[If you’re a newbie trader, avoid this habit of averaging into | The Real Rayner Teo

[If you’re a newbie trader, avoid this habit of averaging into losses]

Imagine:

You bought 1 lot of EUR/USD at 1.3000.

Shortly, the price dropped 50 pips and you’re down $500.

Now you’re thinking to yourself…

“I knew it, the market is out to get me again.”

“But wait… if I buy another 1 lot of EUR/USD, then I can quickly get out at breakeven if the price moves up 25 pips.”

“I’m a genius!”

So…

You buy another lot of EUR/USD at 1.2950.

Next thing you know, EUR/USD tanked 100 pips—which puts you at a loss of $3,500.

In other words…

If you had cut your loss from the start, it would have only been a loss of $500.

But because you gave in to your emotions and averaged into your losses, it grew into a $3,500 loss.

So the lesson is this:

If the market proves you wrong, get out of the trade.

Don’t average into your losers because it could snowball into something near impossible to recover from.