Quitting forex trading? Then you’ve probably fallen for one of these traps! There are plenty of reasons not to trade and many people never will, but that doesn’t mean you have to quit.
Forex trading is a difficult thing to get right, no matter what anyone tells you. In fact, up to 96% of forex traders give up!
But there are ways of mitigating these traps and securing a fortune, you just need to learn how to spot them.
Professional traders are less likely to quit for the reasons we’ve highlighted, they’ve most likely already gone through them and continued on.
Every trader faces these issues at some point and wants to quit, it’s completely normal.
In this article, we’ll look over the top reasons people quit forex trading and how you can prevent them from happening to you.
Want to learn how to trade forex like a pro? Take our forex trading course!
Top reasons people quit forex trading
There are tonnes of reasons people quit forex trading, but these top three are often prime instigators.
1. They’re losing too much money
Losing too much money tends to be the biggest reason why people quit forex trading and can be a result of the other reasons on this list.
As a beginner, your first goal should be survival. It is very unlikely that you will make much money when you start forex trading. How can you expect to be automatically successful?
You will probably go through a long rough patch at the beginning where you are just emptying your account. As crazy as it sounds, this is pretty normal.
And even when you start making money, you will still make losses. In fact, you will never be 100% profitable.
It’s all about measuring success. For many professional forex traders, a win rate of 50% is successful.
For such traders, to make such a rate work, they aim to make their losses as small as possible and their wins as a big as possible.
This often means getting out of a trade as soon as it starts going bad and staying in a trade when it’s going well.
What you can do
If you’re losing too much money, then you should probably consider trading less and in smaller amounts.
In fact, it is well-known that top forex traders don’t trade that frequently, in reality, the opposite is true - they only trade in specific situations when they know they’re going to make money.
Granted, of course, this takes a long time to recognise such situations!
Further to the above, if you start risking smaller amounts on every trade, your trading account will last a lot longer and you will be able to take advantage of more opportunities.
There is a great rule that many forex traders advise for people with this problem; only ever risk 1% of your trading account on every trade.
You should also put together a good risk management strategy and, obviously, don’t trade money you cannot afford to lose!
People who quit forex trading because they’re losing too much money very likely didn’t set themselves appropriate goals at the begin.
There are also some key things you should avoid doing. One that is often jammed down the throat of many beginners is: Stay away from leverage!
2. They don’t understand what they are doing
This is a huge problem for some beginners. They think when they start trading they’ve found the holy grail. In some senses, it can also be a precursor to the other reasons on this list.
It is highly likely that these individuals have bought into success stories, most of which are likely exaggerated, extremely unique or possibly even fake.
They are simply dazzled by the idea of how much money they can make, ignorant to the fact that forex trading requires a lot of skill.
They are also likely to believe strategies that have been given to them that promise them returns.
Such traders tend to rely on tools to make money instead of their own knowledge. They may strictly follow technical indicators and be completely ignorant of what the market is doing.
They don’t understand the principles behind price action and external factors that affect the market.
Just because you have money to invest in trading doesn’t mean you will make a profit. Money doesn’t always give more money; it can be easily wasted.
Only once you know how the market works, you’ll be able to make your money work for you. Would you invest in the restaurant business without knowing anything about how to run one?
What you can do
You can prevent this from happening to you very easily; teach yourself how to trade and keep learning.
There are a lot of ways you can do this, but first and foremost, you must start dedicating some time to learning.
You cannot expect one video, one article, one online tutorial or one course to readily prepare you for everything you need to know before trading forex.
Quite simply, as we repeat a lot at Trading Education, learning to trade forex is a never-ending process!
The minute you stop learning how to trade forex, you leave yourself open to making mistakes.
You should be careful here not to get bored and quit if you cannot invest the time required to learn to trade.
To get started educating yourself, check out our free forex trading course here.
3. They’re not disciplined enough
It is very possible that you are the exact opposite of the previous point.
You may indeed know how to trade forex and have studied hard to get to where you are today, but if you don’t know how to control your impulses, it can be problematic.
This could just be that you are not seeing results fast enough; you might want to see success now, but unfortunately, for most of us, success a process that happens over time, not immediately.
Forex trading is not a get rich game! To make a profit trading forex requires a lot of skill and experience.
But there are other causes of a lack of discipline.
It might just be that they don’t have the mentality for forex trading. It can be very stressful, especially day trading, which requires a lot of attention.
It might just be the case that you have a great and logical plan, but you just can’t keep to it.
Talking about online trading, what broker would you suggest to a beginner. I know many of them are high rating forex brokers tradersunion.com/ratings/forex/common/, but I am really lost in the dozens of platforms. I read the main selection criteria and roughly understand them. But there should be some other nuances that experienced traders know and can share.