Reasons why it’s hard to decide “not to do it today” with FX

When you start FX, you begin thinking from the moment you open the chart.

“Will it go up?”
“Will it go down?”
“Should I buy here?”
“Should I sell soon?”

For a long time, I believed this was natural.

But if you think about it carefully, it’s a little strange.

Just opening a chart does not obligate you to decide whether to buy or sell.

There is actually one more option.

Do nothing.

This is surprisingly difficult in FX.

Once you think about “up or down,” you’re already assuming you’ll participate

As you look at the chart,

“Up, maybe down”

the choices in your head naturally become two.

Buy.
Sell.

But in reality, there are three:

buy, sell, or do nothing

The market is not a test.

You don’t have to write an answer every day.

If you don’t understand, leaving it blank is fine.

If today seems dangerous, you can discard the entire day’s market.

However, the more you open the chart and spend time, the harder it becomes to do “nothing.”

Having opened the chart, you feel like doing something

Look at a 30-minute chart.

You’ve checked the news.

You’ve drawn the lines.

You’ve checked the indicators.

After going that far,

you feel, “Since I’ve analyzed it, I want to enter at least once.”

And then,

you start to feel,

“Yesterday I couldn’t trade.”
“There’s still no profit for the week.”
“There’s time today.”
“There might be movement.”

With those reasons added, you end up, before you know it,

not trading because conditions are good, but looking for reasons to trade

instead.

Originally, it should be the opposite.

Trade when the conditions are met.

If they aren’t met, do nothing.

That should be enough.

The market being open and your participation are separate

FX prices move almost any time on weekdays.

If you open your smartphone, there’s a chart.

You can trade in the morning or at night.

This “you can do it anytime” environment is surprisingly troublesome.

Just because a convenience store is open 24 hours doesn’t mean you need to shop 24 hours.

Likewise,

even if the market is open, you don’t have to participate.

“You can trade” is different from “you should trade.”

The “untaken profits” sting

There’s another reason doing nothing is hard.

Because the market moves a lot after you pass on it.

For example,

you think, “I’ll pass today.”

Then the USD/JPY rises significantly.

When you look at the chart later,

you think, “If I had bought here, I could have made 50,000 yen.”

So, even though you didn’t lose a single yen, you feel like you’ve lost something.

But that 50,000 yen wasn’t your money to begin with.

Unrealized profit and actual money lost are different things.

If your account balance hasn’t decreased by not trading, you haven’t lost in the market for that day.

Mixing these up leads you to think,

“I must absolutely not miss the next move.”

and you become more inclined to trade even when the conditions aren’t favorable.

Seeing SNS makes you feel you’re the only one doing nothing

This is also a big factor.

When you open SNS,

“USD/JPY long”
“Gold huge profit”
“Another several ten thousand today”

you see posts like that.

You realize you didn’t trade even once today.

Then you feel,

“Everyone’s making money except me.”

But there are people in the market every day.

And every day, someone wins.

If you measure yourself by that standard, you can’t rest ever.

What matters is,

not whether others are making money today, but whether you have a reason to trade today.

That’s what I think.

Decide “not today” at the outset

Right now, when I look at a chart, the first thing I think about is

“up or down”

and also

“do I even need to trade today?”

I think that’s enough.

There are important economic indicators.
The market is volatile.
I lost big yesterday.
Lack of sleep.
Feeling rushed.
Just looking at charts because I’m bored.

On such days, I quit before trying to predict the direction.

The market will be here tomorrow.

Next week too.

Even if you don’t participate, the market moves on its own.

So,

instead of thinking “What should I trade today?” ask first, “Do I really need to trade today?”

If you want to prioritize not losing in FX, it’s quite important not to erase the option of “do nothing.”