Forex Professionals – Forex Academy

If somebody told you at the beginning of a professional forex career that you will have to bust many accounts and work for a couple of years to get it right, would you still take that road? Probably not, because in the end, you might not even get to the professional level. A lot depends on you, how much do you love trading and how much do you want to have a job most people dream about. People will settle for less, why is that so is not important, it is more about is that enough for you. At some point on this road, in case you lose a few accounts or run into obstacles, you may fall into a bad mood called desperation. So much was sacrificed only to scrap everything, you might think. Nobody will say this, but it will happen to most of the traders if not all. At any moment in a professional forex trading career, it is a possibility your mindset will take a hit, and here is what professionals have to say about this.

The Old Problem

People that want to become forex traders do it when they want to get out of their present situation. Forex trading is much more attractive than a day job, at least for ordinary people working for XYZ company from 9 to 5. However, with all the warnings forex trading is only for the most persistent, people go in thinking they are just better than everybody else. Well, even genius traders mess it up, and mistakes are good, better make them early on.

Desperation comes in when you pay for impatience. Rushing to forex trading just because you need alternative income so you can quit your job or drop out of college is a faster path that hits back at you. Feeling that you are missing a lot if you do not start trading now is a warning you need to take seriously. Before allowing forex to hit you financially, demo trade. Then it might hit you psychologically, your real money is safe at least. Professionals take real losses, and you have to get ready for that first. So patience is a must, you are not going to be ready in a few months and more likely not even for a few years.

Pro Approach

Professionals know this “trap” so they do not start panicking when they have a bad month. They play the long game and patiently wait out to see if something is really not aligned with their trading. The right mindset about this would be even when you are losing, it is good. Professionals do not get emotional to the point they lose their trading ability, but actually are very intrigued about what could take their multi-year successful strategy down. It is a great discovery because ironing out the problem makes their strategy even closer to perfection. The result of this research is also very beneficial for understanding the market and to other traders as well. What follows is looking for tools or trading measures that could evade the losses from this market situation.

FOMO and Risk Fear

Fear Of Missing Out is also one of the most common issues beginners develop but later advanced traders may experience the paradox of “knowing too much”. FOMO is handled by having a strict rule set or a trading system. Some traders count candles until it is too late to enter a trade, some have indicators, but they all have something that prevents them from feeling that fear. There is a simple barrier in the form of a rule.

When traders love trading they are very well informed, they digest a lot of information from various sources. This can at times affect their trading where they become risk-averse. It is hard to have a decision based on every indicator, news, or other data. Traders have to focus on a set of “decision-makers”.

One of the ways to redirect the risk fear is gradually entering the position. This could be referred to as the Scaling-in method of money management. Older traders and investors are especially fearful of the new wave that is probably taking over currencies as we know them. We are talking about cryptocurrencies of course, and their intangible form is not really understood. The new age of currencies goes along with the new generations but veteran traders are conservative most of the time. Gold and precious metals are their choices over bitcoin and have this fear of risk (unknown). Scaling in method starting with small amounts is a good way to break this fear, gradually increasing the amount as the trade progresses. Professionals with an open mind do not have problems accepting new markets as long the asset is globally present.

The New Problem

According to the experiences of pro traders, the journey of ironing your emotions does not easily stop. So if you are a beginner reading this article, be ready for a bumpy ride and do not ever get discouraged. Pro traders have devised a way to combat that deep but mellow feeling they have wasted many years and that they might give up trading. This feeling gets stronger when you become a pro. For clarity, a pro trader is not the one who is trading real money, it is the one who does it for a living, with his or with somebody else’s money. The feeling you are not good at what you are doing gets stronger even though you have reached the level most dream about. After every loss, it reminds you. For some, it could be a bad month after you lose sight of the long play you are actually aiming for. Desperation is there, some traders feel it more, some are more rational. According to pro traders, there is no way around it, the longer you are in trying to trade your way the more you get the feeling all was for nothing.

The best way to get yourself on track nevertheless is by putting the work early on your strategy, plans, the whole system, and of course psychology. When you have a really tested out system with great results, you have confidence in what you are doing. The reason why pros might get desperate is that even though the system is tested out, the market is changing. Results are changing.

