Pin Bar Forex Trading Strategy – Pin Bar Definition

By Nial Fuller   Posted in Forex Trading Strategies

An Introduction To The Pin Bar Forex Trading Strategy and How to Trade It Effectively…
The pin bar formation is a price action reversal pattern that shows that a certain level or price point in the market was rejected. Once familiarized with the pin bar formation, it is apparent from looking at any price chart just how profitable this pattern can be. Let’s go over exactly what a pin bar formation is and how you can take advantage of the pin bar strategy in the context of varying market conditions.
What is a Pin Bar?
The actual pin bar itself is a bar with a long upper or lower “tail”, “wick” or “shadow” and a much smaller “body” or “real body”, you can find pin bars on any stripped-down, “naked” bar chart or candlestick chart. We use candlestick charts because they show the price action the clearest and are the most popular charts amongst professional traders. Many traders prefer the candlestick version over standard bar charts because it is generally regarded as a better visual representation of price action.

Characteristics of the Pin Bar Formation

• The pin bar should have a long upper or lower tail…the tail is also sometimes called the “wick” or the “shadow”…they all mean the same thing. It’s the “pointy” part of the pin bar that literally looks like a “tail” and that shows rejection or false break of a level.
• The area between the open and close of the pin bar is called the “body” or “real body”. It is typically colored white or another light color when the close was higher than than the open and black or another dark color when the close was lower than the open.
• The open and close of the pin bar should be very close together or equal (same price), the closer the better.
• The open and close of the pin bar are near one end of the bar, the closer to the end the better.
• The shadow or tail of the pin bar sticks out (protrudes) from the surrounding price bars, the longer the tail of the pin bar the better.
• A general “rule of thumb” is that you want to see the pin bar tail be two/thirds the total pin bar length or more and the rest of the pin bar should be one/third the total pin bar length or less.
• The end opposite the tail is sometimes referred to as the “nose”
Bullish Reversal Pin Bar Formation
In a bullish pin bar reversal setup, the pin bar’s tail points down because it shows rejection of lower prices or a level of support. This setup very often leads to a rise in price.
Bearish Reversal Pin Bar Formation
In a bearish pin bar reversal setup, the pin bar’s tail points up because it shows rejection of higher prices or a level of resistance. This setup very often leads to a drop in price.
Examples of the Pin Bar Formation in Action
Here is a daily chart of CAD/JPY, we can see numerous pin bar formations that were very well defined and worked out very nicely. Note how all the pin bar’s tails clearly protruded from the surrounding price action, showing a defined “rejection” of lower prices. All of the pin bars below have something in common that we just discussed, can you guess what it is?
If you said that all the pin bars in the above chart are “bullish pin bar setups”, then you answered the question right. Good job!
In the following daily USD/JPY chart we can see an ideal pin bar formation that resulted in a serious move and trend reversal. Sometimes pin bars like this form at significant market turning points and change the trend very quickly, like we see below. The example in the chart below is also sometimes called a “V bottom reversal”, because the reversal is so sharp it literally looks a V…
Here is an example of a trending market that formed numerous profitable pin bar setups. The following daily chart of GBP/JPY shows that pin bars taken with the dominant trend can be very accurate. Note the two pin bars on the far left of the chart that marked the start of the uptrend and then as the trend progressed we had numerous high-probability opportunities to buy into it from the bullish pin bars shown below that were in-line with the uptrend.

How to Trade a Pin Bar Formation

The pin bar formation is a reversal setup, and we have a few different entry possibilities for it:
“At market entry” – This means you place a “market” order which gets filled immediately after you place it, at the best “market price”. A bullish pin would get a “buy market” order and a bearish pin a “sell market” order.
“On stop entry” – This means you place a stop entry at the level you want to enter the market. The market needs to move up into your buy stop or down into your sell stop to trigger it. It’s important to note that a sell stop order must be under the current market price, including the spread, and a buy stop order must be above the current market price, including the spread. If you need more help on these “jargon” words checkout my free beginners forex course for more. On a bullish pin bar formation, we will typically buy on a break of the high of the pin bar and set our stop loss 1 pip below the low of the tail of the pin bar. On a bearish pin bar formation, we will typically sell on a break of the low of the pin bar and place a stop loss 1 pip above the tail of the pin bar. There are other stop loss placements for my various setups taught in my advanced price action course.
“Limit entry” – This entry must be placed above the current market price for a sell and below the current market price for a buy. The basic idea is that some pin bars will retrace to around 50% of the tail, so we can look to enter there with a limit order. This provides a tight stop loss with our stop loss just above or below the pin bar high or low and a large potential risk reward on the trade as a result.
To effectively trade the pin bar formation you need to first make sure it is well-defined, (see pin bar characteristics listed at the top of this tutorial). Not all pin bar formations are created equal; it pays to only take the pin bar formations that meet the above characteristics.
Next, try to only take take pin bars that are displaying confluence with another factor. Generally, pin bars taken with the dominant daily chart trend are the most accurate. However, there are many profitable pin bars that often occur in range-bound markets or at major market turning points as well. Examples of “factors of confluence” include but are not limited to: strong support and resistance levels, Fibonacci 50% retracement levels, or moving averages.
Pin bar in range-bound market and at important market turning point (trend change):
In the chart example below, we can see a bearish pin bar sell signal that formed at a key level of resistance in the EURUSD. This was a good pin bar because it’s tail was clearly protruding up through the key resistance and from the surrounding price action, indicating that a strong rejection as well as false-break of an important resistance had taken place. Thus, there was a high probability of a move lower after that pin bar. Note the 50% limit sell entry that presented itself as the next bar retraced to about 50% of the pin bar’s length before the market fell significantly lower…
Pin bar in-line with trend with multiple factors of confluence:
In the chart example below, we are looking at a bearish pin bar sell signal that formed in the context of a down-trending market and from a confluent area in the market. The confluence between the 8 / 21 dynamic EMA resistance layer, the horizontal resistance at 1.3200 and the downtrend, gave a lot of “weight” to the pin bar signal. When we get a well-defined pin bar like this, that has formed at a confluent area or level in the market like this, it’s a very high-probability setup…

Other names you might find pin bars described by:

There are several different names used in ‘classic’ Japanese candlestick patterns that refer to what are basically all pin bars, the terminology is just a little different. The following all qualify as pin bars and can be traded as I’ve described above:
• A bearish reversal or top reversal pin bar formation can be called a “long wicked inverted hammer”, “long wicked doji”, “long wicked gravestone”, or “shooting star”.
• A bullish reversal or bottom reversal pin bar formation can be called a “long wicked hammer”, “long wicked doji”, or “long wicked dragonfly”.

In Summary

The pin bar formation is a very valuable tool in your arsenal of Forex price action trading strategies. The best pin bar strategies occur with a confluence of signals such as support and resistance levels, dominant trend confirmation, or other ‘confirming’ factors. Look for well formed pin bar setups that meet all the characteristics listed in this tutorial and don’t take any that you don’t feel particularly confident about.
Pin bars work on all time frames but are especially powerful on the 1 hour, 4hour and daily chart time frames. It is possible to make consistent profits by only trading the pin bar formation, and you can learn more about it in my price action trading course. Upon adding this powerful setup as one of your main Forex trading strategies, you will wonder how you ever traded without it.
 

