While successful forex trading can free us from waking up to the sound of the alarm clock, commute to the office and smile to the boss, it still requires discipline and takes time. There are no shortcuts. Becoming a successful trader does require some characteristics of a day job.
The Forex Guy wrote about the patience that is needed for forex traders, and touched an interesting point – forex traders want to be free of their jobs and their bosses. I’m following up on this point. Here are the characteristics:
- Education: While you don’t need to spend years in college, basic education is necessary. It can either be done in a forex course, by hiring a coach or by studying alone, if you are disciplined enough. In any case, education cannot be avoided.
- Training: Learning the theory is nice, but like driving lessons, getting on the road is essential. Using a forex demo account for learning technical analysis is one necessary step. There are more.
- Discipline: Sticking to a strategy is very important. This means not forcing yourself into a position. It also means not escaping from a position just to calm yourself down. And sometimes this means accepting that you just don’t do anything. The Forex Guy dives into this issue. This discipline is different from the one you have to demonstrate in the office, but it can be much harder.
- Occasional reassessments: You don’t have to go the meeting room for this, but you should occasionally check out your trades, see what went well and what went wrong, and make modifications to your strategy. The meeting minutes are for yourself.
While similarities exist, the freedom is very rewarding. Do you find additional characteristics?
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6 Comments
Well, I’d say until you lose, you most likely won’t have the necessary discipline or respect for the market. Also, you must keep in mind that this is a probability game…so you have to keep your emotions at bay in your decision making and use cold logics. This is one of the most difficult things!
Great article, thanks.
In my experience, I have found that the very first thing we must stick to is risk management, risking no more than 1-2-3% per trade give us the chance to mantain our hard earned money into our live account. This will apply for all of us even if we traded a demo because when real money comes into the game the game rules changes drastically. Keeping the risk low allow us to “learn” how to trade and how do we react to trading without blowing out the account. This was my experience, first year in red but never below 40% losses till the account starts to recover gradually.
Thanks for your valuable articles,
Best regards,
Jose
it nice to hear you state that u encourage new biss like us however to learn a srategy require determination and comitment,on my own case i love my style but i ve not yet resign from 9-5 job i need more help and confidence.thanks.ADEGBUYI
Great reminder. I cant immagine that I learned and lossing in forex for three years and just got to my senses last week.
I think discipline is the most important among all.
Thanks UB.
Thanks everybody for your comments!
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