Calm down.
That’s the best advice for any situation, and it’s the fastest way to ensure your brain will be able to figure out your predicament, even though those words feel snarky or insulting sometimes. (If you ever had a teenager in your house, you’d know what I mean!)
Calming down is also crucial to making the best Forex trading decisions. Think about a time when you had a trade opened and the market didn’t do what you expected. It might go like this.
“My trade is losing.”
“No. This is bad. It’s thousands of dollars!”
“Oh my gosh! This can’t be happening. It’s racing against me and the loss is bigger than I expected. All of this week’s profits just flew out the window!”
“What should I do?”
Calm down.
No amount of panic or arguing with the market is going to increase your options or improve the status of your existing loss. No amount of disdain or denial is going to change the fact.
If you need to make a decision about a losing trade, it’s easy to calm down in the heat of the moment by looking at your chart and narrowing it down to 2 choices.
- The market is still in the correct position for your trade. Keep it open.
- The market is no longer in the correct position for your trade. Close it.
Don’t you feel more calm already? You may not always like the truth, but the truth about your trade really will keep you calm so you can make the best trading decisions.
Calm down because chances are the market will produce another opportunity to get back into your trade with better timing. If it doesn’t, taking the loss while it’s manageable means you can quickly forget about it.
Calm down because there is a way to fix the problem. Every time. Every situation. No exceptions.
Here’s a bonus Forex trading tip. If you want to feel even more calm, keep track of how often waiting it out actually produced a better result. You might prove to yourself that closing the trade earlier and being ready to get back in produced the better outcome a lot more often.