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Nial Fuller

NIAL FULLER Nial Fuller
Professional Trader, Author & Coach

The 9 Worst Forex Trading Mistakes You Can Make

tradingmistakesAs a trader, you will make mistakes, it’s inevitable and it’s part of the learning process. However, if you continuously make the same mistakes over and over, it means you aren’t learning from them and you’re likely not making any progress as a result. This is what you want to avoid because it’s how traders lose more money than they are prepared to and blow out trading accounts.

The first step in learning from your trading mistakes so that you can avoid them in the future, is identifying them. Once you’ve identified them, you have to admit to them and accept that you are indeed the one at fault; it’s not the markets being too volatile, it’s not news events and it’s not your broker. You, and you alone, are responsible for your trading mistakes and your trading account, so let’s identify the 9 worst mistakes that traders make so that you can get to work on eliminating them once and for all…

1. Trading too much (over-trading)

Trading too frequently is number one on this list for good reason; it’s basically the most prevalent and most destructive mistake traders make, over and over again. I’ve written quite a few articles that discuss the psychology of over-trading, so I won’t get into this too much here. But, you should be aware that it’s extremely easy to trade when you probably shouldn’t, and it’s so easy to do that many traders aren’t even aware they are doing it.

The easiest way to avoid over-trading is to master your trading strategy one setup at a time and then ONLY trade if one of those setups is present. If you trade at any other time, you are trading too much and you will unnecessarily lose money as a result. Thus, not over-trading is something you can only achieve through self-discipline.

2. Risking too much

Risking too much money on a trade means you are risking a dollar amount that you’re uncomfortable with potentially losing on that trade. The problem with this is that when you do lose more than you’re comfortable with, it hurts emotionally. This emotional pain or frustration is usually a catalyst for revenge trading, which is when you are so angered or disappointed by a loss that you feel compelled to jump back into the market to try and make back that lost money. Sadly, this is not the proper way to trade and will usually only lead to more losses and a deeper sense of regret, anger and frustration, which only works to perpetuate the cycle of emotional trading.

3. Thinking too much

If there is one profession that lends itself to self-sabotage by thinking too much, it’s trading. At the end of the day, trading is really pretty simple, but our minds make it complicated. It should be as simple as: Is my trade signal present? If yes, then move forward and decide on entry type, stop loss distance, lot size, etc. If no, then don’t enter the trade, go do something else and close the laptop up.

Sitting there, stewing over your charts, trying in desperation to find a trade signal, is going to cause you to over-trade. Or, trying to read multiple financial market news sources in hopes of finding some ‘tip’, is also futile; it’s going to cause you to over-trade most likely. Similarly, thinking too much about a good trade that you have on can also mess you up. Most of the time, you’re better off not thinking about a trade you have on, and if you’re not in a trade and there’s no obvious setup to enter, don’t think about the market at all, you’ll be far better off this way.

4. Arrogance

This one is big. A big problem that is. Becoming arrogant or over-confident after a winning trade or a series of winning trades is often what happens right before traders slide into a huge losing streak.

Why, you ask?

It’s simple really. This one is all about psychology and how we let the market affect us. Most of us are not aware we are becoming over-confident or ‘cocky’ about our trading until it’s too late. The feeling will slip over you subtly; it will start out as optimism (this is OK), but that quickly turns into greed (not OK) and a feeling that you are ‘on a roll’ so you might as well keep trading. Well, this is fine IF there’s actually a trade to take that meets your trading plan criteria. However, the problem is that when you have this feeling of greed and over-confidence, you somehow start to find ‘other trades’ where normally you would not. Your sense of risk in the market is dulled by your greed and you lose all the money you won recently (and maybe more) because you let your over-confidence compel you to jump back into the market without a high-probability price action signal being present.

5. Reading too many trading websites (not this one of course)

Information overload is what I call it. It’s when you try absorbing too much information about trading; too many strategies, systems, news reports, etc. All of this information can become an addiction in its own right. You feel like you ‘need’ to learn more and more and absorb more information, because you think it will give you some edge over other traders or that it will ‘show you’ some trading opportunity you didn’t otherwise see.