How To Trade Trends In Forex – A Complete Guide

By Nial Fuller   Posted in Forex Trading Strategies

 We’ve all heard the saying “The trend is your friend”, and while it sounds nice it doesn’t really teach us anything about trading a trending market or how to identify one. In today’s lesson, I am going to give you guys some solid information on trend trading that you can begin using immediately. Today’s lesson is all about trading trending markets with price action, and we are going to talk about how to tell when a market is trending and how to take advantage of these trends.
I hope you guys pay close attention to today’s article and refer back to it when you have any questions about how to trade or identify a trending market. In fact, if you email me asking about trends…I will probably refer you to this article!
Let’s get started…

The first step: Learn to identify a trend with nothing but raw price action

As you probably already know, there are tons of different indicators that you can put on your charts to ‘help’ you identify a trending market and trade with it. Many traders spend countless hours and dollars on trend-following trading systems or on indicators that just end up confusing them and making the process of trend discovery a lot more difficult than it needs to be.
I have always been a strong proponent of visual observation of the raw price action of a market, as you probably know. I also believe that simply observing a market’s raw price action, from left to right, is the easiest and most effective way to identify a trend and to spot high-probability entries within it.
Let me make a quick note before we proceed: A trend is not actually a strategy by itself; it’s just an added point of confluence that increases the probability of a trade. However, just randomly jumping in with a trending market is not an edge or a strategy.
As a market moves higher or lower, its previous turning points, or swing points as I like to call them, become reference points that we can use to help us determine the trend of a market. The most basic way to identify a trend is to check and see if a market is making a pattern of higher highs and higher lows for an uptrend, or lower highs and lower lows for a downtrend. This is just plain old visual observation of a market’s naturally occurring price action…no mumbo-jumbo trading systems or magic-bullets here. I’d like you guys to take a look at this simple diagram that I drew below; it shows us the basic idea of looking for higher highs (HH) and higher lows (HL) for uptrends and lower highs (LH) and lower lows (LL) for downtrends:
Note: each colored circle is highlighting what we would consider a ‘swing point’ in the market:
Thus, general observation of a market’s swing points is the first point of call in determining if a market is trending. If you do not see a pattern of HH HL or LH LL, but instead you see sideways price movement with no obvious general up or down direction to it, then you are probably looking at a range-bound market or one that is simply chopping back and forth.
Tip: You shouldn’t have to think too hard about whether a market is trending or not. Most traders make trend discovery WAY too difficult. If you take a common sense and patient approach, it’s usually fairly obvious if a market is trending or not just by looking at the raw price action of its chart, from left to right. Make sure you mark the swing points on your chart, as it will draw your attention to them and help you see if there’s a pattern of HH and HL or LH and LL, as discussed above.

Characteristics of trending markets

Trending markets tend to make strong moves in the direction of the trend followed by periods of consolidation or a counter-trend retrace before the next leg in the direction of the trend. You will notice this pattern happens in almost any trend you can find. Typically, what happens to many traders is that they will make some money during the periods of strong directional trend movement, but then they continue to trade as the market takes a breather from the trend and consolidates. It’s these periods when traders give up all of the gains they just made when the market was moving aggressively.
You need to learn to identify the different parts of a trend, this will help you avoid over-trading during the choppy / consolidation periods and will give you a better chance at profiting when the trend makes a strong move.
Here is an example of what I’m talking about:
In the diagram above, we can see that a trending market tends to move in spurts, moving in the direction of the trend and then stalling to take a breath before another leg in the direction of the trend. Now, all trends are obviously not exactly the same, but we do typically see the general pattern described above; a forceful move in the direction of the trend followed by a period of consolidation or a retracement in the opposite direction.
Now, these retraces are when we have the highest potential for a high probability entry within the trend. Often, a market will retrace to approximately the level of its previous swing point before the trend resumes. In an uptrend these swing points are support and in downtrends they are resistance. Look at the very first diagram in this article for a quick refresher on what I’m talking about. Also, let’s look at the chart we just looked at but this time with the support levels marked. These support levels resulted after the market began to retrace lower within the structure of the broader uptrend.
Note the ‘stepping’ pattern left behind by the swing points in this uptrend. As the market retraces back down to these ‘steps’ or support levels, we would focus our attention and watch for price action signals forming near these levels to rejoin the uptrend:
Note: These same principles apply in a down trending market but we would be looking for price action setups from resistance rather than support.
As we discussed previously, a trending market will tend to surge in one direction and then slow down and either consolidate in a sideways manner or retrace lower or higher, depending on what direction the dominant trend is. It is during these contraction or retrace moves that we can focus extra hard through our ‘sniper-scope’ and begin searching for high-probability price action trading strategies forming from previous swing points within the overall trend.

Trading from value in trends

My primary mission as a price action trader is to watch for obvious price action setups that form after a market retraces back to a confluent level in the market. This can be a swing point like we discussed above, a moving average level, or some other support or resistance level. Whatever the case, I am looking to trade from ‘value’ in a trending market. By value, I mean from an optimum point in the market that has proved significant before.
For example, in an uptrend I would consider ‘value’ to be support, since that is where the price of the market is likely to be seen as a good ‘value’ for the bulls, and thus they will tend to buy from that level and push the price higher. Whereas, in a downtrend, ‘value’ is seen at resistance, since the price has rotated higher within the broader downtrend; so it’s a good ‘value’ to sell from resistance in a downtrend. These rotations back to value points can also be called ‘trading from the mean’ or the ‘average’ price, this is why moving averages tend to act as dynamic support or resistance levels.
One tool we can use to find ‘value’ in a market is a moving average. I don’t use them all the time, but when I do I like to use the 8 and 21 day exponential moving averages. I use them as a general guide and a helper to find confluent points in a market. For example, often the 21 day EMA will align with a swing point in a trending market, this would be considered a confluent level since you have multiple factors lining up together. Then, if we see a price action signal there, we know we are seeing a setup form in a very high-probability area on the chart. See here:
Note: these moving averages should only be used as a ‘general guide’ and never as an actual signal (as in the old ‘moving average crossover signal’). We only use them as a helper to see dynamic support and resistance levels (to add confluence) and for trend direction. But just to be clear, our main focus is on visual observation of a market’s price action and levels, that is to say without any EMAs.

Don’t fall into the ‘breakout’ trap – Many amateur traders get stuck in a cycle of trying to trade breakouts all the time…this is not really an effective long-term strategy because the ‘big boys’ all know that amateurs are constantly trying to buy and sell breakouts. Instead, we want to enter closer to key market levels, swing points, EMA levels (confluent levels) in the market…always with confirmation from a price action signal. As a ‘regressive’ price action trader, we are looking to buy or sell from value within the trend…waiting for the inevitable pullback and then pouncing on an obvious price action signal if one forms.

