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NIAL FULLER Nial Fuller
Professional Trader, Author & Coach

Trading With Patience – Ambushing Price Action Trade Setups

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By in Forex Trading Tutorials October 15th, 2010 | 42 Comments

Bengal tiger and sambar deers, IndiaToday’s lesson should not be taken lightly, it contains some very important concepts that I have learned after trading the markets for many years. This article provides some insight into trading with patience and how it can help you avoid over-trading and losing your shirt (or house) in the markets…

One of the most effective weapons in our Forex trading arsenal to help fight the most prevalent of trading enemies; over-trading and over-leveraging… is PATIENCE. Patience is a necessary ingredient for successful trading, in fact it is probably thee most important ingredient; without patience, you are almost guaranteed to struggle or fail as a trader.

The old saying, “patience is a virtue” is as applicable to the world of Forex trading as it is to any. Patience also happens to be the main virtue that most traders are deficient in, and this helps explain why most traders fail to make consistent money, or any money in the market.

The importance of having being a patient trader cannot be emphasized enough, in fact, one could even say that there is a positive correlation between the equity curve of your trading account and the amount of patience you possess as a trader. In other words, focusing on developing and maintaining patience while trading the market will cause your equity curve to rise much more consistently than not paying any attention or little attention to patience, as most traders do.

Why patience is SO important for a trader

It is one thing to simply state that patience IS important to your long-term trading success; however, most people reading this will want to know WHY patience is important to Forex trading and HOW to implement it. The reason why patience is such a crucial part of being a consistently profitable trader is mainly because patience increases your accuracy, or your “strike rate”. As you become more accurate in your trades, you obviously will have fewer losers and more winners, which will have a direct impact on your forex money management plan. When you hit winning trades as a result of being patient and waiting for that picture perfect setup to come along and then executing it without hesitation, you essentially reinforce one of the best trading habits anyone can learn, which is of course patience. Trading success depends entirely on the concept of reinforcing good habits and eliminating bad trading habits, unfortunately most traders do the exact opposite, which is why most of them fail.

HOW to trade with patience

Now, let us move on to how you can begin implementing patience into your trading routine. If you have been studying price action trading for some time now, you already have an excellent trading method that will reward you many times over for being a patient trader. Being patient while trading with price action goes something like this: you see what looks like a decent pin bar formation but it is going against a rather strong trend, because you know that this setup has a much lower probability of working out than a pin bar setup with a strongly trending market, you sit on your hands and pass it up, don’t think anymore about it, even if it works out it does not matter because you just exercised patience, and you will be rewarded for it the more you use it. Now, a day or two has gone by, still no good price action setups have formed, then you notice as the New York session closes out there is a very nice fakey setup that has formed with the dominant daily trend, you enter your trading parameters and let the trade take its course.

The above scenario is one example of trading with patience. You need to remember that once you commit to becoming a patient trader you cannot waffle on it, meaning you can’t be patient for a week and then lose your patience the next week. Being a patient trader means you might only trade 4 times a month. But if you win on all 4 of those trades as compared to taking 15 trades and losing on 10 of them, you are going to be much further ahead, both financially and emotionally. There is much to be said about the power of patience in helping you remain objective and calm in all your trading decisions.

In conclusion

Being a patient trader is just one piece of the puzzle that must be in place for the picture of consistently profitable Forex trading to be complete. If you do not learn to exercise the proper amount of patience while trading the markets, you will begin doing all kinds of self-destructive things to your trading account; over-trading, trading off too low of a time frame, over-leveraging, etc. Simply put, you cannot become a consistently profitable Forex trader if you don’t understand why patience is a crucial component to Forex trading success and make it a part of your daily trading routine. The power of price action trading and the positive habit of patience is a very potent combination that can drastically improve your odds of becoming a great trader. If you want to learn some excellent price action trading strategies that can put you on the path towards becoming a profitable trader, check out my forex trading course for more information.

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Nial Fuller

About Nial Fuller

is a Professional Trader, Investor & Author who is considered ‘The Authority’ on Price Action Trading. His blog is read by over 200,000+ followers and he has taught 25,000+ students since 2008. In 2016, Nial won the Million Dollar Trader Competition. Checkout Nial's Professional Trading Course here.
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  1. Thabang Emmanuel Mabone

    I have learned from great teacher today about being patient This lesson open my eyes about why I always lost my money in the market Thank you Nial

    Reply
  2. Joe Brush

    Well written , excellent ingredient to be applied .

    Reply
  3. Moses

    Thanks Master

    Reply
  4. Zinnur

    Excellent lesson! Thanks

    Reply
  5. naveen

    I learned several things from Nial but this is the foremost important lesson I learned from him. I set traps in the confluent areas and patiently wait for price to approach. Every decision except the bar close should be taken in advance to avoid the “trading demon” attacking you in the heat of trading moment. By following Ambush trading method, we can avoid hesitation, fear, second guessing and taking stupid trades.

    Reply
  6. arun

    Dear Nial, very thanks, and appreciate you a lot ya, its very useful for me, to be a patient trader

    Reply
  7. joe

    very helpful, nial

    Reply
  8. KRISTOFA

    There is no more truth to be told than that the patience dog eats the fattest bones

    Reply
  9. Larry H.

    Nial,

    Yes! Yes! Yes! Patience occupies first place in one of my posted Self-Stimulators that goes “Patience, Practice, and Persistence pays poor Pedro precious pesos provided he religiously follows his plan & rules to the P”.

