“I hardly spend any time trading” – Steve Lescarbeau
Many new traders are very active, but without achieving much. They spend a lot of time reading news, taking in analysis, and digesting charts. This keeps them busy, but does not necessarily help their trading at all.
Good trading does not need to require that much time. Instead, your time can and should be devoted instead to writing a trading plan that fits you, working on your psychology, and researching your system.
It takes discipline and self-awareness to stop doing what is not working, and allocate time to things that are much more conducive to your trading success. What could you stop doing that does not help your trading?
Excessive activity leads to overtrading
One of the things that I have noticed when I talk to, or read about, good traders, is that many of the discretionary traders are very selective about when they enter. They only trade their high conviction ideas, or they adjust their position size so that they are trading much smaller on their lower conviction trades.
They don’t play, and they don’t overtrade.
In contrast, excessive activity and a desire to be busy lead to a fair amount of overtrading amongst new traders. They place trades that they don’t strongly believe in, just for the sake of doing something. This chews up their capital.
Then, when the really good trades do come along, they don’t have as much capital as they should, and they are restricted in how much profit they can realistically chase.
This is another reason to be careful about being too active with your trading – it can be quiet wasteful in the long run.
About the Author
Sam Eder is a currency trader and author of the Definitive Guide to Developing a Winning Forex Trading System and the Advanced Forex Course for Smart Traders (https://fxrenew.com/forex-course/). He is a part owner of Forex Signal Provider www.fxrenew.com (You can get a free trial). If you like Sam’s writing you can subscribe to his newsletter for free (https://fxrenew.com/newsletter-sign-up).
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