Forex trends vs. other markets

One aspect of trend trading that I want to touch on briefly is that trends in Forex tend to differ from those in other markets, especially equities.
In Forex, bearish and bullish trends are typically equally as violent and potent…whereas in equity markets we tend to see slower moving price action in a bull market, along with lower volatility. Down-trending markets tend to be fast and volatile in equity markets. Forex trends tend to be the same in their volatility and price action whether the trend is up or down. The main reason is because it’s one currency against another in any given currency pair and this results in more balanced price movement.
Thus, in Forex, your trading strategy and plan will generally be the same for both up and down markets. Here’s an example of the EURAUD daily chart recently that shows just how consistent both down trends and up trends can be in this market…note how the volatility and speed of these trends were about the same:
In the equity markets, traders typically need to adjust their strategies or systems as a market moves from bull to bear or vice versa. But in Forex, whether you’re trading long or short, bull or bear, the volatility of a currency pair tends to say about the same. That’s not to say that volatility never changes in Forex, it just means that the particular direction of a Forex pair doesn’t have a very big impact on that pair’s volatility or price action, as it does in the equity markets for example.

Final notes on trading with trends:

Take advantage of trends when they happen – There is never anything concrete with trends…meaning you never know how long they will last for, so try to take advantage of them when they do occur. Markets typically only trend about 25 to 35% of the time, and the rest of the time they are range-bound or chopping in a sideways fashion. The trick is to learn how to identify a trending market so that you can get the most out of it and get on board as early as possible.
Counter-trend trading – Overall, trend trading should make up about 70% of the trades you take, and the other 30% might consist of counter-trend trades or trades in range-bound markets. It’s best to learn how to trade with near-term trend before you try trading counter-trend, because trading with the trend is naturally higher-probability than trading against it.
In conclusion, trend trading is perhaps the ‘easiest’ way to make money in the forex markets. Unfortunately, markets don’t trend all the time, and it’s the time in between trends that traders do the most damage to themselves. This damage is a result of not having the discipline to wait for high-probability setups to appear, and not being able to properly read a market’s price action to determine whether or not it’s trending.
I trust that today’s lesson has helped you get an idea of how to determine whether a market is trending or not and how to trade a trending market. Remember, there’s no ‘Holy-Grail’ for trend trading, but if you’re in doubt, the best thing to do is to just relax and take some time to visually observe the last few weeks of price data in a market…without indicators. This no-nonsense approach is hard to beat and will work if you know what you’re looking for.
Finally, I leave you with this little formula:
The Best Trades = Trend + Confluent level + Price action signal
I’ve touched on some topics that traders can use for short-term trend analysis today, and I expand on these topics in the members’ article section of my price action traders’ community. Trend following is a large part of my Price Action Forex Trading Course and of my general trading strategy. I’d really love to hear your feedback today, so please remember to leave your comments below & click the ‘like button’.
Good trading, Nial Fuller

Trading 50% Retracements with Price Action Confirmation

By Nial Fuller   Posted in Forex Trading Strategies


In this price action trading lesson, I am going to explain how to use the 50% Fibonacci retrace in conjunction with a price action reversal ‘confirmation’ signal, ideally a pin bar setup or fakey bar reversal setup.

It is a widely accepted fact among chart technicians that most major moves, and many minor ones, will eventually retrace to around the 50% level of the move. There are many reasons why these 50% retracements are so prevalent in the market, but we aren’t going to speculate on those today, because in the end it doesn’t really matter, what matters is that the 50% retrace is a very real and very useful event to be aware in the market.
I am only a fan of trading the 50% retrace off a swing low or high as long as there is a price action signal to confirm its validity; meaning, I don’t “blindly” enter only because the market has retraced to a 50% level. My trading is all about confluence and finding evidence to support the price signals on the charts.

How to find the 50% level of a move

Before we talk about trading price action signals from 50% retrace levels, we need to be clear on how exactly to draw in the 50% levels because I know from some of the emails that come in on the support line that some traders don’t really understand how to properly draw use the Fibonacci drawing tool on their Meta Trader 4 trading platform.
Quick note: I don’t use all the other Fibonacci extension levels because there are just too many of them and I don’t see the point of having so many different levels all over your charts. The 50% phenomenon has been proven across hundreds of years of technical analysis whilst the other Fib levels are much more haphazard and self-fulfilling in the sense that if you put enough lines all over your charts, some of them are going to get hit regardless of whether or not there is any significance behind them or not. I primarily only use the 50% level, but for me it is an ‘approximate’ 50% retrace and that means if a valid signal forms near the 50% level, say anywhere from a 45% retrace to a 60% retrace, I will also count that as a valid retrace and treat it the same I would as a signal exactly at the 50% level.
It really is quite simple to draw in the 50% levels, but it’s important that you understand where a move begins and where it ends, because I know some traders get confused about that. Where the move started should be an exact high or low of the move, or very close to it, this is where you first place the Fib tool, then you click and drag the other end of the Fib tool to the other end of the move; where the move terminated. Where the move started you should see the “100.0″ in the top right of the Fib tool and you should see the “0.0″ in the bottom right of the Fib tool. This might seem confusing at first to have the 100 % level at the start of the move, but it makes perfect sense if you think about it like this: You are looking for a retracement of a move, so by the time the move is finished and the market starts retracing, it is moving back toward the origin of the move and if it were to retrace back up or down on the whole move, it would then have retraced 100% of the move. See the chart below for more help:
In the example below, we are looking how to properly apply the Fibonacci tool to find the 50% retrace level of a major down move in the EURUSD pair:

How to trade price action signals from 50% retrace levels

When you have a price action signal present on the daily chart, you then match up the fib 50% retracement level if there is one present (see chart example below), if the price action candlestick signal matches up with the 50% swing retracement level then you’re good to go and potentially have a valid trade. If you can also find a relevant horizontal level to match up here, its a ‘double whammy’ of confluence (a reason to get excited).
The process of trading the 50% retrace is simple, below is one example of a recent trade on the AUDUSD pair:

After finding the potential trade signal, decide to enter at market prices, or wait for a pull back to get your stop loss tighter to reduce overall risk. In the chart example above, given the ‘perfection’ of the setup, as prices started to move up in the correct direction, a long entry could have been taken, momentum in the correct direction is always a good sign.
These obvious and ‘perfect’ price action setups at a 50% retrace level can lead to huge moves on daily chart time frames and learning how to identify and trade them can give you a very potent trading tool for your price action trading toolbox.
I personally feel that when a trader looks for the price action signal first, then matches up the supporting factors (confluence) they tend to make better trades. What I am saying here is this…if you see a giant signal on the daily chart, find out what other factors are backing it up and showing supportive evidence; we won’t always be able to trade a signal, mainly because we prefer not to fight the natural trend of the market, and many times we see signals forming against the trend.
In the next chart example below, the 50% swing retrace line and price action signal both came together at one common point and showed us a nice setup here, but what you should really take away from this example is that it was in line with the general thrust of the market, notice that prior to the pull back, we saw a nice rally up, and the pull back did not exceed the 50% area , rather it rejected it strongly and has now bounced aggressively higher to the new recent highs.
In this example we can see a 50% retrace in the EURJPY and a price action buy signal that formed showing rejection of it:

I hope this article clears some confusion about Fibonacci levels. Personally, I only get a handful of these setups every month on the daily charts, but when you see these swing retracements inside a general trend movement, its wise to mark them on your charts and then look for a price action confirmation entry signal. These setups typically lead to some very significant, and potentially very profitable moves, for more information on trading price action signals from 50% retracements levels, checkout my price action course and members area.

