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Forex Basics

Women in the World of Forex

In this article, everything is based on an opinion, experience, conversation, and basic research by people that work professionally as traders on forex. It does not have any psychologists involved so it is not regarded as a scientific fact, theory, or consideration. As an observation by professional prop traders, it can easily be concluded that women should be dominating the forex market, they just do not realize this market or profession has all the elements women can utilize better than men.

Predispositions are strongly aligned yet they are the minority in this business. The reason for this could be that they do not understand how and why forex trading is a perfect setup for them. When all summed up, this is a psychological approach to trading that is simply out of scope for many and it is not present in the media, books, or the internet. After all, the media will produce what masses what to hear, want is trending, and appealing, not necessarily what could help them.

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Never forget, trading has a definitive list of important elements every trader needs to have to consider successful trading. They are ranked in this order:
Psychology.

1. a) Money Management
3. Technical and fundamental trading methods

Note that the order sets the Money Management and Psychology element as equally and most important. Yet, most of the traders are interested more in the third element. Trading methods are more interesting but ultimately worthless without deeply devoting to develop the most important ones. Most of the time you will see about trading tools, methods, strategies, indicators, robots than about the core of every trading or investment, Money Management, and Trader Psychology. That is why many will fail immediately. Still, trying again is an important step, meaning you may have the right mindset to start developing as a trader.

If you are reading this article, you are probably a woman even though this content is beneficial to men too. Women just do better in forex but there are no numbers to back this up. It is only an observation that will still help see another view on forex. Hopefully, the article should not spark a debate about gender or inequality. Now, since the source does not come from a Ph.D. Psychologist but trader experience and observations, it may even be more credible. It is most likely better to listen to what traders have to say about trading and psychological approach to trading than anyone detached from forex.

According to some ratios in brokerage companies, between 5 and 10% of traders are women. Forex is a very different kind of profession and one of the best peculiarities of forex is there are no barriers. Forex is a blank canvas turned to you. Paint whatever you want out of it. It does not matter who you are by any classification or category. There are no obstacles, ceilings you need to break through, no special treatments, greasing, environment, culture, or connection benefits. Everyone has the same chance to succeed, your race, age, location, orientation, and even how much money you have now are completely irrelevant.

If you have influence and power you can use this to your advantage in many ways, except in forex. Skip on any of the above-mentioned core elements, and the forex market will filter you out. In the classic working environment, you work from 9 am till 5 pm, most likely you are in a vertical and horizontal management structure and so on. There are so many things you can blame when you cannot realize your ideas or ambitions. Forex does not have anyone to blame except yourself. Excuses you may have been unjustified.

Forex will look at you, Waren Buffet, Bill Gates, a child with the same eyes. You may think that someone with more money has an advantage, but all they got is more to lose. Trading consistently well can be your career, even when you do not have enough capital you may turn to proprietary trading, for example. All that matters are the three pillars mentioned above.

Women will have an instant advantage with anyone who wants to invest in a good trading system just because many scams with forex are more likely to be done by men. One who decides to make this his career and beat the game will overcome all the challenges of this path. After all, it does not matter who you are, just if you want and decide to walk it.

Now, when we are speaking about successful trading, it comes down to systematic good decision making. Both men and women have some obstacles before creating that decision-making mindset and a system.

Let’s start with men trading traits, just observations without going too deep. These will change as we present a different view in the article:

Men are mostly born risk-takers. This is a positive thing but just for one step.

Men have a killer instinct. This is also a positive side although it is a double-edged sword.

Desire to be great. Motivation is an excellent base for launching a forex trading career. Competition is one part of it, how men compete among themselves, and how to get to the top, prestige, wealth. These goals are achievable with forex, and that is why men will not lack motivation. However, men have one fatal flaw according to traders’ opinions.

Men have a hard time with their emotions control.

More on this later, but let’s move on to women:

Women are Risk Averse. Many do not want to get involved with trading just because it does not seem something they would like to do. Taking risks with hard-earned money is a male thing to do, women do not want to take that risk.

Not competitive in the same way as the men are. Men will compete and have that additional motivation to win, be better. Women are not aligned like that, so they might lack the additional motivation to succeed.

A great trait for women is they are process-driven. Just from the conversations with female traders and how they approach forex trading is very process-driven. They like the process of creating the system, making the rules, and train the mindset. Men just want to get to the top as fast as possible. Of course, they will fail a lot more along the way until they start building the skill step by step.

Less emotional than men. Wins and losses do not affect women to the same effect and way the men. This is just an observation by reports from female traders. Whatsmore, emotional build-up has a destructive effect on how men continue to trade. The emotional control element of trading is a much bigger problem for men to master. Most of the psychology content is about keeping the emotions out of the decision making or trading.

