What Psychological Traps Do Beginner Traders Face? What Stands in Their Way to Success?
Author: Timofey Zuev
Let us get started with the simplest questions: how did you find yourself in Forex? What was the reason for you to get interested in such a thing? One of the most popular ways of attracting an untutored searcher of new money sources must be to promise them a quick and easy-to-make profit. Indeed, the Internet is full of ads assuring you that making money in Forex is nice and easy; however, it is not.
Of course, one has to get up really early in the morning to fool such serious-minded and clear-headed people like us: we know that there are no free lunches. However, the more you try to ignore the ads, the more curious you become: how do people make money in Forex? This is the starting point where a beginner makes their first step from simple to complicated techniques, from mere curiosity to engrossing passion. Today, the amount of free information about trading and earning is virtually unlimited: read, study, and try. Imagine how delighted you will be to make your first profit on a demo account!
With your cheeks flaming, you start calculating what profit you could have made on a real account, and how much it would amount to monthly or annually. You make a wide gesture and deposit your money on a real account. Alas, after your first success or even without it you lose your money. It damps your ardor but you realize that there must be a reason for your losses and recall seeing an ad somewhere promising to teach you how to trade in a fortnight. You rush there.
A new step in your studies begins: you learn about indicators, patterns, trends, support and resistance, trading systems, money management, psychology, and other useful things and novelties. Simultaneously, your teachers tell you that in fact, things are simple. Indeed, you succeed again: your demo account is growing, and what you have learned really works. No need to repeat that you deposit your money on a real account – and return to where you got started…
Why do beginners drain their deposits?
There are several answers to the question.
Reason one
Your learning is just a part of your way, the necessary minimum that you need to start making money. The market moves either up or down (for now, we will neglect the times of consolidation). Hence, the first half of beginners will end up with a profit while the second half – with a loss. This first half will immediately open a real account and lose the deposit. Meanwhile, the second half will go on learning, being sure that their effort was not enough – however, they will also open a real account later, explaining their previous losses by a lack of knowledge and experience.
Reason two
All learning, especially in a dealing center, is a kind of hypnosis. As soon as you read something, you immediately start looking for confirmation of the information on charts – and, curiously, you find them. On the other hand, your teachers leave out the cases when you could suffer losses in the same circumstances. When a beginner opens the terminal and tries trading in accordance with the information studied, one of the two things happen: they either make a profit and fill with enthusiasm – or suffer a loss and start thinking something like: “My gosh, I should not have entered here!” or “On the longer timeframe it was okay but on the smaller one I entered counter the trend!” or “I did it right except for the Stop Loss, it was too short!” or “Why on earth did I wait? I should have closed it with a profit!” or something else of the kind. There might be thousands of explanations, however, not many will admit that the strategy was erratic from the start.
Read more at R Blog - RoboForex
Sincerely,
RoboForex team
