Times are rough and as the Russia-Ukraine war rages on, heightened volatility are to be expected.
To help you sail through these choppy days, here are 9 rules you should follow to alleviate stress during your trading sessions.
#1 You don’t need to be trading all the time
If the market is choppy, if you are going through a period of poor emotional control and low risk tolerance, if the market is behaving in a strange manner, make no mistake: you can wait it out and come back once the coast is clear.
#2 Low conviction trades are the worse. Subjective criteria are equally as bad
If you find yourself take a trade just because you can’t seem to find a decent play, it might be time to stop and go back to the drawing board.
In what concerns subjectiveness when crafting a strategy, you will want to keep subjective trading conditions to the bare minimum. Otherwise, you will only make your life harder and trading nearly impossible.
#3 If you plan out X trades, then X trades it is
Discipline is key and your strategy should most definitely dictate the number of trades you take. If you start taking on more trades that you originally planned, it might be a major red flag.
#4 Structure your trades appropriately
Decide beforehand which indicators will you follow, which entry point are you going to take and what will give you the green light, what will your exit strategy look like, what your stop losses will be, how much should you risk, and so forth.
#5 Charts are fine but there are other things you should be looking at
Research, back testing, thoroughly analyzing your trade log… All of those are of the utmost importance. Relying on charts alone can cost you deeply.
#6 Plan for the worse
You should also remember to plan for something which most people often forget: What will you do if your trade starts going against you? What if the market flattens and you get stuck on one single trade? How will you react once you see profit, but it just can’t seem to hit your exit point?
#7 Leave room for flexibility
You will want to plan and structure everything appropriately but there are always exceptions, meaning you should know exactly what to do in any given scenario but also leave room from snap decisions if necessary.
#8 Value your own time
Sometimes “the grind” doesn’t mean standing in front of your screen and you will soon find two things:
More hours spent do not seem to have any correlation with more profit, rather it sounds more like a fast track to burnout.
The market doesn’t really care how much time you are trading for. Millions can be made in seconds, and fortunes can be lost in a couple of hours during a single trading session.
This highlights how important is to know yourself, your limits, and do not overdo it. Being motivated is great but you will be met with stress and your concentration won’t last for hours on end. Don’t fall into that trap. Learn to trade in a focused yet rested and relaxed state.
#9 Don’t believe anything you haven’t checked and tested yourself
This last point isn’t a matter of social trading
Social Trading
Social trading is a relatively new method of trading in which retail traders buy or sell financial instruments based on information provided from fellow financial traders. Typically, a less experienced trader gauges information shared by more experienced traders, who often have demonstrated a successful record, and places their trust in their superior knowledge. While the rise of social networks such as Facebook and Twitter have accelerated this form of trading.There are now many dedicated standalone social trading platforms which are proving to be very popular with traders.Social Trading Providing Benefits to TradersSocial trading essentially attempts to remove the steep learning curve which accompanies financial trading, which is traditionally traded using technical and fundamental analysis. Technical analysis involves the use of mathematical based visual tools and indicators to assist traders in deciding, such as Fibonacci, MACD, and RSI. Fundamental analysis is the observing of geo-political events and economic reports and understanding how they affect trader sentiment. Proponents of social trading claim these forms of studies and education are not necessary. This is because traders can simply view and share key information and details with other traders, allowing anyone to make an informed decision on whether to buy, sell, modify or exit a trade. For example, a trader who specializes in commodities could share useful details about the current state of gold, where as a currency trader might have more knowledge about what the US dollar is doing. Critics of social trading claim that it’s merely the blind leading the blind. These critics suggest that social trading sites and platforms such as Zulutrade, eToro, and others, ultimately fail in delivering long-term success.This they argue results in new traders having initially placed a lot of misplaced faith, losing a large chunk of their investment.
Social trading is a relatively new method of trading in which retail traders buy or sell financial instruments based on information provided from fellow financial traders. Typically, a less experienced trader gauges information shared by more experienced traders, who often have demonstrated a successful record, and places their trust in their superior knowledge. While the rise of social networks such as Facebook and Twitter have accelerated this form of trading.There are now many dedicated standalone social trading platforms which are proving to be very popular with traders.Social Trading Providing Benefits to TradersSocial trading essentially attempts to remove the steep learning curve which accompanies financial trading, which is traditionally traded using technical and fundamental analysis. Technical analysis involves the use of mathematical based visual tools and indicators to assist traders in deciding, such as Fibonacci, MACD, and RSI. Fundamental analysis is the observing of geo-political events and economic reports and understanding how they affect trader sentiment. Proponents of social trading claim these forms of studies and education are not necessary. This is because traders can simply view and share key information and details with other traders, allowing anyone to make an informed decision on whether to buy, sell, modify or exit a trade. For example, a trader who specializes in commodities could share useful details about the current state of gold, where as a currency trader might have more knowledge about what the US dollar is doing. Critics of social trading claim that it’s merely the blind leading the blind. These critics suggest that social trading sites and platforms such as Zulutrade, eToro, and others, ultimately fail in delivering long-term success.This they argue results in new traders having initially placed a lot of misplaced faith, losing a large chunk of their investment.