One of the main arguments for the above comparison can come from the historic overview. A long time ago we all had our roles as men and women, we still have. Overall, the men were the hunters. Men had to take risks, sometimes extreme risks depending on the game. When an opportunity shows, men have to act, if they pass it could pose a survival risk for the whole community. Men had to be aggressive and had to take chances. You will probably see some forex analogies that trading is like hunting. On the other hand, women had other roles. They were gatherers and took less risk overall.

Whatsmore, women had to think about the food rations, how to preserve the food, especially if men do not come back with a game. This process created a heritage of how we think and approach problems, and today, forex. Competition in men also has a historical reference. Hunters that were the ablest, skilled and athletic were the ones who picked the female partners first. Those men who did not have that prestige were motivated to improve. In today’s world, all this is similar, just in another form. So we have all these traits given, now we need o use them to our advantage and mitigate the ones that do not benefit us in trading.

Now let’s go back to the comparison. When it comes to practical trading, all of the above mentioned positive traits may as well be men’s negatives. They could get men into the forex but what comes next is torture. Women might have an issue with forex and not stepping in, therefore not moving on where their advantages take effect. Men as Risk-Takers make a lot of stupid mistakes, and it tends to roll into bigger mistakes as men turn to all-or-nothing mode. Now note that great traders take risks, but at the same time they minimize it. They minimize risk by avoiding mistakes and keeping the emotions out of the system.

Most of the bad decisions you made in your life were emotional. A for men this seems to be the biggest problem when it comes to trading. Most of the men readers will think about time women were emotional, but without perception, women might not be that emotional as their expression suggests. Of course, there is plenty of times emotions are strong, just not all of the time. Some may argue with this notion that women might play this emotional card with men to take advantage of the emotional vulnerability men have. Again, note this is just an opinion and observation.

But here are some arguments:

Love songs are for the most part written by men. Regardless of who is singing them. This is not about creativity, both genders are creative but men are quicker to express the emotions down to paper.

Divorces. Women seem to recover from the consequences faster than men it seems. Men tend to take a hit, dwell, and even decide not to seek out new partners at all. There are a lot of stories men express about their condition after a divorce while women do not follow equally according to some observations. Expressed in forex language, men are more volatile with emotions, they can go to 100 quickly, crash down to 0 and decide not to go this road ever again.

Crime. White-collar crime also means gaining an advantage at the expense of others, a very male trait. Men try to get to that top level, have the desire to be great and this makes them astray into various and violent actions. This desire to be great and emotions are a deadly combination.

Violence in men arises from emotional decisions. For example, a thief wants something others have, so they decide to steal. But if things do not go their way, they may become violent and cause harm. This is all a gap in emotional control. It is rarely a good move but men may think this is all they could, and then comes regret.

When we look at all the marketing content, we can see marketeers target the masses. Most of the promotional material has an emotional stimulus and show successful good looking men, with lots of wealth and attractive women. They present what the masses want at their core, they do not target the intelligent people, intelligent people are harder to manipulate and there are not many of them. It targets men’s impulsive, envious side, and it works. Men might get a good motivation out of this but they will have a hard time controlling that urge to get to the top fast, and they slip. Men focus on the wrong things because of this, skipping the long and boring elements such as psychology and Money Management. If we replace this article title with “the best uses of the RSI indicator” it is going to attract so many people looking for a quick fix.

All this means women have a much easier way to get to the top of the forex trading. Let’s take another look at the women’s disadvantages above. Forex is not a competition, this is not a poker game. It is just traders versus the market. Men could, of course, make a competition who is going to have the best P/L result but this is not forex per se. So we can take out that not competitive women trait as it is not relevant to forex. The only negative trait for women when it comes to forex is the risk aversion. However, once women step into trading, that risk becomes irrelevant, you have made that step if you are reading this article already. There are just beneficial traits left now. Comparing how difficult a female forex trader path with men’s, the advantages become very clear.

Based on some experience while working with beginner women traders, it can be concluded that women have far less hit and runs, are more meticulous, they study deeply, they like reading, and the process of building a system. No one watched a video about the MACD indicator and made a fortune trading on forex. Men might try but women know better. Interestingly, women even like psychology and Money Management content more than men, while men focus on trade tools and other trading elements. After all, this article is as useful for men as it is for women.

Women can also astray even with all given predispositions. You should not get too involved and devoted to the process. At one point you will need to invest, forex is a money game. According to certain prop traders, women should lose their fears by creating a premise all the funds on the account are going to be lost. They should plan on losing even that is unlikely not going to happen. This way the fear of losing someones else or their money is not going to affect them much. After all trading elements are well tested and built, women can expect the best.

To conclude, women already know what to do and how once they step in and decide to walk the forex path. Men need a lot of training to control the emotional part most. This is a process that does not happen overnight, the process women will like more than the fruits at the end. Men have only one option here, do whatever it takes to get in control, just do not depend on motivational speeches or similar every time you regret a bad decision.

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