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Why over-trading can be harmful to your Forex success

In this video:
1:06 Why Focus on A-Grade Trade Setups
2:44 Be Selective with Trade Positions
4:13 Less Can Be More!

Want to talk about why over-trading can be harmful to your Forex success, so let’s get into that right now.

Hi Forex traders, this is Andrew Mitchem here. The owner of the Forex Trading Coach, and in today’s video and podcast I want to talk about why over-trading can be so detrimental to your Forex success, and it’s a problem that so many traders have.

I know full well what it feels like, because when I started trading I was in exactly the same position. I think the problem is that now most people feel that now they want to be a trader. Whether it’s a part time trader or a full time trader, they feel that they have to always have a position open, or many positions open into the market. Otherwise they feel like they’re not really trading, and so I think people then jump into trades almost like without getting the perfect setups. They just take trades because they feel that they should be doing something, and are just a bit worried about moving or missing moves in the market.

Why Focus on A-Grade Trade Setups

Whereas what you really needs to be doing is eliminating those sort of 50/50 trade set ups, and really focusing on those A grade set ups. Those trade setups that give you those high probability trades, and those great reward to risks. If you can concentrate on those, and try to eliminate some of those more 50/50 setups then you’ll do far better from your trading.

As an example this week I took five trades on Tuesday … Well first of all let’s start with Monday.
Monday I saw nothing. Monday was a really quiet day. Couldn’t really see anything justifying/worth taking.
Tuesday I took five positions over all the different time frames that I look at, and in fact only one of those trades actually got filled into the market because I placed my trades as pending limit orders. Four of them didn’t even get filled in the time allocated to get filled, so those four were automatically deleted. Now the one that did get filled made full profit, and it made 1.52% on my account, and it was just over a three to one reward to risk trade. That was Tuesday.
Wednesday I took two trades.
Yesterday, being Thursday, I took three. One of them has profited, and two have been stopped out.
Moving into Friday, today, I’m probably not expecting too much to happen, because today’s the first Friday of the month.
Therefore it’s non-farm payrolls, or non-farm employment day, so all I’ve taken five, seven, ten trades so far this week, and I’m up 3.9% on my account right now. With still one day to go.

Be Selective with Trade Positions

It just shows that you don’t need to take a huge amount of trades in order to be profitable. For some people ten trades in the week might be a lot. For some people it may be quite a small amount. Just depends on how you trade, but the important thing is to be selective on the positions that you do take.

Just to give you another example, I was talking to some clients of mine over in Canada. Who’ve been with me for several years, and they’ve developed a trading robot, NEA. Using my strategies and principles of trading, and on a live account so far this year, so ten completed months, there up over 44% on their account. With just a 4% draw down, but the interesting thing is they’ve only taken 38 trades. Well the robot’s only taken 38 trades in the entire ten months. That’s taking less than four trades per month, yet they’re still up 44% on a live account.

Now if you say to most people, “I’m going to take only 38 trades in ten months.” Most people would just think that’s completely boring, far too slow, not enough price action, not enough excitement. Talk to them, and you say, “Look automatically we’ve just made 44% in ten months with only a 4% draw down.” You can see the different mindset the investor would just jump on that chance. Whereas the trader who is maybe new or more a gambling mentality, might look at 38 trades a year and think that’s completely boring.

Less Can Be More!

It just goes to show you that less can be more, and select those high probability trades. Trade less. Don’t feel that you’ve got to be in the market all the time. Basically all your doing is not only stressing yourself, but also paying your broker if you’re constantly taking lots of positions.

That’s the lesson for this week. I hope that helps. If you have any questions about trading, drop me an email at [email protected]. I look forward to bringing you more information. Videos and podcast this time, next week.