Did you know that journaling missed trades could improve your skill in spotting trading opportunities? There are more tips here if you're learning how to never miss out on a trade.

Have you ever been in a situation where you were ready to trade, but didn't make a decision to enter the market right away? Missing opportunities is a common situation among forex traders, and there are many reasons for it. Some may lack confidence in their analysis, while others may have run out of margin to open new positions.

Although these reasons are understandable, you will eventually miss out on opportunities to earn big profits. If this continues to happen, you may lose confidence in your trading system. It can also affect your psychology, ultimately leading to a recency bias trap. Those who miss out on trading opportunities tend to "replace" them on less-than-ideal trading conditions.

So, how to never miss out on a trade for your mind's sake? Here are four things to consider:

Avoid Missing Trade Opportunity

 

1. Write on a Trading Journal

A trading journal is a record of all trading results achieved by following a trading plan. Typically, forex traders always record the following in their journal: entry level history, exit, stop loss, and target profit. Essentially, a trading journal helps you review each transaction, performance results of a strategy, and observe market conditions.

Unlike losing trades, missed trading opportunities are usually not recorded in a journal. You can't fix everything because these things will continue to be "invisible" until you pour them into your notes.

So, make sure to track missed trading opportunities in your trading journal. You can evaluate what caused you to miss trading opportunities and change destructive habits into constructive ones. As a result, you can quickly improve decision-making, manage emotions, and increase confidence.

 

2. Use Pending Orders

Pending orders are useful to enter the market at a desired price. For example, if EUR/USD is traded at 1.12435, you can plan to buy at 1.12458 using a pending order. This means that your position won't be executed until the price reaches the desired level.

By using the pending order feature, you are automatically setting your trades to be executed at a certain level, so you won't miss any trading opportunities when the price moves to that level. This means that you don't need to constantly monitor the screen.

 

3. Decrease Your Position Size

No matter how big your trading is, applying good risk management is a must. One way to apply risk management is by managing the size of your trading position.

For example, if you have a $5,000 account, then the risk per transaction should not be more than 1%, meaning that you should not lose more than $50 in one transaction.

Additionally, you can determine a cancellation point of 5% from the entry position, so if the market moves against you by 5%, you should exit the transaction and limit your loss at $50. In this case, 5% of your position should be equal to 1% of your account.

To calculate the appropriate trading size, you can use the following formula:

Position size = account size x account risk/cancellation point (distance between stop loss and entry)

With this formula, you can reduce the potential loss by exiting at the appropriate time. Don't forget to consider slippage especially if you are trading on low-liquidity pairs.

If you apply this strategy correctly, you don't need to worry about missing trading opportunities due to running out of capital. Proper risk management can help you manage your account funds better and keep you away from getting margin calls or even being stopped out.

 

4. Getting Used to Losses

The only way to stay focused on your trades rather than just aiming at profits is to get used to experiencing losses. You must be able to accept that losses are just a part of trading. It's just as much a part of the game as wins.

As mentioned earlier, traders tend to fall into the recency bias trap. When experiencing consecutive losses, traders tend to stop trading. The majority of them tend to ignore missed trading opportunities because they are not used to losing and therefore being a little traumatized to try again. Are you also like that?

Well, previous trading results will not affect future trades. If you are trapped in recency bias, many golden opportunities will be missed. Thus, you could make yourself get used to the idea of losing to minimize the impact and help you move on easier. That way, you can avoid wasting good trading opportunities even after a bad experience.

 

Bottom Line

By considering the four things above, it is hoped that you will no longer miss trading opportunities due to reasons that can actually be overcome. Forex trading is a market with unlimited chances. Trading opportunities can arise at any time, and you can make use of them as long as you have the right sense and adequate knowledge.

 

Now that you know how to not miss out on any trades, it's important to make sure that your strategy allows you to get the best possible entry level. If you're still looking for any suggestions, you could learn how to look for entry signals by price action.