#578: Top 5 Forex Trading Mistakes to Avoid

02/23/25 • 9 min

Top 5 Forex Trading Mistakes to Avoid

Podcast:

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#578: Top 5 Forex Trading Mistakes to Avoid

00:33 – What you must do in order to succeed as a Forex trader.
00:46 – #1 You must have confidence in your trading strategy.
02:00 – #2 Forget Pips and understand Percentages.
03:50 – #3 High Reward:Risk trades.
05:35 – #4 Don’t let trading control your life.
06:40 – #5 Belong to a trading community.
07:52 – 17 minutes Masterclass and Book a Call.
08:52 – Blueberry Markets as a Forex Broker.
09:14 – Comments, Like & Subscribe.

Today, I’m going to discuss the five things that you must have as part of your trading plan in order to be a successful, independent and profitable forex trader. Really important this. Let’s get into the more right now.

Hey there, Traders! Andrew Mitchem here at The Forex Trading Coach with video and podcast number 578.

What you must do in order to succeed as a Forex trader.

That’s right today I’m going to give you my five top points that you must have in order to become a successful trader, but a profitable trader and also an independent and knowledgeable trader. So let’s get into it.

#1 You must have confidence in your trading strategy.

Now the first point is you must have full and utter confidence in your trading strategy. You must know exactly what to do when to do it. You must have proof in your strategy that it’s been proven across different markets, across different time frame charts, across a large amount of length of time that you’ve traded that on demo and small live accounts before taking it a little bit more serious on a bigger candle problem.

But you have to have that strategy. Why? Well, otherwise you’re going to doubt yourself. Aren’t you? Going to see something and you go, I’m not quite sure what to do here or you start gambling or you leave a trade because you’ve had a few losing trades. And of course, that’s the one that would have won. And you do all these silly things and you break the rules, you break your plan and it all comes down to having no confidence or a lack of confidence in what you are doing as a trader yourself and or your trading strategy.

It’s because it’s not proven, because you’re not really 100% committed and confident with it. And so to have a trading strategy, you’re fully on board with is the most important thing as part of being a successful and independent trader.

#2 Forget Pips and understand Percentages.

The second point is you must understand risk. Forget pips, do not count your success or your failure on pips is just madness.

Luckily, over the last number of years, more and more people have figured that out. But when I started, everybody talked in pips and I’m talking 20 years ago now. But luckily today people understand percentages of risk. Now, for me, it’s vitally important that you have low and controlled risk on every single one of your trades and it’s equal.

So what that does is one, it gives you peace of mind that knowing that if a trade goes against you and we all have trades, it get stopped in you. No it’s perfect. It’s a part of trading. You got to accept it. But if a trade goes against us that’s fine. Providing that the set up that we took at the time look good and you can have some fantastic looking trade setups.

And sometimes the market goes against you. Something happens, news announcement, somebody says something, whatever it is and the trade just goes wrong, that’s that’s life. Okay? But if the trade goes against you, you have to know that you lose a set low and pre known amount as a percentage of your trading account. Therefore it doesn’t matter if you’re trading $1,000, $10,000, $100,000, $1 million, it doesn’t matter.

It’s still the same percentage risk. It also means that it doesn’t matter whether I’m trading a monthly chart or a 15 minute time frame chart. For me, my trades all have the same risk. So as an example, it’s that 15 minute chart trade was the profit or the monthly chart lost all the other way around. It doesn’t really matter.

I know how much I’m losing as a percentage of my account on either of those two trades. ...

Top 5 Forex Trading Mistakes to Avoid

Podcast:

#578: Top 5 Forex Trading Mistakes to Avoid

Hey there, Traders! Andrew Mitchem here at The Forex Trading Coach with video and podcast number 578.

What you must do in order to succeed as a Forex trader.

#1 You must have confidence in your trading strategy.

#2 Forget Pips and understand Percentages.

The second point is you must understand risk. Forget pips, do not count your success or your failure on pips is just madness.

I know how much I’m losing as a percentage of my account on either of those two trades. ...

Previous Episode

#577: How to Avoid Common Forex Strategy Failures

How to Avoid Common Forex Strategy Failures

Podcast:

#577: How to Avoid Common Forex Strategy Failures

In this video:
00:25 – Failing trading strategies.
01:00 – A lack of trading knowledge.
02:09 – What is the actual price?
03:35 – A signal service website.
04:33 – What makes us different?
05:15 – 16 years of coaching.
06:01 – 17 minutes Masterclass and Book a Call.
06:21 – Blueberry Markets as a Forex Broker.
07:01 – Comments, Like & Subscribe.

Why is it that so many trading strategies fail to deliver? They look promising and then they fail? Let’s get into that a more right now.

Hey there, Traders! This is Andrew Mitchem here, the owner of The Forex Trading Coach with video on podcast number 577.

Failing trading strategies.

Today I want to talk about failing trading strategies. Why do so many strategies fail? You hear the stats out there like 90-95% of all people lose money when trading. So what is it about that the why? Why this strategy is just not working?

It’s quite annoying for people. You know, people would put a lot of time and effort into developing trading strategies. They do a lot of backtesting, a lot of research, and inevitably things go wrong when they take it live. So a few reasons.

A lack of trading knowledge.