In reality, all this type of behaviour does is confuse you and cause you to take stupid trades, otherwise known as over-trading, as we discussed above. You need to forget about all the information on the internet and elsewhere. You don’t need it. It’s a waste of your time and energy. All you truly need is to become ‘in-tune’ with the market by learning to read and trade from the price action. This is all the information you need to analyse.

6. Gambling – having no strategy or edge

Especially if you’re arrogant as we discussed above, it’s extremely easy to end up gambling in the market. Another cause is trading without a strategy or trading edge; many traders think they can just ‘wing it’ and don’t really need to actually learn how to trade. However, if you do not have a real trading method, ideally that you’ve learned from a credible teacher / mentor, you do not have the high-probability trading edge that you need to thrive or even survive in the market. There’s an old saying about casinos, that the “House always wins”, it means that the casino will always win in the end. If you treat trading like a casino, the market and the other traders in it will always take your money in the end.

7. Not having a risk and money management plan

Perhaps another one of the most widespread mistakes that I see traders make over and over again, is not having any type of plan or strategy to manage their risk and their reward.

You need to have a plan in place that says how much money you will risk per trade, in terms of dollars, not pips or percentages. This 1R dollar amount that you risk per trade is not to be exceeded at any one time in the market, ever. Once you exceed that amount at risk, you have broken your rules and violated your discipline and opened yourself up to all the other trading mistakes listed in this lesson. You see…all of these trading mistakes are intertwined with one another, committing one makes committing another one far more likely.

You also need a plan to manage your rewards in the event you start doing well in the market. As I’ve said before, don’t leave all your money in your trading account. A good rule of thumb is to take out at least 50% of your profits each month until you’ve grown your account up to a level you want, once you hit that level, take all the profit out each month. Take some of that money out of your bank and hold it in your hands…you are far less likely to commit stupid trading mistakes when the money feels more real to you.

8. Paying too much attention to the news

News is mostly garbage for trading, and as they say, garbage in is garbage out. I can’t tell you how many opinion pieces on financial television or on the internet I’ve seen be clearly wrong. These people that produce these are paid to produce opinions, not to be right. After all, if they knew what they were talking about they’d probably be traders, not opinion makers. Trust yourself, trust your gut, and block everyone else out.

Financial news releases are also mostly irrelevant. You’ll drive yourself crazy trying to figure out what “might or might not” happen with the upcoming NFP release or any other one. At the end of the day, the price action reflects all market variables and it’s all you need.

9. Not educating yourself on how to trade

Trading is a very solitary endeavour, and it lends itself to people believing they can ‘figure it out’ on their own or that they don’t need real education / training. However, this couldn’t be further from the truth.

What we are doing here is risking our hard-earned money to potentially make money, but we can also potentially lose money on any given trade. So, I don’t know about you, but I want to protect my money as much as possible and I certainly want to know what the heck I’m doing before I try trading and putting my money at risk. I obtained training and education from various sources early-on in my trading career and I then used that training to form my own opinions and my own view of the markets.

Nothing is ever ‘concrete’ in trading, but you do need a starting point and a trading education on an effective trading method to get you on the path to success. From there, you will form your own unique understanding and view of the market which will ultimately determine how you trade. I would like to invite you to learn my views on the market and my trading strategies that I teach in my price action trading course and members trading community, as they have worked for me and I’m confident that with some training, open mindedness and willingness to be disciplined, they can work for you too.