How To NOT Blow Up Your Trading Account

By Nial Fuller   Posted in Forex Trading Blog

So, you’ve been studying the markets for two years now, you’ve read all the books, taken numerous home-study courses and even attended a trading seminar, your demo trading results seemed pretty good, then you went live and lost 50% of your account in two weeks. You decided to go back to the drawing board and learn a different system, because you figured it must be your trading system’s fault that you lost all that money so fast; you just need to find the ‘perfect’ trading system…

Sound familiar? For many traders, this story is all too familiar. The majority of the people who come into the markets end up blowing up their trading account at some point, and many traders blow it up multiple times. Trading can almost seem “rigged” at times, because it seems so easy and effortless when your demo trading or when you’re not in the market and you’re just observing. But, the minute you enter the market with real money it seems like the whole game changes and someone changes all the rules to keep you from making money. I know it seems that way, I’ve felt like this before too, every trader goes through the same trials and tribulations while learning how to trade successfully. Some give up, some never change and just continue losing money without trying to make a real change in their trading habits, and some traders push through to the other side and become consistently profitable. In today’s lesson, we are going to discuss how you can become one of the profitable traders and how you can stop blowing up your trading account.

The typical journey of a Forex trader…

There are different stages in the journey of learning how to trade the markets. The stages consist of approximately the same elements and traders tend to progress through these stages in a similar sequence. Some traders progress through each stage quickly whilst some get stuck in one stage for months or even years. Let’s take a look at the 6 general stages of a Forex trader…

Stage 1:

Problem - You hear about Forex trading from a family member, a friend, a colleague, a T.V. commercial, the internet etc. It seems like a legitimate and exciting way to make money. You get dollar signs in your eyes and dreams in your head. You can’t wait to learn all about trading so that you can tell your boss to “shove it” and live the life you’ve always wanted. Case in point, you’re interest switch has been turned on and your gas tank is full of rocket fuel…you are chomping at the bit to absorb everything you can about trading, open an account and watch the money pile up.
Solution – While there’s nothing wrong with being excited and interested in the potential lifestyle to be lived by being a full-time Forex trader. You should be cautiously optimistic at this stage rather than planning to put all your eggs in the Forex trading basket and dreaming of life styles of the rich and famous. Trading is anything but a ‘get rich quick scheme’; it takes discipline, dedication, organization, logic, and patience, if you think it’s a way to some ‘fast and easy’ money, then you’d better think again. If you want to build a sustainable Forex trading career you’ve got to be realistic and understand from the beginning that developing the proper trading habits is what determines whether you become a successful Forex trader or fall to the wayside like most traders.

Stage 2:

Problem - You start doing some research on the internet, Googling everything you can think of regarding Forex trading. There are a lot of different options for trading systems, trading strategies, trading software, trading courses, seminars, and the like. You decide to learn the basics of Forex by taking a good free forex beginners course like mine or another. After this, everything is making sense to you, you are excited about the opportunity in Forex and now you just need to decide on what trading strategy you will use. After a lot of research and thought, you finally decide on a trading method that you feel confident will help you trade the market successfully. The problem with this stage is that many traders start out by learning a trading system or strategy that’s far too complicated. They’ve got Elliot Waves, MACD’s, Stochastics, expert advisors, and other indicators plastered all over their charts. These things are not conducive to developing and trading from a relaxed and confident Forex trading mindset.
Solution – Instead of learning about a million different indicators or purchasing expensive trading software, you should begin by learning how to trade off the raw price action of the market. I’m not only saying this because I teach price action trading, but also because you really do need to know how to read the raw price action of a market, no matter what trading method you eventually end up using. I suggest you stick with pure price action trading strategies, like the ones I teach and trade, but whatever method you end up using, you will trade it better by understanding the price dynamics occurring on the chart below it.

Stage 3:

Problem - Whilst the first two stages discussed above are pretty consistent amongst most traders, stage 3 is where traders’ paths might diverge. At this point, most traders are trying to learn a trading system, a trading strategy, they’ve purchased a Forex trading robot or they are trying to trade with a bunch of different indicators. Most traders tend to demo trade for very little time, if any, on their first attempt at learning to trade. It seems to be human nature to want to jump into the markets as soon as possible and start risking our hard-earned money.
So, at stage 3 most traders have spent a little (too little) time learning some trading method and then after they see one or two instances of it working out they open a  live account and begin trading with real money. Typically, traders make stupid trading mistakes like entering the wrong lot size or buying when they wanted to sell, etc. These are mistakes that are the result of not taking the time to properly learn about your trading platform and how it works. In stage 3, traders typically blow out their first trading account, or lose such a large portion of it that they take a break from trading for a while, at least until they learn another trading system. (Note, some traders do avoid ever blowing out a trading account, and it’s typically because at this stage they begin trading with proper trading habits and they never waver, they stay on track and don’t give into the temptations of trading like a gambler).
Solution – Whatever system or strategy you decide to start learning how to trade from, BE SURE TO DEMO TRADE IT FIRST. Many traders seem to think they don’t need to demo trade, or they don’t do it for long enough. You need at least one or two months of demo trading the exact same strategy or system you are planning on trading live with, if you don’t do this you’re a fool. Remember, this is your hard-earned money you’re risking, waiting two or three months to start trading with it is not going to hurt you, especially if you consider that doing so will allow you to become more familiar and confident with your trading method, which will ultimately cause you to trade much more effectively.  Demo trading your trading strategy and the trading plan you’ve built from it, will increase your odds of not blowing out your trading account dramatically.
Most of the time, traders blow out their first account by getting too excited and too anxious; they skip demo trading, they have a mediocre grasp on their trading method, and let’s face it, they really just want to get in the markets and throw some money around because it’s fun at first. Well, I assure you that blowing out your trading account that you worked 6 months or a year to save up for will not take you 6 months or a year to blow out, and the fun and thrills you felt when first starting to trade live will end very quickly once you realize you have no idea what you’re doing and the market is eating your money like a hungry Great White Shark. So, make sure you have MASTERED your trading strategy and that you have demo traded it for at least two months or more before you even think about risking your real money in the markets.

Stage 4:

Problem – In this stage, most traders begin a frantic search for a ‘better’ trading method than the one they were using. There are so many options for trading systems and strategies on the internet these days that it can be nearly impossible to not get tempted into buying one of the ‘too good to be true’ sounding ones… and there are plenty of those. This is the stage where traders really try to find that “Holy-Grail” trading method that they ‘know’ must be out there…after all, someone is making money in the markets so there must be some ‘ultimate’ trading system out there (or so they think). In this stage, traders end up dropping some serious money on some Forex trading systems or other trading products that they feel will help them correct their previous trading mistakes.
Solution – This solution is pretty straight forward; if it sounds too good to be true…it probably is. The Forex industry is FILLED with trading systems, strategies, courses, books, and you name it that sound really great; they make trading seem easy. Truth is, trading is not easy, and it’s a battle against your own emotions that only you can overcome. Yes, the strategy that you use matters, a lot, but it is not true that more expensive trading systems or more complicated and fancy sounding ones work better than plain old price action trading strategies. In fact, I can tell you from experience that they don’t. I’ve tried them all, in my early trading days I too set out on the “Holy-Grail” trading system quest. Eventually, through trial and error, logic and commonsense, I realized the markets were best traded by just analyzing the naked price action of the charts that had been staring me in the face the whole time.

