How do you learn to trust yourself in trading?

Learning is very important because you will only be able to think differently based on the knowledge you have acquired.

Trust is something that we learn and earn. I only trust myself with the decisions I make, I don't use robots, signals, indicators, etc. Therefore there is only me to blame if things go south. When I was a beginner I had so many doubts if I am doing the right thing, if I chose the pair smart enough or if my volume and leverage were right. All this because I was getting confused by so much contradictory information online. Then I built my own strategy and golden rules that work for me and I never looked back. Practiced a lot, lost and won and then lost again. Yes, they don't always bring profit because market always find a way to screw you but overall it proved me once again that it's me and only me who I can trust with my own hard earned money. Who else has your best interests? It's all in your hands.

I'm not sure that's something I can learn. In my opinion, it comes with experience, so you just have to pay more attention to practice and then you will definitely get easier and easier and you will learn to work as calmly as possible for you. The main thing in this case is not to rush and not to wait for some incredible achievements from the first days of trading. Try it, experiment to find the approaches that will really bring you the maximum profit and make you feel more confident. Don't grab strategies that require a lot of indicators or are simply related to many factors. It is better to start with something simpler and more accessible and gradually move on to more difficult moments as you learn.

Trading with confidence and trusting yourself has strong links to risk management and understanding tolerance for risk. Drawdowns can take you out of the proper mindset to trust yourself.
The best solution will be different for everyone, but avoiding losses will eventually help you regain the trust in your abilities.

Confidence in yourself comes only with experience, you probably also paid attention to the fact that when you first started trading you looked through the charts a hundred times, you thought about every step you took, you were wrong and very upset, you earned and rejoiced like a child, and every time you felt a certain stress, because there was no confidence. Each trading session was a kind of feat and took away a lot of energy from you, and now you have come to a higher dynamics. You spend less time on analysis, you navigate faster in any situation. You're less terrified that something went wrong. You become calmer, and the calmer you are, the more effective your actions are. And it allows you to trust yourself!

I do not claim to be an expert so I am only sharing what I feel has been working for me up to this point in my personal development as a trader. I think most will agree that the one characteristic that all financial markets have in common is "uncertainty". Uncertainty can make human beings extremely uncomfortable, its just in our nature. An important goal for me in my trading journey has been to acheive a level of confidence in my trading plan that would enable me to be comfortable enough with uncertainty to trade it with real money. So far, the best way that Ive found to accomplish this is to test and measure everything. That way, I have the data to back up what I "think" works. At this point, if I have tested properly and the data tells me that I may have a profitable strategy the only thing I can do is focus on my process and following the rules of my trading plan. And I also document every trade I take, I have found this to be extremely helpful.

I always make sure to have a checklist before I enter and exit a trade. The usual problems that I had when I was starting out is that I was trigger happy, that I always wanted to be in a trade. The moment I started my checklist, I realized that I didn't need to be in 90% of the total trades I took (which by the way was always a losing position). It's not the I don't trust myself enough, but having a checklist always felt like someone is guiding me in all my trades.

Why not to delegate decision making to a robot or algorithm. Human participation need only at the stage to identify market pattern, calculate lot size, TP and SL (or make them as a function of price of volatility to make them flexible). The rest should be done by machine because it eliminates human factor.

I am a swing trader and I only trade less than 1 hour per day so no need for robots or algorithm.

Hi,
Your experience is really sorrowful. You spend a long time with trading. Trading is really risky but everyone need to control their emotion and need to stop appalled for trading. Because Its affects on your real life and its obviously not good. We need to think trading is a business as like as another business. So, stop appalled for trading.

Thank you..

It is depressing when you constantly lose. I seriously believed I'm cursed. EVERY time I buy, the market goes down, and goes up when I'm short. Even if I follow other traders, observe support & resistance, line up all the indicators, follow the news reports, candle patterns, whatever. Year after year. I have better luck in the casino, seriously!

A little too soon to proclaim myself a successful trader so take this with a grain of salt......here's what I've learned:
1-Fear of missing out, fear of losing, becoming over confident after a good trade, etc.... are all rooted in your relationship and beliefs about money. If you are like most of us, you place too much value and self worth on money. You need to disconnect from that to be a successful trader. There is an unlimited supply of money (just ask the fed) and a million ways to get it for yourself. You have chosen trading. Whether you are successful or not, it does not change who you are or your value as a human being.

2-Once you have that out of the way you need to realize that the best setup, the most obvious winner, the best trade you've ever spotted from time to time can and will go against you at any moment. This was a big one for me. It's really hard to judge if your system is any good when the market goes against you 30-50% of the time. To overcome this, you need to give any new system, indicator, method, whatever, a chance to help you. System jumping is good until you find what works for you, but it is difficult to tell short term if you are actually winning. This is where a trade explorer helps. Is your account balance growing over time? Good. Keep doing that.

