By Darrell Martin
…Until you know. So how do you finally discover what you don’t know? If you’re a trader, it means posting your charts, showing your trades, sharing with others to learn and get confirmation from yours peers and mentors. It’s an opportunity to find out what you don’t know and expand your knowledge even more. Unfortunately, learning this the hard way after a costly mistake happens time and time again.
It’s easy for it to happen and can happen to the best of us. Recently, a trader found out how important it was to post his charts, show his trades and learn from his peers and mentors. He was trading and thought what he was doing was correct: his charts, his entries and his exits, but he was struggling and kept having losing trades. Finally, he spoke up and complained in the live trade room where he was a member, about the strategy. He said it wasn’t working and he kept having losing trades. It was then, at another trader’s urging he finally posted his chart in the room for others to see.
Once the chart was posted, the room leader noticed right away he had the wrong size bars for the market he was trading. It was a simple, easy, very correctable mistake. He then had an aha moment and others learned with him. Although they all learned more than just what the correct bar size was for that particular market, they learned how important it was to share, post their charts, to ask questions, to verify and confirm what they’re doing is the correct way to do it.
Why do people hesitate to share, to ask and confirm? There can be as many reasons as there are traders. Maybe they’re afraid of being wrong, or worse yet, being wrong in a chat room where many can see their wrongness, their dreaded, horrible, no good losing mistake. So what is so bad about being wrong, or looking wrong in front of others that holds a person back from asking and posting charts? It’s the feelings that go along with being wrong. The feelings you have when you discover you’re wrong and others have seen you be wrong. Those dreaded feelings can be embarrassment, or even shame. Those feelings are unbearable for some.
Aren’t you trying to be a day trader though? What is so important when you are day trading? It’s your emotions. You need to control your emotions. There are books written on how to control your emotions while trading. An excellent one is Trading In The Zone, by Mark Douglas. It’s also just as important to control your emotions while learning.
What is more important, being right, and looking good or learning to trade correctly for the highest opportunity to profit? Rather than focus or thinking of humiliation, focus instead on the benefits of learning to trade correctly. If you don’t know you’re doing something incorrectly, you could be doing it for a very long time, if you don’t post your charts or request someone to verify your trades. In this business, you need all the help and encouragement you can get. Traders need to help traders in every way. Everyone benefits from it: the giver, the receiver and the audience, for a positive overall experience. Others can be out there doing the same thing or they can realize just like you, the importance of interacting with a supportive, learning, trading community.
You can find real traders helping traders every day in the 17,000 strong Apex Investing member forum available for free access to all traders at www.apexinvesting.com. Free education on trading futures, forex, CFDs as well as Nadex binaries and spreads is available as well.