Nial Fuller

About Nial Fuller

is a Professional Trader, Investor & Author who is considered ‘The Authority’ on Price Action Trading. His blog is read by over 200,000+ followers and he has taught 25,000+ students since 2008. In 2016, Nial won the Million Dollar Trader Competition. Checkout Nial's Professional Trading Course here.
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  1. Adnan Hamdani

    Absolutely true findings even a experience trader can make these mistakes only key is to keep avoiding them if one avoids it there is no stopping and a true winner will emerge great article keep up the good work

    Reply
  2. Anil

    hi,
    Nial can you help me out the situation of indecisiveness, despite having good setup, I hesitate to enter the trade and later what is see, my decision goes in favour according your entry strategy, at that time it is very depressing situation. how can I improve it.

    Reply
  3. karabo

    Number 2 above reasonates with me

    Reply
  4. Anil

    Nial, You are great apart from a mentor you have a great understanding of human mentality as how a trader react in desperation when there is no great setup.

    thanks for making us a calm trader even in odd time.

    Reply
  5. Colin

    Hi Once again thanks’ for the article. These articles help keep me on track. I am one who is guilty of over trading and over analyzing the chart on my screen in front of me.

    Reply
  6. Brian

    G’day Mate! Thanks for sharing Nial. Your Daily chart price action insights are powerful, and a great light to the trading community. I have found that reversal candles at support/ resistance levels are very strong signals for momentum, and can lead to larger trade opportunities. To add to your point, we are wise to test a strategy, hone it until it works, and stay with it consistently. Otherwise human emotions are too confusing, and lead to “system changing”. Best to you and yours Good Sir. Thanks.

    Reply
  7. Efe

    It’s as if Nial has faced all of the problems beginner traders face and he has solved every single problem and is writing about it to us. For me it is just a matter of time before I make a mistake and come back to read what Nial has written about it and find out how to avoid that mistake.

    Reply
  8. Bello

    nice article thanks alot

    Reply
  9. Bello

    nice article

    Reply
  10. Yudi Purwanto

    Thank you Mr.Nial…nice article,it’s very helpfull to me….

    Reply
  11. Lucky Gentle

    Thank you Mr. Nial this is really wonderful. I appreciate this.

    Reply
  12. AY

    Great article..It is easier said than done! One thing all traders should recognise is the fact that
    ‘EMOTION IS STRONGER THAN REASON’
    You can not change that in aday. Happy trading

    Reply
  13. Ages, Nigeria

    Thank you mentor Nial… More grace!

    Reply
  14. Sujay

    Very nice article… One question on your point #5: I read informtion on other websites/watch videos but i gather info only on price action and dont get into other stategies & methods. Will this also fall under this information addiction? Please guide…

    Reply
  15. rajesh vishwakarma

    Thanks for your valuable lessons . Just by recalling these keywords i can avoid the destructive thought process and improve my trading results to great extent.

    Reply
  16. Pattrek John

    As a forex trader , he must avoid such mistakes.

    Reply
  17. William

    Very well said Nial.
    I am guilty as charged on all nine of these points.
    I decided to start you’re course on price action.
    Keep up the good work.
    Thanks. :)

    Reply
  18. kingsley

    Nail you are my Fx idol, I have been wondering in the wilderness of forex for over four years, only burning my account thank God i didn’t give up and now I have found you.all I was thought about Fx was trash and I have happily dump them in the dust been and like a new born babe I have gone back to demo trading following your teaching all the way
    God will continue to add to your knowledge .

    Reply
  19. Selorm

    Great article Mr.Nail

    Reply
  20. marisa

    Thank you Nial. I like the way you simplify all aspects of trading.

    Reply
  21. lilyermina

    100% correct, but difficult to avoid that.

    Reply
  22. Alfredo (Alf)

    Hi Nial,

    As always, every word from you hits the right target
    this is what I used to do and the results… Well! your words
    described them in every detail accurately.
    thanks to your course I have changed and now I stick to the rules.

    Many thanks for sharing with us your knowledge.
    ALF.

    Reply
  23. Jendy Jasper

    What else do I say! A pretty write up!!!

    Reply
  24. Ndukuba

    Absolutely true in everyway. Thanks Nial

    Reply
  25. Arash

    Thanx Coach , Beutiful as Usual .

    Reply