Forex Psychology

Why Demo Account Performance Is Often Better Than Real Account Performance
by William M White
Over the past several years, the popularity of online currency trading has grown substantially. Each day, online FX brokerage firms attract new investors - each of them lining up with a glint in their eye, lured in by promises of easy money. Most of these companies allow you to sign up for a free demo account which lets you place mock trades using their trading platform to get a feel for the excitement of currency trading. In the casual world of free demo accounts - many young traders find they are able to garner impressive profits without a significant amount of effort. But transferring this success from a demo account to a real account is far less common. Why is this?

Taking Control
by Chuck LeBeau
In my mind, control is an important issue that has a great deal to do with understanding the process of trading and doing it successfully. There many parts of the trading process where exercising control is relatively easy and other parts of the process where control is much more difficult. For example, the entry into a trade is a point where we are very much in control. We set the conditions and the market must meet our conditions or we will simply refuse to participate. This is clearly the point in the trading process where we can exercise maximum control.

Discipline, Mental Skills and the Psychology of Trading
by Jay Lakhani
Most traders do not realize that successful trading comes from a belief and confidence within oneself. It's an attitude! It's thinking like a winner. It's trading to win, not trading to lose. The fact is, trading, as all of you should know, is a zero sum game. You either are a winner or a loser.

How To Control Fear and Greed in Trading
by Tim Wreford
There is an old saying that the market is driven by fear and greed. Anyone that has placed more than a couple of trades will surely have experienced these two emotions.All traders experience emotion. The distinction between a successful trader and an unsuccessful trader comes down to how they deal with that emotion. Let's look at how these emotions affect a successful trader and an unsuccessful trader in various scenarios.

Psychology of Trading
by Tim Wreford
The psychological aspect of trading is usually underestimated by those new to trading. The psychological problem for most traders is the fear of losing - ironically it is this fear that causes most traders to lose money in the long run. The fear of losing can manifest itself in a number of ways.

Learning to Trade: The Psychology of Expertise
by Brett N. Steenbarger, Ph.D.
When people hear that I am an active trader and a professional psychologist, they naturally want to hear about techniques for mastering emotions in trading. That is an important topic to be sure, and later in this article I will even have a few things to say about it. But there is much more to psychology and trading than “trading psychology”, and that is the ground I hope to cover here. Specifically, I would like to address a surprisingly neglected question: How does one gain expertise as a trader?

The Psychology of the Individual
The first step as an individual is believing in yourself and your own abilities. One of the most startling discoveries when you start trading or may have observed from the stock market is how many experts get it so wrong so often. This is a real confidence booster when you begin to understand that with a solid background and knowledge, discipline and a well defined trading plan that you will often outperform many professionals.