Stage 5:

Problem - This is the stage where traders feel they have found the ‘perfect’ trading system or strategy and they are ‘finally’ ready to start making money in the markets. Typically, in this stage, a trader will either develop good or bad trading habits and this is also the first stage where some traders have a real shot at going on to make consistent money in the markets. However, what happens to most of them is that they aren’t properly prepared with a Forex trading plan, trading journal, and a concrete trading routine. Instead, they are all hopped up over their new trading system and they start trading with it without any sort of organized structure or plan behind them. This typically leads to over-trading, risking too much, and for most traders it starts them down another path to blowing out their trading account, again.
Solution – Don’t fall off track. Many traders get excited about doing the right things in the market. They have a trading plan, they have a trading journal, and they know what they are looking for in the markets. Then after a few losing trades they seem to forget about their trading plan and they start ‘winging it’ a little more, they’ve also stopped filling out their trading journal, etc. You see, it’s REALLY REALLY easy to stop being discipline and to get out of control in the markets. In fact, it’s far easier to trade in an undisciplined manner than it is to remain disciplined and patient and develop the proper trading habits. The trick is that the longer you remain disciplined, organized, and patient, the easier it will become, and eventually you will enjoy trading the right way because you will have forged these things into positive habits. You’ve got to stick it out long enough and endure some ‘pain’ to see the long-term reward. Nothing worth doing in life is easy, trading is no different. If you give in to what you ‘feel’ like you want to do in your trading, rather than what you know you should do, it will only be a matter of time before you blow out your trading account.

Stage 6:

Problem - At this stage, you’re either on the right track because you’re remaining disciplined, organized and patient, or you blew out your account in stage 5 because you got too excited and emotional. Having blown out two or more accounts at this point, you are really starting to feel depressed about your trading, you think it’s ‘impossible’ to trade successfully and that you just don’t ‘have it’. You fall into a ‘downward spiral’ of losing money because you feel like you’ve lost so much to this point that you start to feel like you don’t care if you lose anymore, so you start taking bigger risks and trading more frequently, in other words, you’re gambling in the markets now.
Solution – Time to take some time off. Stop trading real money, and if you need to, stop demo trading and forget about the markets for a month or two. They will be here when you return. The best medicine for ending a period of emotional trading is to simply remove yourself from the markets for a while. If you feel like you’ve reached this stage, and you really need some help, then I suggest you simply stop trading for a while. Come back later after you’ve got some trading education and you’ve demo traded for a while. There’s no rush. In fact, the more you rush and try to ‘force’ money out of the markets, the more the money you so badly desire will elude you.
In closing,
I hope today’s lesson has helped to open your eyes to the fact that you are NOT ALONE as a trader who has committed emotional trading mistakes or who has blown out a trading account or two (or three or four). It happens to all of us, it’s part of the game. You either figure out that what you were doing before wasn’t working and try to fix it in a logical and straight-forward manner like we’ve discussed here today, or you continue on in your old gambling ways, or you give up trading all together. Those are really the only 3 things that can happen to you from here.
I trust that because you’re on my website and you’ve read this whole article, you’re committed to righting your trading wrongs in a logical and no-nonsense manner. If that’s the case, I suggest you check out my Forex trading course and members’ community for further training and fellowship with like-minded traders who are committed to learning how to trade with simple, logical and effective price action trading strategies. If you have any questions or feedback, please feel free to contact me.
 

How To Remove Your Fear Of Losing Money When You Place Trades

By Nial Fuller   Posted in Forex Trading Education Articles
 

If you’re going to be a trader, you’re going to lose money at some point, and in case you are still in the phase of trying to avoid all losing trades and searching for a “Holy-grail” trading system with a 75% strike rate, you should forget about all that right now. As cliché as it may sound, losing really is part of winning as a trader; the two are inseparable. If you don’t learn how to lose properly you will never make consistent money as a trader.

Reality check…ALL pro traders lose money, and they understand that it’s just part of the “game”. Sadly, for many traders, every trade is accompanied by a tremendous FEAR of losing money and sometimes intense emotional attachment.

Some of the key reasons why traders become fearful about losing their money include the following:

1. They don’t understand that mathematically, over a series of trades, a trader can lose a majority of their trades and still be widely profitable, simple math proves this.

2. They are simply fearful of losing money in general.

3. They are trading positions that are too big (risking more than they really should be), causing fear, sleepless nights and huge emotional swings.

In the rest of this lesson I’m going to provide you with some insight into the fear of losing money in the markets and how to conquer it. This is some pretty powerful stuff so make sure you actually read the whole article and re-read it if you have to. What you learn here should give you the power to eliminate your fear of losing money in the markets and will help you develop into a confident and emotionally collected trader.

Fear of losing money can be a good, natural emotion, but we need to transform its focus.

Fear of losing money is a good emotion to have in many areas of life, if we did not have it there would be even more chaos in the world and in the markets. Humans are protective of their acquired wealth and property, and rightly so; they worked hard for it.
However, in trading, this natural energy to be defensive and emotional with money needs to be transformed and refocused into a different mental state…
Instead of being fearful of losing your money when trading, embrace the control you have on each trade; a trader has complete control over the risk management of every trade via stop losses and position sizing, [and for more advanced traders, derivatives and hedging mechanisms (not discussed here)]. These risk management tools are your way of being in control of your money/funds, and instead of being “fearful” about losing money, you should feel empowered and confident because you can predetermine how much you are comfortable with potentially losing BEFORE you enter a trade by using these tools.
However, just using these tools to control your risk per trade is not quite enough to totally remove the fear of losing.

Ask yourself some serious questions

If you feel fear or any emotion at all when you place a trade, you need to “slap” yourself in the face and ask yourself 3 big questions (and answer honestly):
1. Do I really have the knowledge and confidence to be trading with real money in the first place?
If you’re trading your hard-earned money in the markets but you don’t know what your trading edge is and you don’t have 100% confidence in your ability to analyze and trade the markets…you probably should not be trading. One of the biggest reasons traders become afraid to lose their money is because they aren’t confident in their own ability to trade! It seems silly I know, but it’s very true; many traders simply don’t have a trading strategy mastered, they don’t have a trading plan, trading journal, etc…they simply aren’t prepared to risk real money in the markets yet…thus they feel fear when they trade.

2. Am I trading a position size that’s too large for my personal risk profile / per-trade risk tolerance?
If you don’t know what your per-trade risk tolerance is, then you need to figure that out first. It’s basically just the dollar amount that you feel like you are 100% comfortable with potentially losing on any trade; because you CAN lose on any trade…remember that. You have to take into account your overall financial situation and then determine how much money you should realistically and honestly have at risk in the market on any one trade…be honest with yourself here. You’ve got to think of yourself as a risk manager and as someone who is managing funds, rather than just a small-time guy trying to get lucky; your trading mindset will directly influence your trading results.
3. Do I truly understand the math’s behind trading?
When I say the “maths behind trading” I am mainly referring to risk reward and how it relates to your overall winning percentage. For example, on a series of 20 trades, you are likely to lose at least 35 to 45% of the trades, and most traders who are successful lose anywhere from 40 to 50% of the time, some even up to 60% of the time. But, through the power of risk reward you can lose more than you win and still come out very profitable. We will expand on this below.

