The main factor that separates a successful trader from a failure is how they use their emotions. Only when traders can turn off their emotions can they truly become successful. Here are the four main emotions in play and how successful players deal with them:
Fear
When it comes to forex trading, fear may be a very useful tool. If you let fear affect your decision-making process, you can end up making poor decisions about business transactions, which could result in financial losses. Fear has the capacity to infuse uncertainty into your decision-making process, causing you to be more reluctant and ultimately leading to you believing that you are making the incorrect option as a result of your increased reluctance.
Fear isn’t the only thing at play in the foreign exchange market, though, as this example demonstrates. There’s also the nagging worry of missing out, which is commonly referred to as FOMO (fear of missing out). This drive to avoid missing out on excellent trades, just like the urge to avoid missing out on good opportunities in your day-to-day life, can have a detrimental impact on the decisions you make as a trader, resulting in larger risks.
Dread
A healthy level of dread is necessary for every one of us since it enables us to evaluate the dangers posed by various circumstances. Fear may be managed and even turned into a useful commodity when properly included in forex trading techniques. This enables you to have a level mind and clear perspective even in the face of potentially disastrous market conditions.
The fear that most traders have is likely the fear of losing money that they’ve worked hard to achieve. In the second part of the process, you will need to develop a well-thought-out forex trading plan that has the goal of minimizing the impact of this event by taking risks that are proportionate to their potential rewards. This may involve putting a restriction on the total amount of currency you trade as well as the number of currencies you trade-in.
This will allow you to have a better grip on the amount of money that might be lost. You will be able to guarantee that you are making more reasonable judgments overall if you use a strategy that is both measured and educated and that makes use of fear in a controlled manner to analyze both the markets and your own personal liquidity. Even when losses are incurred, it should be simpler to recover from them if smart judgments are made.
Greed
The majority of individuals enter the foreign exchange market with the intention of generating income. And when the markets are doing well, this aspiration may function as a powerful driver of motivation. On the other side, it’s possible that it might lead to greed. When greed takes control of a person, the first things that generally go out the window are common sense and reasonable reasoning. This isn’t a sustainable approach to trade forex. It might result in your trade account being completely wiped out as well as large financial losses.
On the other hand, there are strategies you may employ to better control your greed and guarantee that it does not have a negative impact on your trading career. Greed is often an instinctual behavior. It is a deeply ingrained component of a person’s mind that drives them to desire to attain more of whatever it is they are striving for, whether it be social standing, monetary worth, or anything else. When it comes to the process of developing your techniques for trading forex, it is essential to be aware of the indicators of greed that exist inside your own personality.
Have you always been very competitive and primarily motivated by monetary value? It is recommended that you establish a solid forex trading plan that you adhere to at all times, even when you make big gains from your trades. Doing so will help you overcome this problem. This necessitates making certain that your forex trading methods are founded upon sound commercial judgments and making use of industry-accepted best practices for risk management and analysis in each and every trade transaction. This involves regularly reminding yourself that you shouldn’t trade with any amount of money that you can’t afford to lose if you want to be successful in trading.
Revenge
The fact of the matter is that any investment in a business will put you in danger. The danger is of incurring significant financial losses. However, as a forex trader, you need to know how you deal with these feelings. It might be the determining factor in how quickly you bounce back and how successful you are overall. It is common for foreign exchange traders to have sentiments of irritation. This is especially when trading dealings do not go according to their predictions.
These traders frequently place the blame for their losses on the market. This manifests itself as unreasonable and aggressive exchanges that are only motivated by feelings, such as anger or fear. As a consequence of this, many vindictive traders ignore logic and the forex trading plan they carefully crafted in order to try to recoup the money they lost trading. This invariably leads to further uninformed trade deals. This can result in additional losses that can quickly deplete your trading account balance.
All forex traders should be aware of the potentially harmful nature of the feeling of retribution. This is comparable to that of greed. Even while making financial investments in the currency market always involves some level of danger. Revenge trading may be avoided by ensuring that you keep to your established trading forex tactics. In the same way that you did with the other feelings, you need to emphasize the significance of using rational thought processes. That and accurate data analysis to inform your decisions will ensure that your judgment is not clouded by frustration. Especially at previous losses or market fluctuations that are beyond your ability to control.
Excitement
There is a tremendous feeling of pleasure and excitement that comes after a string of profitable transactions. This is the opposite of the crushing disappointment that comes with suffering significant losses and engaging in revenge trading. It is only natural that you should have a boost in confidence. This is as a result of this sensation since you believe that you are doing a good job of interpreting market movements and choosing the appropriate actions.
However, despite its generally good connotations, this mental state is also associated with the negative trait of overconfidence. This, if not recognized and mitigated by traders, can pose a threat to their financial well-being. Having an unrealistically high opinion of your own capabilities might frequently lead you to give up on your forex trading strategy. This is why successful traders turn off their emotions. If they don’t, excitement takes over which is the last thing they need.
It should come as no surprise that this will, more often than not, result in losses. This, like all of the emotions listed above, may quickly spiral out of control. Instead, you should give yourself permission to be buoyed up by your triumphs. However, you should also make sure that you always remain grounded in the decisions that you make. Because of this, even if you have tremendous success in forex trading, you will be able to maintain a sense of modesty and realism about the market. This will enable you to approach each transaction with a clear head and a level perspective. You should have a solid grasp of these major emotional characteristics. That and the ways in which they may be properly handled within your forex trading techniques. You will then be one step closer to becoming a successful trader.
How Successful Traders Turned Off Their Emotions
So how do successful traders turn off their emotions? They don’t let fear, greed, revenge, and excitement take control of them. They understand that it is important to play with your head, not your heart. If you have a good trading strategy and proper money management skills, doing this would be a piece of cake.