One of the dreams that those who get into currency trading have is to be able to do it on a professional basis, as their day job. But making the transition from amateur to working professional can be challenging to say the least. However, you can make it easier by starting to develop certain attitudes that all successful forex traders have.
They realize that they have to trade with precision. One of the biggest misconceptions about forex trading is that it is literally like a job, in which you enter the market at the start of the trading session and then exit when it closes. But professional traders realize that you don’t make money by trading for the sake of trading. Instead, they analyze the markets and then wait until they see a trading opportunity before they open a position and enter a trade.
They trust their method. Once a forex trader finds a method that delivers the results they want, they stick to it. This does not mean that the method does not undergo adjustments in response to changing market conditions. However, when they encounter streaks in which they lose more money than they win, they do not lose faith in their method and abandon it.
Related to this, is having the courage to do your own thing rather than following what other traders do. While there is some comfort in following the pack, you should realize that the majority of new traders fail. So you might as well succeed or fail on your own merits.
They do not chase profits or losses. One of the biggest mistakes many traders make is to continue to hold on to a winning position in the hope of squeezing more profit from it, until it turns against them and they lose money. It is better to close out a winning position early and leave some money on the table than waiting until it becomes a losing one. Similarly, they should not ‘chase losses’ by continuing to hold on to a losing trade in the hope that it turns in their favor or continuing to trade even after a series of losing trades.
They specialize in one pair at a time. One of the things that professional traders do is to focus on a particular currency pair and learn everything about it so that they can trade it knowledgably. Amateurs have the mistaken belief that they should trade multiple pairs so that if one is a losing trade, one of the others will be a successful trade. But as we already mentioned, the best traders focus on making winning trades rather than just trading on a scattershot basis. Eventually, once they gain more experience, they can study other pairs.
Content credit: Mr. Rohit has contributed from Mtrading.in