Embrace the belief that losing is OK

Losing is good if you’re cutting your losses quickly and understand that by doing so you’re simply preserving capital and that your winning trades will pay for your losing trades with profit left over. This is the power of your average risk reward ratio over a series of trades coming into play; we will see this in action below…
Even very profitable traders typically lose more than they win, to prove this point let’s take a look at a case study showing 14 trades with a just a 43% win rate. To be clear, that means you are losing 57% of the time and winning just 43% of the time. It can be hard to associate “losing” the majority of your trades with making money, but as I discussed in one of my recent articles, you don’t have to be right to make money trading.
This image shows us that profitable traders can lose more trades than they win and still come out very profitable over a series of trades. Thus, losing money on any one trade should not concern you:

Trust your strategy and Trust the maths

As we can see in the hypothetical track record above, the math shows us that even while losing 57% of our trades, if we let our winners run to around 2 to 1 or better and cut our losses at -1R or less, the profits will take care of themselves. It’s worth noting we included a couple of 1.5R winners, because sometimes it will make more sense to take a reward of slightly less than 2R, depending on market conditions. The average risk reward in this example was 1:1.75, and if you can aim for an average risk reward of around 1:1.5 or 1:2, over the long run you should come out ahead. The “secret” is keeping ALL your losers at 1R or less and ONLY trading when our price action trading edge is truly present.
If you follow an actual plan, losing is easier to accept, because at least you had a plan and a roadmap as to what you were trying to do; the brain then sees it as more logical and thus you’re less likely to experience apprehension or fear. The set and forget concept I always talk about will assist with training your brain into accepting losses. You will also avoid interfering with a lot of your trades which can produce unnecessary losses.

The “Sleepless night test”

Everything we said above is accurate and important, but there really is one simple “fear test” that I have found to be very effective for most traders. That test is simply to gauge how you feel at night before you go to bed while you have a trade on. If you find that you can’t stop thinking about your trade(s) or you are glued to your computer screen while you should be sleeping, you are still experiencing fear of losing. So here’s a very simple test for you:

One simple rule…if you can’t go to sleep at night feeling comfortable and at ease with the trade(s) you have on…
1) You’re either trading too big of a position size / risking too much at your stop level
2) Or, you have no idea what you’re doing and lack confidence in your trades

Conclusion:

The fear of losing money or of losing a trade can be crippling to a trader, causing them to miss out on high-probability trade setups, second-guess themselves constantly and it can even cause them to be unable to sleep. Clearly, if we are to succeed at trading we have to conquer this fear. Conquering the fear of losing money and trades starts with acceptance; we have to first accept that we are going to lose money and have losing trades, even if we try to avoid them. Thus, there is no sense in “trying” to avoid losing trades, instead we have to learn to roll with them and contain them. We do this by following through with the concepts we discussed above, so let’s sum them up briefly:
• Mastering our price action trading strategy and “trusting” it: master it, own it and believe in it.
• Manage your money and employ solid risk management; this means cutting losses at 1R or less and aiming for a decent risk reward of about 1:2 on each trade. We also need to try and let some winners run to get larger risk rewards like 1:3, 1:4 or more.
• Trust the math: remember the example track record above and that even a 40% win rate can make very good money with an average risk reward ratio of approximately 1:1.5 or more.
To learn more about the above concepts and to get on the track to conquering your fear of losing money in the markets, checkout my Forex trading course and members’ community.
Good trading, Nial Fuller

The “Four Horsemen” That Are Killing Your Forex Trading

By Nial Fuller   Posted in Forex Trading Education Articles

You’ve probably heard of the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse”, while I’m not going to give you a “sermon” today, I am going to talk to you about the “Four Horsemen” of your trading account “apocalypse” and how to defeat them. They are the four emotions that influence most trader’s decision making in any market: Greed, Fear, Hope and Regret, and if you don’t thoroughly understand them and keep them under control, they will KILL your trading account, in shall we say an “apocalyptic” manner…
Let’s take a closer look at the “Four Horsemen” of your trading account’s “apocalypse” and how they work to influence your decisions in the market and how to control them instead of being controlled by them…

GREED

Greed is something we are all familiar with; it is the excessive desire for money and wealth (or other things). However, as it relates to trading, it can be more specifically defined as expecting an unrealistically large or quick profit from a trade.
Risking more than you know you should on a trade is the perhaps the most obvious way that greed negatively affects traders. You need to define the 1R dollar risk per trade that you are comfortable with potentially losing on any given trade, and never exceed that amount. If you start ratcheting up the amount you’re risking, you are being greedy, and it only takes one losing that you’ve risked too much on to do serious damage to your trading account.
When traders get greedy they may not even be aware of it. It often manifests as looking at your open profit on a trade and thinking about how much you’ve made and about how much more you ‘could’ make by keeping the trade open. Here’s the danger with this line of thinking: Open profit is just that, “open”, and you have not secured any profit from a trade until the position is closed. Unless you have closed a profitable position out, you really have nothing but the potential for profit. Traders often confuse the feeling that they get by looking at their open profit on a trade as ‘real’ money that they already have ‘in the bank’. Ignoring the fact that open profit is much different than ‘secured’ profit is the root cause of why traders do things like move their original profit target further away as price approaches it, which typically results in a much smaller profit than their original target would have brought them, or no profit at all. If you are greedy in trading, it has the ironic effect of making profits harder to obtain.
If you had a predefined profit target set at a 1:2 or 1:3 risk reward ratio, but as price gets close to that target you move it further away because you “think” price will keep going for an even bigger gain…that is greed, and it will almost always result in you making LESS than you would have if you just exited at your predetermined profit target. It can be difficult to exit a trade when it “looks good” and is in your favor, but most of the time, that is precisely when you should be exiting. Many traders hold trades too long, move their targets further out or set unrealistically large profit targets. All of these things are the result of GREED and they will all result in you making less money than if you weren’t greedy.
Greed can help you amass money in some areas of life, like if you are a “cheap” person who doesn’t like to spend much money…while this personality trait obviously has other negative consequences, it will help you grow your bank account over time. However, greed in the currency markets or in any investment / trading market will work against you most of the time and it’s something you must consciously be aware of and fight if you want to have a chance at long-lasting trading success.

