Why You Shouldn’t Monitor Your Trades…

Hello there !! It’s been a little while since I haven’t been posting on the blog because of school and all the reviews i’m currently doing ! Anyway, I woke up this morning and realized that I forgot to talk about one important point… Indeed, I‘ve forgotten to tell you that it’s not such a great idea to monitor your trades… Read on this little story and find out why…
When I started to trade live it was during vacations so I had a lot of time in order to do what I planned : trade. And being new plus having time results in the fact that I was monitoring my trades… And I can say that it’s very boring, very difficult, very stressing and very unuseful !
It’s very boring because I was staying all the day long in front of a computer waiting for my positions to move…
It’s very difficult because you’ve got to make choices that you wouldn’t have to do if you weren’t monitoring. Indeed, every two minutes you’re asking yourself the same question : “should I close this damn position ??” or “oh my god I’m losing money what Am I going to do do ??”.
And most of all it’s very stressing because of the two precedent points… I mean that psychologically it’s hell because you’re not living anymore ! I was nervous like never before and even if I was kinda profitable it was a very bad moment because I wasn’t appreciating what i was doing !
So what I did is that I told myself : “I‘ve got to stop monitoring those trades or I’m gonna have to stop trading“. And hopefully for me school began one week latter and because of that I wasn’t able to stay home all the day long anymire. And i can say that it has been a great chance.
Why ? Simply because it’s not physically and psychologically possible to monitor your trades ! If you do you’re not gonna last for a long time and you’re gonna get so tired that you’re account will hit the $0 bottom line !
What you’ve got to do is force yourself by opening some trades on the morning and then shut your computer down ! You’ll come back on the evening to see the results ! Moreover I guess that you have some obligations during the day and if you don’t have, please tell somebody to impede your from checking your forex account ! I’m not joking, you’ve got to have somebody who tells you “No No No, it’s not the moment to check your trades now, you’ll see this evening”.
So, just this little post to tell you how much it’s important no to monitor your trades.
Trust me if you stop monitoring your trades you’ll have such better results !
Samuel.



Thanks for those great tips !
I like the way you write : frankly…
Regards, Marks
I guess it depends on how long you intend to let a trade run. For me, I have a scalper mindset that only 20-30 pips would do, so I don’t mind sitting in front of the PC to watch a bit.
But I guess you will be right in higher timeframes where minute-to-mintue monitoring may become meaningless.
yup! i agree with you.
it’s better to stop monitoring rather than stop trading.