It could be a motivator to find out new, better trading methods, but it is for the wrong reasons. Fear of failure should be overcome at one point, it seems only time (experience) of generally good results can make you glad you chose to be a professional forex trader. According to experts, if they could take away one thing on their road to ascension, it would be that feeling. Otherwise, it is a great profession. Having an eyeopener such as realizing you will be doing 9 to 5 jobs for most of your life will likely put you on a different track than most people. On this track, not necessarily forex trading, the same feeling will come up. Professional traders make sure they know what they are doing, the same translates to everything else.

Professional traders are the people that are putting the food on their table with what they make with trading, so they must be doing well. They have gotten to this stage through a lot of dedication and learning. While the learning and time that they have put in helped them get there, they are able to stay there by following a number of different rules, of course not every trader will follow every single rule, but they most certainly will be looking at a number of them and following them on a day to day basis.

So let’s take a look at what some of rules that the professional traders may be following:

Keeping discipline: Discipline is an incredibly important trait and aspect of trading. Without it anything can happen, trades will be going in left right and centre and they will be going in without any actual reason. Discipline ensures that you will always be following your trading strategies and the rules that have been created by them. Once that strategy has been realised, they must remain on it, any sort of deviation can cause a loss and ultimately cause a strategy or even an entire account to fail. So maintaining self-control and discipline is one of the most valuable traits that a professional trader could have.

Not being influenced by others: A professional trader has their own plan and their own trading ideas. This is why when actively trading, a professional trader will not be accessing forums or chat rooms, they will not be talking to others about their trades, instead, they will be concentrating on their own plan and their plan alone. As soon as they start looking at others or talking to others, the information that they have will start to become muddy, so sticking to themselves and avoiding others while actively trading can be vital to staying on the straight and narrow line.

Updating their trading plan: A trading plan will not stay the same forever in fact it shouldn’t stay the same for long at a time. A professional trader will constantly be updating and adapting their strategies. If you were to just stick with the original plan without making any additional changes, as soon as the market conditions begin to change, then your strategy won’t be able to cope with the changes. A professional trader will constantly be changing bits of the strategy to meet the current trading conditions and to be adaptable to work in whatever state that markets are currently in.

Not cutting corners: A trader should not cut corners, this is particularly relevant when we look at both the analysis and the placing of trades. When doing your analysis, you cannot cut corners, as soon as you do, there is an opportunity that something will be missed, and no matter how small it is, it has the potential to make a good trade go bad. It is the same with making your trades, as soon as you cut a corner and enter or exit a trade without all criteria being met, it can cause a good trade to end up as a loss, so maintaining your plan and following it through completely is vital.

Not always going for the obvious: Sometimes when trading there could be a pattern forming or some news coming out that makes things look pretty obvious, there is nowhere that the markets can go apart from down. However, there have been plenty of times where the obvious has not happened, a lot of political news, economic news, and the consensus can all make it appear that something will go down, yet it continues to rise. This is why you cannot just follow the obvious, further analysis is always needed and you should not just blindly follow the crowd.

Not breaking rules: Rules are there for a reason, they are there to keep you on the short and narrow and to ensure that all of your trades are staying consistent with each other. Your Strategy has set these rules to ensure that you are profitable overall, as soon as you break a rule you are also breaking that ratio that was generated. As soon as a rule is broken, the overall strategy is thrown out of sync. Sticking to the rules is paramount if you have any hope at remaining profitable in the long run. This is why professionals always stick to their rules and very, very rarely break them.

Avoiding the gurus: Gurus claim to have the knowledge that a lot of other people do not. They claim to be able to predict the markets at a greater level to most people, so you need to ask yourself, why are they spouting their information over social media instead of trading it themselves? Professional traders know things, they know that the gurus do not have any more knowledge or information than anyone else and so they ignore them, using your own analysis and information is far more valuable than letting someone else cloud your judgment with their information and analysis.

Regular breaks: One of the things you would have been told about is the need to take regular breaks, a way to clear your mind and refresh yourself for some more trading. Professional traders will often plan their breaks, taking them during times where the markets are a little quieter, this can often be the times near to a market changeover or during times of no active trades. What is important is that breaks are being regularly taken as any professional trader will know that sitting in front of the computer for hours on end is not healthy for your mind or body.

