Dear friends, before my last education post, I have to say it has been a long time since I was very active. I have been busy and a bit unmotivated to post on TradingView. The place changed much, and very few times good strong analysts come up on top. People I look up to, analysts and traders with strong years of experience and good trading strategies are buried down with few views. It's just a pity because there is little respect for logic and good strategies left over here.
Still, I get messages often that sound like this: "I bought X coins and made 500% profit but then I did not take profit, I changed X for Y coins and Z coins and then changed back to X and then again to Y and then it fell and now I am 30% (20%, 10%?") from where I started. Help me get it back!" - Same story again and again.
I wish new traders would play this scenario in their head before starting trading with 0 knowledge. Also, I think it would be smarter to not start giving trading advice after they only traded for a short period. It creates a false impression of expertise, which will hurt them badly when the markets start falling. And worse, other people follow their advice and the effect multiplies. I have traded for 11 years, and in some areas I am a beginner myself. Plus, I read and follow traders with 30+ years of experience I look up to, and I feel like an ant compared to them. That is the reality.
You know, if trading would be easy, everyone would be riding Lambos, and to me, it seems that too many people are riding the bus after the past months.
These stories like the one from the message are sad, and every one living it feels they are in the greatest pain. It gave me the idea for this series of posts. Why do people keep losing? Especially beginners, as they make up the mass of the hype on the posts in TradingView.
I owe a lot to this community, it’s the place where we made so many good trades together and shared our ideas for a long time, and I think it will be good for the new people who joined the platform to get a chance to learn good practices.
As I said, I will post a series of tips and solutions to beginner mistakes. Here is tip #1:
If you are losing a lot you might not know how trading strategies work and you are not using a strategy
This problem, I see a lot! I said it before but it sounds boring – why to use a strategy when you it looks so easy to win a ton of money in a short time?
People! Strategies are cool!
Strategies help you eliminate emotions from trading and they provide you with the confidence that if you follow your plan you will profit in the long run. When you know you profit in the long run you will stop feeling terrible if you make one mistake or if a few trades are lost. It is part of pro trading and all strategies take into account losses, not only profits.
People are afraid of the red color and the “-“ sign.
Many beginners are afraid to see their trade on red, and I just want to assure you – it’s ok. If you are working with a tested method, created and validated in years by a professional trader, you should not have stress. You will know when to take profit and you will know to get out when the stop is reached and wait for a better trading opportunity. You will understand why staying in bad trade is bad and why HODL in hope it will go back up is a very naive strategy. You should not hope for anything in trading, you should just have strategy.