Whether being a trader is your full-time job or you wish to get an additional return on your savings, investing on the FOREX market involves carefully thinking about which trading strategy you will implement based on your capital, your time horizon, your risk aversion, your money management, your psychology etc.

Whatever the case, each investor should try to answer the following question:

How can I make consistent profits with FOREX trading?

The power of patience in trading

Understanding how important patience is while you start learning to trade will completely change the trajectory of your performance in the long run and help you achieve your goals faster. But before trying to figure out what your trading plan will be, you should first think about why you want to trade: What are you doing this for?

Once you know the reasons why you want to learn how to trade and you have set some goals, you need to understand that there is no quick way to make money while trading. Learning how to trade requires hard work, knowledge, discipline, commitment, dedication and above all patience.

The power of patience shouldn’t be underestimated while learning how to trade, it’s a vital characteristic a trader must have to be successful in the long-term.

Because the FOREX market is a very volatile market and is open 24 hours a day, 5 days a week, a lot of traders decide to use the “scalping trading” method, opening themselves up to the risk of being overexposed. Scalping is a trading strategy used to take advantage of small prices’ variations. This is one of the most aggressive trading strategies around, because traders are aiming for a lot of small quick profits.
Being patient is crucial for those traders, as without it, they are liable to overtrade.
It is not necessary to constantly be in position and believe that you must invest in every price’s movement, or that there is money to make on every single trade. Sometimes the currency pair you are working on will evolve within a sideway consolidation for a while without giving relevant signals.

You must then know how to be patient and open a position only with trades that have the most bullish or bearish potential (breakouts patterns, trend reversals signals, channels strategies…). The ability to wait for a technical configuration, a market opportunity to present itself, or to maintain an opened trade until prices reach your goals, will all help you outperform the average trader, who trades on emotion.

Don’t worry about missing the boat and accept the fact that being on the sidelines and waiting is an essential part of trading. It’s a sign of strength and control, not a sign of failure.

 

 

You can also observe how patience is important while dealing with losses or gains. Everything is about trusting your trading plan and the strategy you decided to apply.

Observe the way you manage your winnings. It’s easy to close your position when you’re making a lot of money. Is it the right thing to do? Not necessarily, especially if your target price hasn’t been reached yet: this means that there is certainly still an upside potential according to your trading system (or downside potential if you are short).

Nearly 90% of traders take profits too early because it’s easy to do – and the same percentage of traders lose money at the end of the year because they do what is easier…

If you are too stressed and if you have trouble controlling your emotions, you’ll tend not to trust your trading plan or your analysis. You will want to close your position relatively quickly, regardless of the messages conveyed by the technical indicators or your chart analysis. Despite earning potential, you will be impatient and you will decide to close your position because you’re following your instinct and not your analysis.

Once the position is closed, you will often realize that it goes back in positive territory and ends up in the direction you had anticipated and you could have won if you were more patient.

 

It is therefore very important not to react impulsively to situations or let your emotions dictate your behaviour.

You can dramatically improve your chances of success in trading by simply having the patience and discipline to wait for the right opportunity and follow the trading plan you’ve worked on and back-tested. Be also aware that a trading strategy might work for a while but isn’t profitable forever, so you need to adjust your parameters when needed.

 

Happy Trading!

For more info just click here