There is a paradox within trading itself but when using common knowledge that applies to other jobs there is also a paradox about trading as a job. I want to talk mostly about the latter because I can summarize the prior quite quickly. With little thought you will realize that when some traders have their entry triggers to sell others will have entry triggers to buy and both can be profitable overall if they have a solid trading plan. Even that sounds like a paradoxical statement!

This common mistake can actually be broken down in to two sections. The first one being an amplification to fear of loss by trading with money you can’t afford to lose. The second being the personal fear of failure and/or the fear of letting someone in your life down. A whole lot of fear as you can see and to take a quote from a movie “Fear is the Mind Killer”. These psychological elements all need to be addressed before you start because they will have an effect on your results.

This being too mechanical sounds a little contradictory after reading that you need solid rules to follow like a robot. The fact is that the Market is basically Organic and moves as a result of human action; this adds a very tricky element to trading. You now must allow for your trading plan to be able to adapt with the market’s volatility and, for lack of a better word, attitude. It must be as mechanical as possible without being too mechanical :-O

It took me years of reading and observation to arrive at an educated conclusion as to how/if the news should influence my trading. It is definitely worth an article because I haven’t been able to find many others who actually write down these simple truths. Everywhere you look people warn you about not trading the news and others sell you $500/month news feed services like it will make a huge difference.

I can’t help but mention this one, not because it’s an amazing breakthrough in Forex trading but because it has to be up there in the top handful of common mistakes. Human nature provides most people with greed and lack of patience. If you have read my other articles you will know that these traits do not mix with being a successful trader. They force human error and unfortunately will result in your failure.

It’s easy to jump in to things and learn as you go, learn from your mistakes, think you know what you are doing long before you actually do, but when it comes to Forex you don’t want to lose your risk capitol during the learning process. Feel free to dive in and make mistakes on a demo account, learn the ins and outs, just don’t jump the gun on going live. It’s actually a very common mistake and the reason for the ’95% fail’ statistic that you see everywhere. Imagine really starting to figure it out and not having any money to play with! This is why a solid trading plan is a must. Swallow your ego because it doesn’t matter how smart you are, you will not succeed without plenty of preparation work. Below is an example of all the things you should have considered in the development of your trading plan; I will be defining everything in this article for example purposes only.

In this Article I would like to pick up where I left off regarding discipline. The two go hand in hand because now we are simply talking about the discipline to follow your rules, you know, the rules that make up your trading plan that you spent all that time on. Having a good solid trading plan that is based on plenty of research is useless if you don’t follow it, let’s take a look at what can happen.

Based on my observations of people on our planet I fully understand why this is a common mistake. A level of discipline is needed in anything you do if you wish to be great at it and not just good at it. It really is what separates the top 5% of people, in any field, from the other 95%. Discipline in trading however is not an option like it is everywhere else because it is the difference between success and failure as opposed to being the difference between the good and the great. Let’s look at some basic effects of discipline in life that will apply to everyone, then see how we can connect it to trading. The examples I will use in this article may offend some of you but there is nothing I can do about that, try not to be offended by facts, I mean no harm.