Success does not come easily. There is no sure way to success, but I am sure no one has ever succeeded without taking responsibility for their actions.
There are circumstances that occur beyond our control. But how you interact with them is none of them. You can control your emotions, reactions, and decisions.
Most of us overlook this, especially when we are trading. Instead of taking responsibility for a bad trade, we blame the forex market, our broker, the charts, and sometimes even the cat outside the window.
But aren’t we the ones doing our homework and identifying the opportunities and risks in the forex market? Determine our entrances and exits? Our stance on scaling?
Everyone has the same market to trade, so if you are not doing well while the trader is next to you, you need to accept the fact that it is you and not someone else/anything holding you back.
Forex trading is not for irresponsible boys and girls but for disciplined men and women.
So why do some traders routinely turn to others when their trades go wrong? The answer is simple: it’s human nature. Shifting blame onto another person or thing relieves the individual of some of the psychological pain caused by a mistake or loss.
Here are some examples:
Trader Joe’s: Follower
Joe takes the same deals as some popular business figures. When he loses, he shrugs it off and says the influencers’ strategies simply didn’t work or are wrong. He follows and searches for other influencers who might give him winning business signals.
Merchant Jack: The Great Prophet
Jack regularly blames the market when his trading stops. He believes his devices would have worked if only economic events had happened as predicted.
You can also hear him curse the market players whenever a strong technical support or resistance is broken.
Merchant Sam: The Mechanical Merchant
Sam uses expert advisors and other trading strategies found in forex forums. Like Trader Joe, he believes that all his losses are due to wrong EA and fake strategies. After a month of losses, he is stepping up and looking for other strategies rather than adjusting his current approaches.
What is common among the above traders is that they all refuse to admit that in the end they are the ones who took the trades.
While there is nothing wrong with following another trader’s forex setup, losing to wildcard event, or using expert advisors, it can be damaging if they refuse to acknowledge their role in the trigger pull and fail to manage their own trading risk.
Don’t avoid the pain of responsibility because that kind of pain is good. It lets you know if something is wrong, which will hopefully force you to adjust, adapt, and avoid the mistake that caused the pain.
The sooner you realize your responsibility, the sooner you will admit to yourself that you still have work to do.
Get to work, rely on your own efforts, and draw your own conclusions about how you want to get involved in the market.
There is nothing wrong with listening to other people’s forex trading advice, but you – and only you – will make the final decision. Don’t let anyone else make your decisions for you.
So, don’t be afraid of your losses and mistakes – accept them, own them and learn from them! Review and reflect on your forex performance with the most important trading task in the trade journal.
Through this process, you will make your own decisions and take 100% responsibility for them. Only then will you be on the right track to becoming a consistently profitable trader.