Instructions for your first LIVE broker trading account
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To open a live or a demo trading account please visit the Forex brokers area. Simply click on any link which will take you to the registration page.
Following our previous video on the importance of having a demo account we are now focusing on providing instructions on what to do and what not to do once you sign up to your first live trading account.
Do not fund your trading account with everything
One thing that we see a lot unfortunately is traders getting slightly too eager. Once you are used to a demo environment and you are comfortable with the trading platform and the trading strategies you are using; eagerness is created to get involved in the live markets. That’s fine; there is nothing wrong with that but this eagerness tends to guide traders towards funding their account with everything they have because they think they are going to make money straight away and that they’ll be successful all week or month.
Please refrain from doing this because if you fund your account with all the money you have that’s where it ends for you. There is no reserve. You don’t know how many mistakes you are going to make at this stage. You also don’t know what you are going to forget from what you have been taught because you haven’t got the experience of being involved in this ‘real’ environment yet.
In the demo environment there was no risk, so even though you had the live market in front of you, feelings, thought processes and other important factors change when you are in the actual live market for the first time. As a result, you don’t know how you are going to react in really difficult situations to prevent losing a lot of money. With this in mind ensure that you fund your account by 10% of what you have on a monthly basis so that you get used to the amount of capital you could win or lose.
Control your emotions
Even though you have been taught how to trade successful strategies you need to remember that you made mistakes to get to the point of success. It is these mistakes that can stay in your mind unless you train yourself like a robot. For example, if we have a trade with a 50 pip profit target but it reverses at the 40 pip mark and drops to -10 pips and your stop loss is just a few pips away where it looks like it will be taken out – most new traders will exit at this point.
They will get very nervous as they don’t want to lose money. In the end that trade could reverse again back up in the original direction, hitting the profit target as planned. It is situations like this that tell us to always let our winners run and minimize on losing trades but let our stop loss provide the losing position for us. Never create your own losing position by moving the stop loss.
Apply money management to EVERY trade
There is no exception to this rule. Use your stop loss and if you have losing trades make sure that you never double up your investment in the next trade to regain that loss because mistakes or factors working against you can also occur in that trade.
Your eagerness to regain losses could be the culprit to losing the total capital that you have but if you only invest $100 or $200 (depending on availability) you should be ok. This amount of money (or any amount you are comfortable with) will help you stay alert while not feel upset that a small chunk could disappear.
Always follow all DEMO account rules
Make sure that every rule is applies to every single trading strategy and every emotional rule that you have mastered is here to stay, now that you are trading live markets. Realistically, nothing has changed but the main factor; which is the use of real money; is the part that has certainly changed. So, stick to everything you did in your demo account and you should be good to go.
Always reference your profit/loss
Your profit and loss total should always be the focal point of your trading day. Make sure that you know how many trades you’ve lost and won. Ensure that you know WHY you lost and won those trades. This way you will learn from it day by day.
The profit and loss sheet will display the time and the chart of all your orders which enables you to locate them in hardly any time. Never go into the next trading day not knowing what happened the day before through your actions. Learn from your mistakes because you will make some, and always reference your trading account and your trading plan to make sure that you know where you financially stand currently in your trading account.