    Thanks — Larry

    Reply
  10. Sanjay

    To tell the truth,most of us have been victims of impatience. It has led to over trading, and trading mainly from the smaller time frames. This article is, as our member pointed out, easily the most important one ever written in Forex.

    Reply
  11. Paul

    Absolutely right, Nial. Thanks. Another benefit is derived from all of this that helps me: Patience is the antithesis of stress.

    Reply
  12. Ken

    Thanks Nial,your right,I’ve never really thought about using patience as a trading tool untill now,I just went about my trading the way most losers do. thanks so very much for these articles,they really are priceless.
    Ken.

    Reply
  13. joaquin

    great and very educative,i really apreciate
    thanks

    Reply
  14. kevin

    Great article and I will follow it to a ”T”.

    Reply
  15. Eddie

    Great article!
    Like you said I also consider patience as the most important trait in traders character and I try to learn it really hard.
    Thanks

    Reply
  16. George

    Nail just want to say thanks for all the info you send me & love it all, hopefuly next couple of days i will do your course. Great work, just want to say im just starting to understand the price activity & I think its great, keep it simple, always believed in that.

    Reply
  17. jon

    once again nice timing with this article, I hit the over trading wall last week,took some of your old advice and took a step back over the weekend and put paitence into practice.
    thanks for another inspiring article.

    Reply
  18. magbagbeola Adesola

    Hi Nial,

    Again you have hit the nail at the top, this is good.

    Reply
  19. FxDiva

    Nial, my trading has improved exponentially, just from reviewing the “free” information on your website . . . patience has been a huge problem for me, mostly because I was using the indicators as opposed to the price action. What a HUGE difference.

    Thank you.

    Reply
  20. Elie

    Top notch articles as usual.

    Thank you Nial

    Reply
  21. dan dare

    Hi Nial.
    I like your style I only have a small account max loss £40.00 so unable to follow your style. I use 8 pips stop loss on aud/usd 2 spread, following price action from pin bars 3 have 12 limit, the other 2 I let run then move stops into profit . the time frame 2 to 4 days closing midday friday. UNCLE DAN

    Reply
  22. Ben Brooks

    I agree fully Nial.

    On the path to our trading goals if we want to get from $1000 to $20000, the surest way to get there is to first go to $1100, then $1200, then $1300, and so on. By skipping a single step, even though it appears to be a shortcut, often results in failure.

    If you have a great ambition, take as big a step as possible in the direction of fulfilling it. The step may only be a tiny one, but trust that it may be the largest one possible for now.

    Greetings Ben

    Reply
  23. Ben Brooks

    Great article Nial my biggest mistake has just been made clear to me is their any exercise you can do to avoid the impulsive trading and become patient

    Reply
  24. seb

    yes,“patience is a virtue” i have learned this the hard way..

    Reply
  25. olajubu

    Thanks for your msgs,i’m realy improving

    Reply
  26. Don Futura

    KPG stands for Knowledge,Patience,and Guts
    The Knowledge of the business gives you the Guts to handle the Risk however the Patience is the hard part for most of us. Timing the trade is the key.

    Reply
  27. Craig

    Hi Nial,thanks for a great educational article,I am learning so much from you.

    Reply
  28. Doug

    I have seen that most people will still go against what you just wrote. I myself have lost a big part of my initial capitol to the market. Then I finally followed the rules and realize that waiting/being patient is KEY. I make more money on the high probabiltity trades than I did just getting into the market to be in with a lot of trades.

    Happy tradeing
    Doug

    Reply
  29. Mr Wong

    Aah Mr Nial
    Day are vely twoo words you have witten.Manny manny tank yoo’s

    Reply
  30. Bryan

    Well said and explained Nial! The same mind set has made me wealthy in trading! You Deserve your succcess! Congratulations on being a great person! Nice to see positve people like Nial helping others in our world of uncertianty! Bryan.

    Reply
  31. galen

    Patience is a habit necessary for trading currency. I learned this just this morning and the loss has stayed with me throughout the day. I have patience now and will wait for that perfect price action trade.

    Thank you for the slap in the face.

    Reply
  32. josue

    Great article..no doubts, patience is a really powerful tool in any situation of our lives…God bless you all.

    Reply
  33. Jose Maria

    Hi Nial,
    Thanks for your excelent article! Whoever wants to succeed trading the markets needs just follow your advice, simply and effective.
    Take care.

    Reply
  34. azmiharun

    Thank you Mr Nial for your nice article. The become a patience forex trader is not easy as the people say. I will not happen for short year trading. Thanks.

    Reply
  35. bobby

    GOOD stuff i have been a lot more patient and a lot more successful

    Reply
  36. Anthony

    Thanks Nial

    Reply
  37. alex idachaba

    if there is anything price action trading has taught me,then that is patience.Before, i used to trade about thrice a week but now i fing myself trading thrice a month because i am just sitting and waitng for that perfect pin bar to form.
    Thanks Nial for this great article

    Reply
  38. T Allen

    Thanks Nial – Great article. You always hit the nail on the head with your lessons.

    Reply
  39. Thrinethra

    Hi Nial,
    Excellent Article.I understood how patience is more important in trading.
    Patience is the secret of Success.
    Thanks for your article

    Reply
  40. Sandra

    Very helpful – well explained. Hope i can do the info justice trading with it.

    Reply
  41. John Peacock

    Hi Niall
    A really important point I am always jumping into trades too early I will take on board this article
    Thanks for all your help
    John

    Reply
  42. sulaiman

    The most important of all forex articles

    thanx Nail

    Reply