What do you wish you knew before you started forex trading?

When I started forex trading, I was always trading on 5 minute candlestick time frames only LOL ! I didn't realize the amount of noise contained on lower time frames.

Now looking back, I wish I knew that I had to look at higher time frames too, to get a better view of the market structure.

I wish I understood how to use Price Action and Support/Resistance to guide my entry and exit decisions.

When I started trading forex, I didn't understand price action and I was always depending on technical indicators to determine my entry and exit points.

I kept losing money because I didn't realize technical indicators were just a filter and needed to be combined with other confirmation.

Understanding Forex Sessions: I stay in the UK and I recall I used to trade EUR/USD in the midnight during the Asian session and I always got bad results because there was poor liquidity and high spreads.

Sometimes I would wait minutes for a small price movement to happen and sometimes close the trade out of frustration.

So, I wish I knew that you need to trade certain instruments during the right time/sessions to get faster price movement and lower spreads.

I'm seeing too many answers related to technical analysis.

But I would say it is the understanding that anything can happen on a trade by trade basis (I'm paraphrasing Mark Douglas). Just because you put on a trade it does not mean it will work. And you have to train your mind to actually believe that.

Have a strategy that has an edge. Test it over a series of trades, without overleveraging on any one single trade. Keep a consistent lot size.

Having very strict risk limits is the job of a trader. It is all about managing your risk, for example not losing more that 0.5% on a trade or more than 1% on a day, whatever your risk thresholds are.

Large drawdowns can kill your trading career & make it hard to recover from. So, whenever you take a small loss within your risk parameters, and walk away after hitting your loss limits, be proud.

Come back the next day. If you need to, in order to keep your sanity in check (or when you are prone to making errors), take breaks (day, week), or whatever helps you.

Or if you are unable to control yourself emotionally, write a system that will stop you from placing any more trades once you hit your risk thresholds for a period. Or have someone who holds you accountable.

Most traders who fail, it is not because they cannot analyze charts. Some of them are really good analysts, many even become fake 'gurus'.

Even if you are a discretionary trader, then also it applies. Your market view can be wrong, infact it happens all the time. Your primary job from my understanding is risk manager.

I wish I knew that success on a demo account does not equate success on a real account because emotions come into play when trading live.

I wish I knew more about correlation of currency pairs and how hedge funds hedge risk using options.

This is so true, I can obviously relate

I wish i actually knew forex trading wasn’t a get rich quick scheme like I experienced in cryptocurrency. I started trading cryptocurrency and made a lot of money in a year, I was trading memes though. Then I graduated into trading forex, i thought i would be withdrawing consistently like I did in trading memes but I was wrong.

For anyone reading, forex trading isn’t a get rich quick scheme, it will take you time to be profitable. The time it will take is totally dependent on the individual.

True. Forex isn't like meme coins, no quick moonshots. It takes time, discipline, and practice to become profitable. Thanks for the honest warning.