Trading During COVID-19: Lessons to Take Forward
BY Chris Andreou
|June 26, 2020Trading during COVID-19 has been difficult for traders across the globe: getting used to working from home, monitoring market conditions, and being careful not to fall into the trap of overtrading. Although some lockdown measures are being lifted in various countries across the world, COVID-19 has changed the way we think about trading.
For traders, coronavirus has made a lasting impact on psychology – from anxiety-induced overtrading to struggling to manage risk while working from home. As a result, we’ve had to adapt: how can we reduce our risk of overtrading? How can we efficiently work from home without distraction? How can we incorporate monitoring global news into our trading practice?
COVID-19 has fuelled some changes in the trading world and has meant some tough lessons. But not all of these need to be forgotten once trading returns to normal: in this blog, we take a look at the valuable lessons to take forward from lockdown.
Lesson #1: Learning to stop overtrading
Overtrading can be a big stumbling block for traders at the best of times, but even more so during lockdown: you’re working from home, concerned about not trading enough to be profitable, or missing out on valuable trades – or a combination of all three.
During lockdown, you’ll have had to learn to manage your anxieties to prevent you from overtrading. Many traders find that placing their trading plan above their workstation is helpful to keep focused, or practising yoga or meditation can be useful to quell any anxieties about missing out on valuable trades.
You can also put your new working-from-home regime into practice – setting up a calendar or timetable to focus on your day job so that you aren’t distracted by unlimited access to the markets. These are all valuable lessons to take into your trading post-lockdown.
Lesson #2: Using the news
Pre COVID-19, checking the news should have been a key component of your trading plan – but it’s likely that during lockdown you spent more time on your news apps than usual.
This is a valuable lesson to take from lockdown: installing news apps onto your phone, buying a newspaper in the mornings after daily exercise, or checking news updates on social media can help you to keep on top of global news, and should become part of your daily practice.
If you found keeping on top of the news overwhelming during quarantine and devised a way to manage this anxiety, you can use this healthy, balanced approach in your new trading practice, too. Limit your push notifications from news apps, or set specific times – lunchtime, or post-morning-workout – for fundamental analysis, and welcome a new, efficient style of trading.
Lesson #3: Mindful trading
Mindful trading was a necessity during the early days of quarantine – but there’s good reason to practise this when lockdown is lifted, too. Mindful trading is about sticking to your trading plan, making sure you’re in the right mindset to trade, and taking care not to overtrade.
Think of how you worked to manage your anxiety – morning yoga or meditation, a lunchtime workout, limiting your news intake, setting a strict working from home timetable to structure your day, or scheduling social Zoom calls with co-workers – and incorporate what worked for you into your post-COVID-19 trading practise.
These are just some of the valuable trading lessons to take forward post-lockdown – which ones will you be carrying on?
Author
Laura Maw
Laura is a writer at BluFX
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