Read this Term, influencers, or pump and dump schemes. It’s just that sometimes you will read upon things which worked pretty well in the past and those exact same strategies might not work today.
Back-testing
Back-Testing
Back-testing is a process in which a set of mechanical technical rules are applied to a period of historical price data of a particular financial instrument.This is performed by analyzing the results of the back-test to gauge how profitable that set of technical rules would have been for the particular time period. Thus back-testing aims to provide confidence over the system’s sustainability when trading in real-time.For a financial trader to have confidence in their system or strategy, they need to be able to test their rules in their market of choice, before deciding whether to pursue this in a live environment. Undoubtedly, the testing of one’s strategy in real-time is the most accurate in determining how feasible a trading system is. This presents obvious issues however, since for some strategies, especially those involving longer timeframes, would take an extremely long-time to execute. Additionally, forward-testing a system before the trader can attain the necessary threshold of confidence needed to trade it live, i.e. with actual money presents enormous levels of risk.Why Use Back-Testing?This is where back-testing comes in. Most broker platforms have a built in back-testing module, which allows the trader to test their rules on an instrument over a fixed time period. The back-tester is then able to crunch this data, by applying all the rules to the asset and time period. This results in a detailed report of how successful the system would have been, often all in a matter of a few minutes to a few hours. Key statistics pumped out by the back-tester include, percentage of trades won, percentage of long trades won, percentage of short trades won, largest winning trade, largest losing trade, average length of trade, consecutive wins and losses. The most popular platform that offers back-testing is the MetaTrader platform, where traders can codify their systems’ rules into an “Expert Advisor” (EA), followed by running that EA on MT4’s or MT5’s Strategy Tester.In theory, back-testing provides an almost perfect solution to seeking out profitable, tradable strategies for the long term. The problem is, back-testing makes a flawed assumption – that past results equate to similar future performance. However, back-testing can arguably, at the very least, help optimize a promising system.
Back-testing is a process in which a set of mechanical technical rules are applied to a period of historical price data of a particular financial instrument.This is performed by analyzing the results of the back-test to gauge how profitable that set of technical rules would have been for the particular time period. Thus back-testing aims to provide confidence over the system’s sustainability when trading in real-time.For a financial trader to have confidence in their system or strategy, they need to be able to test their rules in their market of choice, before deciding whether to pursue this in a live environment. Undoubtedly, the testing of one’s strategy in real-time is the most accurate in determining how feasible a trading system is. This presents obvious issues however, since for some strategies, especially those involving longer timeframes, would take an extremely long-time to execute. Additionally, forward-testing a system before the trader can attain the necessary threshold of confidence needed to trade it live, i.e. with actual money presents enormous levels of risk.Why Use Back-Testing?This is where back-testing comes in. Most broker platforms have a built in back-testing module, which allows the trader to test their rules on an instrument over a fixed time period. The back-tester is then able to crunch this data, by applying all the rules to the asset and time period. This results in a detailed report of how successful the system would have been, often all in a matter of a few minutes to a few hours. Key statistics pumped out by the back-tester include, percentage of trades won, percentage of long trades won, percentage of short trades won, largest winning trade, largest losing trade, average length of trade, consecutive wins and losses. The most popular platform that offers back-testing is the MetaTrader platform, where traders can codify their systems’ rules into an “Expert Advisor” (EA), followed by running that EA on MT4’s or MT5’s Strategy Tester.In theory, back-testing provides an almost perfect solution to seeking out profitable, tradable strategies for the long term. The problem is, back-testing makes a flawed assumption – that past results equate to similar future performance. However, back-testing can arguably, at the very least, help optimize a promising system.
Read this Term your strategy is perhaps the most underrated thing in trading and yet it allows to fully understand what would happen if you followed through with your plan.
Wrapping up
Trading sessions can be rough, especially for those who are unprepared. But with a calm and collected mindset you are bound to start making less mistakes and massively improving your results
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