We all like a little bit of advice, don’t we? The entire point of advice is that it allows us to get better, as other people can see the things that we are doing and point out what we need to improve. Of course, not all advice is actually helpful. Some of it will not impact our trading but it is still good to hear. Today we are going to be looking at some of the better advice that you could use to help improve your trading. You may already be doing a lot of these things, or you may not be. If you aren’t, try implementing this information into your trading plans to see if they make an improvement.
Use a Demo Account
First off, we must stress how important it is to test your strategies and any changes that you make. This is something that a lot of traders, especially newer ones, simply do not do. They just chuck the changes into their main trades and hope for the best. Those that do test may still do this on a live account. While the trades are smaller, you are still risking your own money on something that you have no idea whether it works or not. So instead, what you need to do is to trade and test any changes that you make, no matter how big or small, on a demo account. This way you are not risking any of your own money on the changes, and if the change makes things a lot worse, you have not lost anything. As soon as you can see that the change is working consistently, only then should you try and implement that change on your live account where your actual money is.
Have a Risk Management Plan
One of the main elements of any trading plan or strategy is the risk management that comes with it. You can set this up before placing a single trade and you should, it will then be used for every trade that you place. The thing is though, that a risk management plan that works at one point, won’t always, and so you will need to be making constant changes and constantly reviewing the plan. Different market conditions may require you to change the locations of your stop losses and take profit levels. It may even cause you to change your risk to reward ratio. That is fine if you need to, just be sure that you are constantly monitoring the levels they are at and what risk management techniques you are using. You never know when they need to change, just remember our first point, test them on a demo account. Never accept your risk management plan as final.
Do Not Blindly Follow Others
A lot of traders will come into forex and simply follow what others are doing or what they say. While it is perfectly fine to get ideas from others or to trade the same as someone else, (some people make a lot of money by doing that) what is not right is to simply follow their trades blind. This means that you do not know why the trade is being put on or what to do if things go wrong. Each trader that you are following will have a reason as to why they have placed the take that they have, you need to know this too. As soon as you trade without knowing, you are risking your money on a blind gamble, and what will you do if things go the wrong way? That trader may not be there to tell you what to do, you will need to work it out, so if you follow blindly, you won’t be able to. Always work out why someone is placing a trade and what the requirements of that trade are before you place it. If you do not know any of these things, then do not place the trade.
Never Trade With Bill Money
The golden rule of anything to do with trading or investing, do not take any more than you can afford to lose. The best way of doing this is to consider any money that you deposit into your broker’s account as lost money, it is lost to you until you withdraw it back to your account. You also need to consider whether you need that money. We have seen countless traders trade with money they cannot afford to lose, money that they needed for food or for rent. They lost it and so cannot afford their rent that month, or even worse, traders that borrow, get into debt for trading and then lose it, leaving them with the debt to pay. If the money you are using will negatively affect your life if you lost it, then you should not be using it to trade at all.
Research EVERYTHING
This leads on from the previous point, you need to research everything, and we mean everything. If you are looking for a broker, research them. Find the one that has the right features that you need, and that has a good reputation of honoring what they are meant to be doing. If you are looking at signals, research them. Look at how they have done previously, the people behind it, everything. Creating a new strategy? You know the drill, you need to research everything that you can about it, the risk management that comes with it, the best trading conditions for it, your own requirements such as time required. Anything you do in trading, you need to research, this is how you get to know what it is that you are doing and why and it is the best way to ensure that the way you are going to do is correct. Do not do anything blind in forex or trading, that will only lead to losses and potential blown accounts.
That is some of the advice that you will hear quite a lot over the internet. It is all fantastic advice that can really help you to become a profitable and successful trader to at least save you some potential headaches down the road, not to mention some of your capital. Whether you already do them or not, take them into consideration next time you plan on trading and think about what you could potentially be doing differently which could help to improve your overall trading.
