If you know what can go wrong in trading, it's easy to avoid them. Small mistakes happen all the time, like typing in the wrong stock symbol or setting the wrong buy level. But these are easy to forgive and, if you're lucky, can even make you money. What you should try to avoid, though, is making mistakes because you didn't think things through well. These are the "deadly" mistakes that can ruin not just one or two trades, but whole trading careers. To avoid these pitfalls, you have to keep a close eye on yourself and work hard.
Think of trading mistakes like driving a car on icy roads: if you know that driving on ice is dangerous, you can avoid travelling during a sleet storm. But if you don't know how dangerous ice can be, you might drive on it as if it's not a problem and only realise your mistake after you've gone off the road.
Too many traders are only interested in one market. They may only trade the forex USD/EUR, the E-mini Russell, the E-mini DOW, or certain stocks, among other things. Even though they may feel like they know or are good at this one market, no one, no matter how much experience they have, can always tell what will happen. These people are setting themselves up for disaster because they are bound to make a mistake at some point. And if they only do one thing for a living, they will lose everything they've worked so hard for.
The best way to choose a market isn't to look for the one you seem to understand best. That will always be a little bit of a trick. But you can always count on one market: the one that is moving. You know that when the market goes up, you should buy and when it goes down, you should sell. Even if you've never traded on that market before, it will always be profitable.
Trendlines are important to keep an eye on, both in the markets you are already trading in and in the markets you are thinking about trading in. If one of your markets is always choppy or moving in a straight line, you should leave it and try another. If you think that being a successful trader means sticking with a trend, no matter what market it is in, then you are thinking well.
The important thing is to keep an eye on markets where you aren't trading at the moment. It's just as important to keep up with your options as it is to watch what you already know. Here, research and experience are important. It takes time to learn about different markets and how to find out about them. But don't let that discourage you. Also, don't think that you have to understand every choice right away. Choose a few different markets to trade in and a few more to just watch. So, you can see how your own trades work and compare them to things going on in markets you may not know much about (yet).
You can only figure out which markets are good for you and which ones are bad for you by keeping an eye on them. If you keep an eye on a lot of different markets, you'll know what to do when it's time to switch gears and find that elusive moving trend.