One of the main reasons is actually a lack of trading common sense and knowledge within the strategy itself. And what I mean by that is a few things. A lot of people just fail to actually understand what is happening in the market right now. Actually, is it a good time to be trading right now based on what you’re seeing on the charts? And that, of course, can determine by the timeframe chart you’re trading, the time of day you’re trading the currency pair or even the market.

If you’re looking at cryptos or metals indices, etc.. But a lot of people just rely so much on a big mismatch of indicators. And this one crossing over that one and all these results look really cool. The indicators look really flashy and and look how I’ve done it myself. Years and years ago I did exactly that. I was over optimizing things.

I was making the perfect, you know, curve, results and and everything on paper was looking amazing until I took it live. And time after time after time, the strategy failed and I lost money. And it gets very frustrating because, as mentioned, people spend a lot of time trying to work out a strategy for them, but they fail to look at things like the price, the obvious thing, like what is the price right now?

The amount of times I see people like selling signals and services. And as an example, there’s a big right number in the way, and they’re taking it buy trade straight into that round number. Like why would you do that? That just makes no sense to me. But whether that’s an automated system or that’s because this line crossed over that line and it says buy now that’s what they do.

What is the actual price?

They fail to look at the right hand side and go, that’s a round number. And oh, let’s have a look back through history. You wouldn’t believe it. But every time that round number has been hit in the past multiple currencies, it hits that level and falls away again. So guess what’s likely to happen right now? It’s likely to head back up there and drop away again.

And so if you understand candles and you have a strategy that looks at the price and understands what’s happening in the market, you can look at that and say, I think is a great opportunity for sell trade here.

My longer term might be down. You know, all these things that we look at could be saying a sell trade but a lot of other people were looking at this and they’re crossing over, something’s crossing over another line and they’re just taking it by trade just willy nilly, because this line’s crossed over that line and that’s their strategy.

Now, when they developed that strategy, they probably tested it, back tested it, curve fitted it, over optimize it. And it worked beautifully again until they take it live.

A signal service website.

Give you another example. A few w...

Next Episode

#579: What Every Trader Needs to Know About Broker Time Settings

What Every Trader Needs to Know About Broker Time Settings

Podcast:

#579: What Every Trader Needs to Know About Broker Time Settings

In this video:
00:28 – What time do your charts start the new trading day?
01:56 – 5:00 P.M. EST New York time is when the charts open for the new day.
02:50 – Does your broker have a “Sunday candle”?
03:58 – Have a look at the brokers that I use – see here https://theforextradingcoach.com/forex_trading_resources/
04:32 – 17 minutes Masterclass and Book a Call.
05:03 – Comments, Like & Subscribe.

Is your Forex Broker’s Trading Platform set to the right time zone? If it’s not, it could be causing you many unnecessary losses. Let’s find out about that and more right now.

Hey there, Traders! It’s Andrew Mitchem here, the owner of The Forex Trading Coach with video and podcast number 579.

What time do your charts start the new trading day?

You can ask the question about forex brokers and the time that their platform start the trading day and the trading week. It’s really important that you get this right, because maybe there’s a lot of people out there that just don’t understand it and don’t understand understand the importance of getting it correct.

So it doesn’t matter where you live in the world, the correct start time of the new week and each day of the trading week is always at 5:00 P.M. New York time. That’s Eastern Standard Time. So again, it doesn’t matter where you live. Doesn’t matter where I live. All you need to do is convert your local time into that 5:00 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, new York time start of day.

And obviously with most people around the world, they will have daylight saving. When you change from, you know, into summer, into winter, etc. and that’s the same also in New York. But 5:00 P.M. New York time is always 5:00 P.M. New York time. So the only thing that’s going to change is what that converts to in your local time zone.

So really important that you understand that. And there could be differences like for me right now in, March, we are in summer time in the southern hemisphere. But of course, in the northern hemisphere where New York is, it’s still like wintertime, winter in the spring. And, you know, vice versa. When they go to summer, we go to winter.

5:00 P.M. EST New York time is when the charts open for the new day.

But you have to understand that 5:00 PM New York time is always 5:00 P.M. New York time. So get that bit right and you’ll be fine. So how do you check that on your forex brokers trading platform? Well, the easy way to do that is to see when the new week starts. So when the charts open for the first time in the week, that should be Sunday 5:00 P.M. New York time, and each subsequent day will be 5:00 P.M. New York time.

And if you’re seeing that on your charts, generally if you go down to like a one hour chart, it will start at 00:00 Timestamp and you will see that on your charts and you’ll know in your local time zone what time that is. You’ll know that’s the start of the day. You’ll also figure out that that converts to 5:00 PM New York time. Perfect. You’re good to go.

Does your broker have a “Sunday candle”?

The issue that we find not as much today is it used to happen, but some brokers used to have what we call a Sunday candle, and that would have been a candle that lasts 2 or 3 hours, at the beginning of the week before their first full day starts. Now, when you think about the problems that causes is the charts.

So if you’re using light indicators or support and resistance levels whenever you’re using, it assumes that one bar is equal. So it assumes that in the correct chart you should have five days on the daily charts. Each of them having exactly 24 hours. And if you do, fantastic. Everything’s good. The issue, though is if you’re broke, it doesn’t do that.

And it has this small candle at the beginning of the week and it’s representing effectively one day. But it’s not because it might only be a handful of hours. Generally, the market doesn’t move much at the very beginning of the week, and so all your indicators, you...