Learning Forex the hard way (by losing your investment) doesn’t seem like too much fun, does it? To avoid making costly mistakes, there are several key pieces of advice you should know. This advice might not make you as rich as you’d like to be, but it can help prevent you from losing your shirt.
- Know where you stand. For your best chance to succeed in Forex, know what your possibilities are, the possibilities of success and of loss. Don’t go into trading currency with stars in your eyes and think that while others have lost some investment capital that will never, ever happen to you.
It might anyway, but, if you know where you stand because you have a well tested strategy and you’re not going to deviate from that strategy, the odds of you succeeding where others haven’t greatly increase. Have both short term and long term trading goals in place.
- The second best Forex advice is to listen to yourself. You knew what your limitations were when you began your Forex journey with the thought to become the best investor you could be. Don’t try to talk yourself out of that plan. Over analysing a trade can cause procrastination. The best Forex advice often comes from your own instinct and gut feeling.
- The third best Forex advice is when you see trade take off either to buy or sell and the potential profits are in your favour or your profit target, don’t panic and exit. Stick to your initial trade plan. Ride the wave and then get off.
- The fourth best Forex advice is to have a strategy that lets you know when enough is enough. You may get in a trade but start to panic as its going against you. Before you minimise your losses, analysis the market condition as it just could be you enter the trade just before a news or when the market is low in volume. Don’t try to stay in the trade to recoup any losses. Instead, chalk that one up to experience.
- The fifth best Forex advice is to manage your risk. Ensure you understand the pip value eg. $1 or $10 per pip. Don't try to trade more that one or two trades per day, as you take five trades and they all turned negative, it means that you will lose on all five trades.
- The sixth best Forex advice is keep your spread low with your broker. Many brokers will offer you 1 – 2 pips spread on the major currencies such as EURUSD or GBPUSD. However with other currencies the spread may increase eg. GBPAUD, GBPCAD. Therefore, ensure you check the spreads of your broker.
- The seventh best Forex advice and probably the simplest is to make sure you’re not stumbling over your own two feet. A trader investing without knowledge is as bad as getting behind the wheel of an 18 wheeler and hoping you can parallel park in a space that’s only big enough for a moped. It’s just not the right fit.
By taking the best Forex advice to heart, you can make your Forex investment one you’ll be glad you experienced.