3- Now it gets fun. With all your BS out of the way, it becomes a competition. I think of it this way. Somewhere out there on the opposite side of my trade is some chad working at a huge mega bank making high six figures, driving a super car home to his hot wife. He laughs at the little retail traders that he and his buddies clean out daily. But when I have a winning trade, he loses. Not so funny now is it Chad? It doesn't really work that way, with my account balance and retail broker my trades never make it out to the market (B book) but it is fun to think about chad shaking his fist when the little guy takes his nut.

Once you reach number three, a few losing trades cause you to evaluate the market conditions rather than your trading ability. You are now resilient.

I think everyone has sailed in the same boat as you are. But its okay as long as you know what goes wrong. We should spend some time looking at why our trades go wrong rather than cribbing about it. What is it that you are actually missing out.

Something you might consider is scaling in & out of your trades. It seemed like every time I would hit buy the price would dip 10 pips and of course it would upset me. Now I scale in 1/3 at a time and if it dips I'm happy because I got a better average price to start from. If the price goes my way without getting the other 2/3 then at least I got profit on a portion. Sometimes it can feel like the market is out to get you, but you need to learn to control your emotions and think rationally.

I always had a fear of loss in my mind and I thought it years how can I avoid this loss. I also trade with discipline and not try to over trade but still, fear of loss is with me and I continue my trading and loss and profit are side by side in my trading career.

"Trust", "Sure" etc.. should not exist in the minds of people in this racket.. No such thing... We could relay on past winnings or a good (risk)management, meaning that you DO trades and see what happens, your past experience/success could give you a little confidence (not too much, would advise all to stay humble because, markets...)... and be ready to take the hit... One must be absolute ready to lose in the next trade... even if all indicators say "I am not uncertain". And that is about it... If one have problem trusting himself in ways like... overtrading or chasing the loses, I would advise to program some trades or delegate them so you can resist the temptation. Knowing yourself is best and then deal with it. Of course this is almost easy if you leave EGO and EMOTIONS before you enter in the TRADE ROOM

It seems to me that this comes with your knowledge, because everything starts with the first step - you understand what the market is, you learn its mechanisms and instruments, you begin to imagine how everything is interconnected. I think it's just a primary acquaintance with the market. After that you decide on the strategies that you need, because there are a lot of them and not every one of them will suit you. Each of us has certain personal characteristics, so one of us needs high dynamics, and the other one needs to trade calmly, because at high speed he is nervous and loses his reasoning thread. That's why it seems to me that self-confidence in the market comes exactly when you can determine what's right for you to trade and what's not... But it takes time, and you need to be calm about making a few mistakes to understand it, it's okay.

I learnt to trust myself through spending long hours on the market. Once you do something for an extended period of time you start to feel competent. Competence breeds confidence. Competence does not mean being right on every trade though. Competence

I still don't have trust in my trades though because the price of the markets I trade are controlled by external factors. I could go long and 99.99% of all retail traders and institutional traders decide that they want to start selling. This trust does not create fear because I have determined my maximum risk, my overall exposure and I am constantly managing my trades. When I go to sleep I sleep in peace knowing that my stops are there to protect me. I trust myself because I know that if I get into a position and I lose, I can get back in again.

If I am in a long position and the price is moving against me, I can also enter a short position to cover my loss? I will ride that hedged position all the way down until the long position hits my stop loss. If that happen's I've actually reduce my initial risk, by less than 1R.

Self Sabotage:
Lots of traders self-sabotage themselves and that creates low self-esteem and negative cyclical event. Get your life together. Even if this is a hobby to you to make money, make sure you treat it like a profession otherwise you're just gambling. The more beginner mistakes they make, the more their trust in themselves erodes.

New Traders:
I would suggest starting with very small position sizes. Get into fewer trades and learn from each trade. Why did you get in, why did you get out, why did you set your stop loss there, why did you set a take profit there or why did you take profit early. Don't touch your stoploss it is there for a reason. My personal philosophy for newbies is to never touch the stop loss. The reason is because you don't have enough market experience to justify getting out of a trade. This is also why I advocate for a very small position size 0.01lots ($0.10 USD/pip) So if you set it 25-30 pips away its only $3. Make sure that the stop loss is at a level which is reasonable. Don't set it 100's of pips away and don't set it too close or else the volatility of the currency you are trading might take you out. For myself, my beliefs are that markets either trend up or down and they are bullish or bearish depending on key levels or their position in relation to Moving Averages. I set my stop loss at a key level which will turn the bias the opposite way I am trading.

Read:
Van Tharp's - Trade your Way To Financial Freedom
He talks a lot about personal psychology and developing your own trading strategy/system. If you have your system in order if you have your personal psychology in order (and your life) you will trust yourself.

Self Improve:
Always have a beginners mindset and continue to open your mind. When you are prepared you will trust yourself.

so well said... so well said!
that's y it's so important to invest what you can afford to lose! I consider it an essential risk managment rule in finance, for everyone!

no matter how flexible your system is...

oh, I see many claiming that you need to spend 10000 hours staring at charts and then you become profitable.. what kind of bs is that lmao.

what's the solution... diversify,diversify,diversify.....

there is not just FX trading... there are otherm arkets and many many other things to do