Trader self-analysis. Where to begin?

The most difficult stage in a trader's career is creating stability in trading results. It so happened that today you can find hundreds of stories of getting rich quick and making money in the foreign exchange market. However, for the most part, they have one end - the drain of the earned and the complete loss of the deposit. The reality is that it is not a problem to find a trading strategy and start using it in practice. The real challenge is to achieve stability in trading results, which would allow you to plan your life for the future and once and for all say goodbye to other sources of income (such as work). A very interesting fact is that success in trading comes only through the realization of one's own mistakes, weaknesses and shortcomings. Only a trader's introspection can reveal them.

And in today's article, we will try to give you tips on how to introspect, how to identify the shortcomings of your strategy and what you should pay close attention to. Trading strategy analysis Self-analysis of a trader is possible only under one condition - the availability of statistics. The fact is that in order to understand your mistakes, you need to trade for some time, and for the sake of objectivity, it is better to do this on a real account. A preliminary analysis of the strategy with a demo account makes little sense, since it is the psychological factor that is crucial in working with a real deposit. In order to increase efficiency and understand your weaknesses, we suggest that you analyze the following criteria for your strategy: The ratio of profitability of short and long trades; Profitability on trading assets; Trading time; Duration of holding positions; The ratio of profitability of short and long trades In the process of analyzing your own trading, it is very important to find out in which direction, in most cases, positions are in profit or loss. As a rule, there is a slight skew between the profitability of buying and selling, but in some cases this can be decisive. For example, it is very difficult for many traders to buy, because the growth of an asset is slow and stretched over time.

At the same time, for the most part, it is much easier to work out sales from a psychological point of view, because collapses occur at lightning speed and are larger. One way or another, having understood a profitable trading direction for yourself, you can build your strategy in such a way as to increase the likelihood of a positive outcome in your favor. By the way, such an analysis is also useful for Expert Advisors. The fact is that when drawing a robot on a chart, you can prohibit it from opening buy or sell positions. Profitability on trading assets In terms of diversification and reinsurance, a huge number of professionals prefer multi-currency trading, trading on several trading assets at the same time. Beginners also randomly choose currency pairs, because signals for one asset are rare, which cannot simply satisfy the interest and desire for action. However, few people think about the fact that the effectiveness of the same strategy on different currency pairs is always different.

This is primarily due to the peculiarities of volatility. After analyzing your report with transactions, you will identify those trading assets that bring you the biggest profit and loss. By eliminating unprofitable currency pairs, you will cut off risks in the future, which will stabilize your trading and make it more efficient. By the way, one unprofitable asset with high volatility is enough for a trader to forget about stability once and for all. Trading time Unfortunately, a huge number of traders do not know about the existence of trading sessions, and their trading process takes place only in minutes of free time. As a consequence, this leads to the fact that the results of preliminary testing do not agree with the real results. However, the problem is even deeper, because at certain hours the strategy can give more profitable signals, and in some periods bring only losses.

This is primarily due to the change in price activity at certain intervals. Having determined the optimal trading sessions, you will be able to build the correct trading mode and reduce the number of unprofitable positions. However, you should not row all pairs with the same brush, since the activity on each of them can be completely different. Duration of holding positions Another criterion for the effectiveness of your strategy, which you did not even know about, is the average amount of time after which the order turns out to be unprofitable or profitable. The fact is that very often traders earn only on strong impulses, when the price knocks out profit after a short period of time. However, as soon as the order is in a chatter, when the price is rooted to the spot, you will surely overtake a loss. By determining the optimal time to hold a position in the market, you can minimize your losses by closing unsuccessful trades ahead of schedule without waiting for Stop Loss to be triggered.

By the way, many traders in the same way they approach early closing of the transaction, even if it is profitable. In conclusion, it is worth noting that introspection also includes psychological aspects. After all, if working with numbers does not help you, you will have to give yourself a clear answer, have you played a trader as such? To become a player is a waste of time, however, in this case, there can be no question of any stability and professionalism .