FEAR

Many traders struggle with fear at some point, and they also get abused by it. Let me explain…
Fear can be both good and bad in trading, unlike greed which is essentially always bad for a trader. Fear is an extremely powerful emotion, perhaps THEE most powerful of all emotions we experience. Fear of death and other consequences keeps us (most of us) from doing stupid things like driving drunk or trying to wrestle a crocodile. Fear is essentially a survival response, and this can be good if you were a caveman trying to escape certain death from a saber-toothed tiger. However, in modern day financial markets, fear can cause all kinds of problems for traders…
First off, fear of losing money can be both good and bad, you just need to find the right balance and not have too much fear. Fear of blowing out your trading account will cause you to place stop losses on all your trades, thus, in this regard fear is good for the trader. But, fear can work against us too, by causing us to not enter a good price action trade setup only because we are “afraid” of losing money, perhaps because we’ve just had a series of losing trades. The other main reason traders become afraid to trade is because they have been risking too much money per trade and have just lost more than they can stomach. Thus, there are two main points to be aware of that can help you curb the negative effects of fear:
1) Your last trade has no effect on your next trade. If you are following your trading strategy, you will have winners and losers scattered about in a random distribution. Thus, you should not let your previous trade results (good or bad) influence your next trading decision.
2) You must find a dollar amount that you are comfortable with risking per trade. If you are risking too much money and gotten burned a couple times doing so, it will quickly cause you to be afraid of the market.
YOU have the power to control your own fear in the market. You should be a little bit afraid, because you can lose all your money if you let the market take it. But, the great part is that if you are aware of this and act accordingly, by properly managing your money and sticking to your trading strategy, you can find the right amount of fear and not let excessive fear derail your trading efforts.
Also, listening to news and economic reports (fundamental analysis) can induce fear into traders’ minds. News can cause traders to rationalize why they should close a trade or enter a trade, regardless of what the price action is saying. This is very wrong. The price action is all that really matters, and anything that can affect a market will be reflected in its price action, so following news reports and analyzing them is really a waste of time that can easily cause you to become fearful for no reason.

HOPE

Hope is dangerous for traders. It can be hard to understand this one, because ‘hope’ is usually thought of as a very good thing, and it is in most instances, just not in trading.
Hope is essentially the expectation that something will happen or a strong desire for it to happen. When traders trade with “hope”, they often ‘hope themselves’ right of making money. Hope can cause traders to move their stop losses further away or delete them all together because they think the market will turn around in their favor, allowing them to avoid the losing trade. Hope works in tandem with greed when traders hope for an unrealistically large profit and move profit targets further out. This typically ends up with the trader taking a very small profit because they never take the profit when it’s at a decent dollar amount in their favor, because they “hope” it will keep going and going.
Hoping that every trade you take will be a winner is foolish. When a trader “hopes” for a winning trade they are also expecting a favorable outcome, and this sets them up for whole host of emotional trading errors because when you expect something to happen and it doesn’t, it typically makes you sad, angry or regretful. It is much better to simply take a realistic view on every trade, and that means understanding that whilst you might have an effective trading strategy, that does not mean every trade will be a winner. You will have a mixture of winners and losers, and hopefully, over time if you manage your money properly and do not over-trade, you will see the “edge” that your trading strategy gives you, pay off. Thus, it would make far more sense to “hope” for a profitable trading year IF you follow your strategy and implement consistent discipline in your money management, rather than “hoping” that every trade is a winner, because then you are hoping for something that is not realistic.

REGRET

Regret is the feeling that traders often feel after a losing trade or a missed trading opportunity or perhaps after not making as much money as they hoped they would on a trade…possibly due to greed and fear, as we discussed above. Regret can slowly destroy your trading account……
From the emails I read each day, I know that many traders focus too much on past trades and “what if” scenarios. Something that you need to understand is that NO two moments in the market are exactly the same, thus it’s mostly a waste of time to stew over lost trades or that you didn’t make as much money as you could have. You can’t change what happened on your last trade, all you can do is evaluate what happened and try to take a little something away from it and move on. It is far more important to be focused on the “now” of the market rather than the past, because the market is constantly ebbing and flowing and it does not care how much you made or lost on your last trade.
Regret also causes traders to “chase” trades by jumping in the market after a setup has already triggered. This gives them a far worse risk reward potential on the trade which makes it a lot harder to turn a profit on the trade, chasing trades is not how a skilled and patient trader behaves. Instead of being regretful over missing a trade setup, the professional trader will simply remain calm and observe the market, learn a little something, and keep his or her hands in their pockets until the next trade comes along. Chasing trade setups is a VERY slippery slope to forgetting about your trading plan and kicking off the process of trading randomly or gambling in the market.

Conclusion: How to defeat the “Four Horsemen”

Since we are human, we are all susceptible to the same types of emotional trading mistakes, and the ones I’ve discussed in today’s lesson are the most common. To effectively battle them, the first step is being aware of them and their implications, which you’ve learned here today. The next step is to catch yourself “in the moment” and consciously become aware that you are being greedy, afraid, hopeful or regretful, and then quite frankly, kicking the emotional enemy in the ass.
Tackling your emotional trading enemies takes effort and patience; there’s no ‘free lunch’ in trading, and being unaware of this fact is perhaps why a lot of people fail it. If you make an effort to become more self-aware as you trade and gauge how you are feeling and consciously try to control how those feelings affect you, you will be far ahead of most traders. I cannot force you to do these things or pay attention to what I’ve said here today, but I can promise you that if you work to fight these “Four Horsemen” that are killing your trading, and combine that battle with effective trading strategies like those I teach in my price action trading course, you will avoid a trading account “apocalypse” and put yourself on the road to a successful trading career.

How To Develop A Profitable Forex Trading Mindset

By Nial Fuller   Posted in Forex Trading Education Articles

 In today’s lesson I am going to help you develop a profitable trading mindset.

It’s an unavoidable reality that your forex trading success or failure will  largely depend on your mindset. In other words, if your Forex trading psychology is not right, you aren’t going to make any money! Unfortunately, most traders ignore this important fact or are unaware of how critical having the proper mindset is to Forex trading success. If you do not have the correct trading mindset, it doesn’t matter how good your trading strategy is, because no strategy will ever make money if it’s used by a trader with the wrong psychology.

Note: I would love to hear how you plan on using the points discussed here to improve your Forex trading mindset. Please leave me your comments and feedback below after reading today’s lesson!

A lot of people seem to be unaware of the fact that they are trading with a mindset that is inhibiting them from making money in the markets. Instead, they think that if they just find the right indicator or system they will magically start printing money from their computer. Trading success is the end result of developing the proper trading habits, and habits are the end result of having the proper trading psychology. Today’s lesson is going to give you the insight you need to develop a profitable trading mindset, so read this lesson carefully and don’t dismiss any of it, because I promise you that the reason you are struggling in the markets now is because your mindset is working against you instead of for you.

