What to Read Over Christmas - Trading Lessons of 2011

We have learned a lot this year at DailyFX, through both research and trading. I’m proud to end the year with some really great research where we reflect on the mistakes we have made this year, as well as the most common trading mistakes we see across the broad spectrum of forex traders. In this post, I intend to give a short list of trading education reading that we’ve recently published. Print them up and enjoy them by the fire with some hot cocoa by the fire this Christmas while the markets are quiet.

First, we have finally published all of our Traits of Successful Traders series. In this series, we look at the most common mistakes traders make. Part One looks at how many traders use poor risk-reward ratios, and offers advice for how to prevent making this mistake. Part Two looks at very common mistake of using an inappropriate strategy for a particular time of day. Specifically, we find that most forex traders should trade during Asian market hours. In Part Three, we look at the same issue, but detail the type of strategy you should look to use during North American hours. Finally, in Part Four, we address the common mistake of overleveraging your trading account, and give some guidance on proper trade size.

While I think that research using mountains of trading account data and years of price history is great and all, it’s not all we do. DailyFX does research, but first and foremost, we are traders. Some things you can learn from research, but many things you just need to learn by doing. That’s why every year we publish our Trading Mistakes special. In this report, each of the eight DailyFX analysts considers what he believes to be his biggest mistake when trading in 2011, and the lesson that can be learned from it. It is said that we learn more from our failures than from our successes. We wish to learn from our mistakes of the past year, and hope that they help you as well.

Finally, if you prefer videos, we are in the process of adding tons of them to fxcmexpo.com. DailyFX analysts and trading instructors gave some great presentations this part year at the FXCM Currency Trading Expo. We caught most of them on tape and posting them to the web. There are already about 20 videos up there, and we are working hard to edit and polish the others. We shall be adding more over the coming weeks, so check back often!

The analysts are hard at work on our 2012 outlook, which should appear in the coming days (I give you a hint, we start to talk about the Yen again). 2012 is looking to continue to be exciting in the currency markets, and we look forward to seeing you next year!