Top 10 tips for trading success

Why are these tips so important?

The first few steps you take in the financial markets can be quite scary, so we’ve assembled our top 10 trading tips to help you through the rough start and onto trading success. Here you can find solid principles for classical trading as well social trading, as it is enabled by eToro social trading network, the eToro OpenBook.

1. Pick a Style, Any Style

Not all trades are for all traders. In other words, your trading activity should correspond to your account size, to your availability and other individual factors. If your account is relatively small, you have to scale down your activity so that you don’t risk too much on any one trade. If you’re not available to monitor your trades constantly, don’t open high risk short term positions that require quick intervention. If you don’t know much about the Japanese Yen, don’t trade it until you do.

2. Watch and Learn

The eToro OpenBook social trading network is there to connect you with other traders so you can learn from and share ideas with them. Pick traders who have a similar trading style to yours and follow them so you can learn their strategies and techniques. Following other traders can also alert you to profitable trading opportunities.

3. Stop Forgetting Your Stop Loss!

A key reason people quit trading is heavy losses and the single biggest cause of losses is failure to use a Stop Loss. Using the Stop Loss will prevent your losses from getting out of hand when the market goes against you. Use it wisely and you’ll see your losses decreasing.

4. Don’t Cut Your Profits Short

The number one mistake new traders tend to make is closing their winning trades too early. By sticking to your trading plan you can learn to avoid making hasty exits that reduce your returns.

5. Don’t Turn Profitable trades Into Losing Ones

Once the market is going your way, and your positions show a profit, keep a close watch on them. Move your stop loss forward to your entry point to secure your investment. Then keep moving it forwards, in the direction of the trend, to secure your profits and prevent your trade from slipping back into a loss.

6. Plan Ahead

Never enter a trade because the price is suddenly rising or falling. Always plan your trades in advance. Know your desired entry point, Take Profit and Stop Loss rates before you trade and wait for the right opportunity to arise.

7. Don’t Waste Time On A Losing Trade

If you find yourself in a losing position, remember that it is better to save your energy, cut your losses and move on to the next trade. The financial markets are full of profitable opportunities, just waiting to be exploited, so don’t waste your time on an unprofitable trade!

8. Don’t Just Trade, CopyTrade!

eToro’s investment network enables you not only to receive information about others’ trading activity, but to copy it automatically. With the CopyTrader you can a lot a portion of your account to copying any other trade on the network, preferably a profitable one, so that your money can work for you even when you’re not trading!

9. Find the Social Guru for You

The Social Guru Finder feature is very useful in finding the right traders for you to copy. By configuring the many parameters of this eToro OpenBook search tool to your desired settings, you can find the exact right Social Guru for you to copy.

10. Manage your CopyTrader Portfolio

Just because you have others trading for you, doesn’t mean that you should let them take over your account completely. Remember that you can always take over a copied trade if you see that it’s not going anywhere, or even stop copying a trader all together if you’re not satisfied with their performance. You should also be on the lookout for any new emerging stars on the eToro OpenBook network that can perhaps make you more profits than the traders you’re currently copying.

Put these trading tips to work today. Click here to login to your eToro account.