instead of doing that, take a step back, close down your platform, and walk away. You need to be able to clear your mind, coming back with a clear and fresh mind will enable you to look at things from a different light and it may well make things easier for you to work through whatever was causing the stress.

Accept that you aren’t perfect: No one is perfect, so there is no point trying to be or convincing yourself that you need to be. Instead, you need to accept that you will make mistakes, and you will have losses every now and then. Being able to do this will stop yourself from being so hard on yourself and trying to push yourself too hard to be perfect and to never make mistakes, accept what you will and it will be far easier to move on from any that occur. If you feel that you may be pushing yourself too hard, or that you are doing too much, tell yourself to stop, move away, and then come back.

Create a plan: Sometimes stress can come from the unknown, if you do not have a plan set up for what you will be doing or how you will be making your trades it can be incredibly stressful. Creating a plan enables you to understand exactly what you need to do, it will also help you get a better understanding that losses will happen and may well help you get past those losses and to not blame yourself for them.

Do not compare yourself to others: Many people, especially when starting out, will have someone that they look up to and someone that they may wish to imitate, while it is great to have something to aim for, it is not healthy to constantly compare yourself to them. There are many different things that could be different when you compare their circumstances, such as account balances, experience, and so many other things, so concentrate on your own abilities and the trading plan that you have created for yourself instead of putting yourself under pressure to be like someone else.

Getting through a period of increased pressure can be a fantastic feeling, it will give you energy, it will help you push further and ultimately you will feel good about yourself, however, it would always be beneficial to try and avoid those situations entirely, so do what you can to reduce the occurrences, but if you do get into a period of stress, be sure that you are aware of the ways to get back out of it, you will feel a lot better for it.

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Forex Psychology

The Pressures Of Forex Trading

Pressure, the incredibly strong feeling of dread or stress that can come over you when doing pretty much anything when there is something on the line. In regards to trading, that something is your account balance. This is even more apparent if you are currently trading as your full-time job and you are counting on it for paying things like your bills or to purchase your weekly shopping. Pressure can come from both within and from outside sources, so let’s take a little look at the sort of things that can cause pressure and the effects that this can have on both you and your trading abilities.

Have a little think about the sorts of things that cause you to feel pressure, normally it would be some sort of deadline that you need to meet, maybe you are nowhere near making it. This same pressure can come with trading, e briefly touched on the fact that you may be relying on the money that you will make in order to pay your bills or purchase your weekly shop, this sort of pressure can lead you to making rash trading decisions and making additional risky trades that are outside of your trading plan, simply so you can make enough to survive. This sort of pressure is not good at all, the desperation to make enough will make you throw out all caution and will ultimately cause you to lose, which in turn will increase the pressure further.

There is also the sort of pressure that you can put on yourself, if you consider yourself to be a perfectionist, every single loss that you take will be a little hit to your ego and will increase the amount of stress and pressure that you will be putting on yourself in order to do better. There is also the pressure of trading money that you may actually need, the old saying of not trading what you can’t afford to lose is a very honest and realistic approach, as soon as you start to trade with money you need, an incredible amount of pressure will come over you, knowing that if you lose it, you could be struggling in life for quite a while.

Pushing yourself to learn more, and to achieve more can put some unwanted pressure on yourself, there are no time limits, the markets aren’t going anywhere. Take your time to learn, don’t put these unnecessary stresses on yourself, there is no need to and it is completely self-destructive.

These pressures are often caused by some sort of decision that we made at one point in time when it comes to out trading, whether we deposited too much, our trades are using too much risk or we took the step to going full time too soon. It is important to think about each decision that you make, it is all well and good thinking that you will be able to deal with the pressure when it comes, but the best course of action that you can take is to avoid bringing the pressure down on you in the first place, if you can manage to do that, then you won’t have to deal with the crippling effects that pressure can have on someone.