Step 1: Have realistic expectations

The first thing you need to do to develop the proper Forex trading mindset is have realistic expectations about trading. What I mean is this; don’t think you’re going to quit your job and start making a million dollars a year after 2 months of trading live with your $5,000 account. That’s not how it works, and the sooner you ground your expectations in reality, the sooner you will begin to make money consistently. You need to accept that you cannot over-trade and over-leverage your way to trading success, if you do those two things you might make some quick money temporarily, but you will soon lose it all and more. Accept the reality of how much money you have in your trading account and how much of that you are willing to lose per trade. Here are some other points to consider:
• Only trade with disposable ‘risk’ capital – Disposable capital is money you don’t need for any life expenses, including retirement or other long-term things.  If you don’t have any disposable or risk capital,  then keep demo trading until you do, or stop trading all together, but whatever you do, do not trade with money you are going to become emotional about losing.  Always assume you could lose whatever money you have in your account or in a trade…if you’re truly OK with that, then your good to go, just make sure you don’t lie to yourself…REALLY BE OK WITH IT.  Trading with ‘scared’ money (money you can’t afford to lose) will lead to severe emotional pressure and cause ongoing losses.
• Make sure you can still sleep at night !– This is related to the above point about disposable capital. But the difference is that you need to ask yourself before EVERY trade you take if you are 100% neutral or OK with potentially losing the money you are about to risk. If you can’t sleep at night because you’re thinking about your trade, you’ve risked too much. No one can tell you how much to risk per trade, it depends on what you’re personally comfortable with. If you trade 4 times a month you can obviously risk a little more per trade than someone who trades 30 times a month…it’s relative to your trade frequency, your skills as a trader, and your personal risk tolerance.
• Understand each trade is independent of the previous one – This point is important because I know that many traders are way too influenced by their previous trade. The fact of the matter is that your last trade has absolutely ZERO to do with your next trade. You need to avoid becoming euphoric or over-confident after a winning trade or revengeful after a losing trade. The fact of the matter is that every time you trade it should just be seen as another execution of your trading edge; if you just had 3 consecutive winners you need to avoid risking more than usual on your next trade just because you are feeling very confident, and you need to avoid jumping back into the market right away after a losing trade just to try and “make back” what you lost. When you do these things you are operating 100% on emotion rather than logic and objectivity.
• Don’t get attached to your trades – If you follow the 3 points we just discussed you should have little chance of becoming too attached to your trades. Don’t take any trade personally, just because you lose on a few trades in a row doesn’t mean you suck at trading, likewise if you win on 3 trades in a row it doesn’t mean you are a trading “God” who is immune to losing. If you don’t risk too much per trade and you aren’t trading with money you need for other things in your life, you probably won’t get too attached to your trades.

Step 2: Understand the power of patience

I think one of the biggest realizations that allowed me to turn the corner in my own trading was that I didn’t have to trade a lot to make a decent monthly return. Think about it, most people consider a 6% annual return very good for a savings account, and if you average 12% a year on your retirement fund you are pretty happy. So why is it that most traders expect to make 100% a month or some other unrealistic return? What’s wrong with making 5 or 10% a month? That’s still exceptional over the course of one year. Whilst I can’t imply you will make a certain percentage per month, if you just understand that slower and more consistent gains are the way to long-term success in the markets, you will be far better off at the end of each trading year. Here are some other points to consider about patience:
• Learn to trade on the daily charts first – By learning to trade on the daily chart time frames first, you will naturally take a bigger-picture approach to the markets and you’ll avoid most of the temptation to over-trade that the lower time frames induce. Beginning traders especially need to slow down and learn to trade off the daily charts first. Daily charts provide the most relevant and practical view of the market. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO TRADE EVERYDAY to make a solid return each month.
• Quality over quantity – I consider myself a “sniper” of the market; I wait and I wait and I wait, sometimes for days or even 1 week without trading, then when I see a price action setup that triggers my “this one is a no-brainer” alarm…I pull the trigger with ZERO emotion. I am always fully prepared to lose the money I have risked on any one trade because I do not trade unless I am 100% confident that my price action trading edge is present.
• User your ‘bullets’ wisely – To really hammer-home the power of patience in developing the proper trading mindset, you need to understand that being patient will work to instill positive trading habits within you. Patience reinforces positive trading habits, whereas emotional trading reinforces negative ones. Once you begin to trade patiently you will see how using your “bullets” wisely works…you only need a few good trades a month to make a respectable return in the markets, after you achieve this via patience, you will learn to enjoy NOT being in the markets…because it’s then that you are “hunting your prey”. This in contrast to the frazzled and frustrated trader who is staying up all night staring at the charts like a trading zombie who just will not accept that they need to trade less often.

Step 3: Be organized in your approach to the markets

You NEED to have a business trading plan, a trading journal, and you need to plan out most of your actions in the market before you enter. The more you plan before you enter the higher-probability you will have of making money long-term. You are ALWAYS going to interpret the market more accurately whilst you’re not in a trade…so pre-planning everything increases your odds of making money since you will be working more on logic than emotion.
• Have a trading plan – I know it can be boring, I know you might think you don’t “need” to make one, but if you don’t make a trading plan and actually use it and tweak it as you learn, you will start trading on an unorganized and probably emotional path. A trading plan doesn’t have to be a very dry and boring document; you can get creative with it. You’re trading plan could be that you write your own weekly commentary before each week begins, plan out what you will do and look for in the upcoming week…just make sure you have a “plan of attack” before you enter any trade.
• Keep a professional trading journal – You need a track record, you need to record your trades, you need to do this in a forex trading journal. This is a critical component to forging the proper Forex trading mindset because it gives you a tangible document that you can look at and instantly get raw feedback on your trading performance. Once you start keeping a journal of your trades it will become a habit, and you will not want to see emotional results staring back at you in your trade journal. Eventually, you will look at your trading journal as something of a work of art that proves your ability to trade with discipline as well as your ability to follow your trading plan. This is something any serious investor will want to see if you plan on trading other people’s money.
• Think BEFORE you ‘shoot’, not after – All of the planning and preemption that I just discussed is analogous to thinking before you shoot. A gun is a very powerful weapon, we all know that we need to think before we shoot one, even if we are just hunting or shooting at a gun range. Likewise, the markets can be very powerful “weapons” in regards to making or losing you money. So, you want to do as much thinking before you enter a trade as you can, because after you enter you are going to naturally be more emotional and you don’t want to put yourself in a position of constantly entering regrettable trades. If you plan your actions before you enter, you should not regret your trades, even when you have losing trades. I never regret any trade I take because I don’t trade unless my edge is present and I’m always comfortable with the amount of money I have risked on any one trade.

Step 4: Have no doubt about what your trading edge is

Finally, don’t start trading with real money if you aren’t really sure how to trade your edge. You are obviously not going to develop the proper trading mindset if you jump into trading a live account without being 100% confident in what you’re looking for. Whatever your edge is, make sure you’ve found success trading it on a demo account for at least 3 months or more before you go live. Don’t just “dive in head first” without being totally comfortable in your approach…this is what most traders do and most of them lose money too.
• Have 100% confidence in your edge – I have 100% confidence in my price action trading strategies…that’s not to say that I am foolish enough to believe EVERY trade will win, but I am totally confident that every time I trade my edge is truly present. I don’t compromise my trading edge by taking setups that look they are “almost” good enough…I simply don’t trade in that case. I only take price action setups that I feel in my gut are high-probability valid representations of my edge. Therefore, I am never fearful or worried about any trade I enter, even if it ends up losing.
• Don’t gamble – There are skilled traders, and then there are people who gamble in the markets. If you take a calm and calculated approach to your trading and wait patiently for your trading edge to appear, like a sniper, then you are a skilled trader. If you just “run and gun” and veer off course from your trading plan, you are a gambler. So, are you a Forex trader or a gambler?
• Price action trading helps develop the proper trading mindset – My trading edge is price action, and I fully believe that the simplicity of price action trading helped me develop and maintain the proper Forex trading mindset. We don’t need tons of messy indicators on our charts and we don’t need Forex trading robots or other expensive software. All we need is the raw price action of the market and our magnificent human minds to interpret it; it’s up to us to harness this power.
The price action of the market gives us a map to follow, and a pretty obvious one at that, if we can ignore the emotional temptations that arise in our minds we will have no problem profiting off of this price action map. I trust today’s lesson has provided you with some insight into how you can develop the proper mindset and ignore the emotions and break the habits that destroy your trading success. If you want to learn more please check out my price action Forex trading course.