Becoming A Successful Forex Trader One Trade at a Time

I’m not sure who coined the phrase “Rome wasn’t built in a day”, but it is very applicable to professional Forex trading. I find that many of my students exhibit urgency in regards to making money in the markets. Rather than focusing their mental energy on the process of trading, they are fixated on how much money they will make, largely forgetting that this money cannot be made without first concentrating on the process.

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The main difference between successful and unsuccessful traders is that successful traders followed a process or plan to get where they are at; they meticulously executed their trading plan every time they entered the market. Unsuccessful traders do not do this, instead they may or may not have a trading plan, if they do have one they may or may not follow it, etc. It takes consistent execution of the process of trading to achieve a consistently rising equity curve; just like a sky scraper is built one section at a time, your trading account is built one trade at a time. Just like every section of a sky scraper must be consistent and built to perfection, every trade you take must be consistent and entered with the utmost scrutiny.

• Put the process before the outcome –

Every accomplishment in any field is preceded by a process. You won’t make money unless you have a detailed and practical forex trading plan. Every successful trader arrives at their destination by taking it one trade at a time. Every day you follow your forex trading plan you should consider it one little victory. The longer you remain loyal to your trading plan, the closer your trading goals will become. Learn to love and master the process and forget about the outcome, this is really the only way to make consistent money over the long-term as trader.

A good analogy to help you better understand the importance of the process of trading, is exercising to get into top physical shape. Everyone wants to be in the best physical shape they can be. So why do some people achieve their physical fitness goals while others do not, even if they have the same amount of desire? The difference lies in how each individual thinks about the process of exercising. People who get into the best shape they can learn to enjoy the process of exercising and how it makes them feel, rather than becoming fixated on the longer-term goals of “losing 50 pounds / kilos”, or whatever your idea of physical fitness might be. People who remain out of shape view exercising as something that is uncomfortable or stressful, so even if their desire is just as strong, they do not learn to love and enjoy the process of exercising, and thus will not reach their physical fitness goals.

Traders who learn to love the process of Forex trading are the ones who succeed long-term, those who view the process of trading as something they can skim over or don’t really enjoy, are simply in the markets to try and get rich quick, and the irony is that because their focus is continually on the end result they forget about how to get to the end result and thus never achieve it.

• Make sure you have a “process” before trading with real money –

This point should be a “no-brainer”, but it is painfully obvious that many, if not most beginning traders, simply do not have a definable trading process. Stop and ask yourself right now, “Do I have an actual trading process or do I just shoot in the dark?” If you really cannot define your trading process or you don’t know how to get started creating one, you need to first learn a trading strategy that is truly effective, master it, and then create a comprehensive yet concise trading plan around it.

If you are interested in learning to trade with price action, you can begin developing your trading process by learning my strategies one setup at a time. By mastering one price action strategy at a time before trading with real money you can build your Forex trading process one piece at a time, and this will help you to focus on the process of trading, rather than only being fixated on making money. As we discussed earlier, focusing on the process is HOW you obtain the desired outcome.

• Record each trade –

Recording each trading in a forex trading journal is a good thing to do for two reasons: 1) it gives you a way to stay accountable and make sure you are following your trading process. 2) You will develop a track record, so that you can see how your results are playing out over time. As more time goes by, and you construct each trade consistently by following your trading process, your trading progress and track record will begin to reflect this. Think of it as a giant puzzle, each trade is a piece of the puzzle, and if you follow your trading plan, you get a piece of the puzzle in the right spot, but if you deviate, you don’t. In order to see the “final picture” of the puzzle, or to achieve consistent trading success, you have to put each piece of the puzzle in the right spot, or following your trading process meticulously on every trade you take.

• Don’t let your previous trade influence your next one –

This point is very important. This is where most traders screw up; they become emotionally influenced by their last trade. Whether it’s becoming angry at a loss or over-confident from a win, traders often let their previous trade or trades influence their next one. You absolutely cannot do this if you want to strictly follow your trading process and execute each trade as a separate event. If you need to take time off to “cool down” after every trade then do so by leaving your computer for a period of time. The bottom line is that if you want to build an impressive trading account, you have to learn to focus on one trade at a time, uninfluenced by the previous trade you took, and focusing on the process of trading will help you do this.

• Where to go from here –

If you find that you are lacking a trading process, you need to seriously think about developing one right now; this actually should be your main priority before you trade again. Traders who think they are going to somehow magically become successfully by “running and gunning” with no practical trading process, are essentially doomed to fail eventually. This is a primary reason why most Forex traders lose money; they have no real and effective trading process to follow and so they end up trading emotionally and essentially they end up gambling away their money.

If you want to learn how to trade with the same price action strategies that I use, and develop your own Forex trading process, my trading course and members’ community may be what you need. You will not just learn the specific setups, you will also learn how and when to trade them, and after taking my course and absorbing all the members’ materials, you should have all the knowledge you need to begin building a practical and effective Forex trading process that you can operate off of every day. To learn more about how I trade and developing your own trading process, check out my Forex trading course and members’ community.