Organising your personal life: If there are issues and stresses in your personal life, it is only a matter of time until those issues and feelings bleed into your trading., Having other things in the back of your mind can create distractions to your trading. Coming into trading stressed about something else can cause you to make mistakes or to cut corners which will only start to lead to losses. It is important that you are able to get your personal life in order so that you can fully concentrate on your trading It can be hard sometimes if you cannot fully sort it, find a way to separate the issues from your trading, so you can focus 100% on your trading when you are there to trade.

Not hating the markets: When the markets decide to move against you, you cannot begin to hate them and you cannot feel like you need to get even with them. The markets do not care about you, and they do not know who you are. You should be feeling the same way about the markets. You are there to make money, not to make a new friend, if they go against you, you need to be able to move on, as soon as you start to want to get back at it, your strategy will go out the window and further losses will be on their way.

Chasing losses: Do not do it, do not do it at all, leading on from the previous points, if you have made a loss, do not try to win it back This is one of the most dangerous things that you can do and simply leads to gambling. Your risk management will go out of the window, how would you chase losses? You chase them by either putting on additional trades or by putting in a larger position, whichever way you do it, you are increasing your risk and increasing the potential for more losses.

Control your confidence: Another aspect of your personality that you need to be able to keep in control is your confidence levels. It is great to be confident as this normally means that things are going the right way, what we do not want is for you to be overconfident. Overconfidence can cause you to take additional risks with larger trade sizes and can even encourage you to take shortcuts with your strategy, entering trades when the criteria aren’t fully met, something that a professional trader would avoid at all costs.

Don’t use too many tools: Tools are fantastic, they can give you a lot of information and they can help you to analyze the markets a lot quicker. The unfortunate thing is that if you use too many indicators or other tools, then you are taking your own thoughts and personalities out of the trading system. If you are not thinking about what you are analysing or trading, then you have no knowledge as to why you are doing it, and no way of adapting should things start to go the wrong way. It is fine to have some tools to help you, but you need to be able to limit them to ensure that you are still fully invested in your own strategy and trading.

There is no holy grail: New traders come into trading thinking that there must be a holy grail of trading, a strategy that can always be profitable and will make you rich. A professional trade knows that this is not real, there is no such thing as the perfect strategy. One strategy will work in one trading conditions but not another, so understanding that your strategy will not always work is paramount to protecting yourself.

Build an arsenal: A beginner trader may have a single strategy, it will work in one condition and maybe on a couple of assets. A professional trader will build themselves an arsenal of strategies, this allows them to be far more adaptable, using different strategies for different market conditions and also allowing you to focus on more currency pairs or assets as each strategy can be optimised for the characteristics of specific assets.

You are not here for a paycheck: Many traders come into trading to try and get rid of their day to day job, while this is a great goal to set yourself, a lot of professional traders will tell you that they are not taking a wage each month, the markets do not necessarily allow for it. You need to work to increase your equity, as soon as you start taking out money, you are taking out your equity, you need to be able to build without taking out capital to begin with. Once you have built up a decent level, then you can start to think about taking some money out.

Simplicity can be better: Sometimes it is the simple trades that make the most profits, there is no point in overcomplicating things with thousands of indicators or little bits of information. A professional trader will tell you that sometimes simply using your own analysis and just one or two indicators is more than enough, as soon as you bring in too much information, it can cloud your judgment and bring in a lot of contradicting information that can completely throw your trading game and strategy completely out of synch.

Accepting our losses: Losses happen. No matter how good you are, you will experience losses. You will always make losses. What you need to be able to do is to accept the, do not let them cloud your future decisions and choices. Every loss that you make should be a chance to learn, why did it go wrong? What caused it to change? There are always questions that you are able to ask yourself that can help you to be a better trader in the future. Be sure not to chase those losses, just learn from them, clear your mind, and move on to your next trades.

Avoid false reinforcement: Sometimes you can be thinking of a certain trade, things seem to be going ok, but there are a few bits of your criteria which are not being met, hearing other say something similar can give you the reinforcement to take the trade, unfortunately, as your criteria still have not been met, it is false reinforcement, you should not use what someone else has said to overrule one of your trading rules. Trust your own strategy and analysis, and don’t take reinforcement from those outside of your own strategy.

There are a lot of rules there, some things you are probably already doing, something probably not. There are of course additional things that raiders do on a day to day basis. It is important that you set your own rules that you need to be following, it is important to create your own, once you have created them, it is vital that you stick to them. Your rules of trading are how you trade and why you trade, create them, stick with them, be successful with them.