Learn To Trade Forex | Learn Forex Trading | Learn Forex

Whilst there is no “sure” way to become a successful Forex trader, there are certain things that you NEED to do if you want to find success as a trader. Since your presence on this website implies that you want to learn how to trade, it will do you a world of good to read the 7 steps below in order to gain insight into some things you should be focusing on as you are learning to trade forex.

1) Accept the reality of trading

The first thing that you need to do if you want to become a consistently profitable Forex trader, is fully understand and accept the reality of trading and what is possible given the money you have to trade with. Unfortunately, this is something that most traders simply don’t do. Most traders come into the markets with big hopes of getting rich quick or making some easy money so they can quit their job in a month. Thinking along these lines will literally get you nowhere very fast.

To accept the reality of Forex trading, you need to be fully aware of the fact that you can lose money on ANY trade you take. Many traders do very well on Forex demo trading accounts, only to see their success evaporate when they switch to real money trading. This is mainly because on a demo account you do not feel the full impact of having your real money on the line. Demo trading is important, but you need to consciously remind yourself that when you start trading a real account, that fake money you are trading with now will be REAL. Thus, if you fully accept that you can lose real money on any one trade, there’s no reason to not properly manage your risk every time you enter the market.

2) Learn HOW to trade Forex

This point might seem pretty obvious, but it’s pretty surprising how many traders dive into the markets (ignoring the reality we discussed above) without actually having any plan or strategy. In short, you need to know what you are looking for in the markets; you have to have a trading edge. If you think you are going to just “figure it out” as you go, you are going to quickly lose your money to other traders who have done the work to preempt and preplan their trading approach. Emotion and disorganization never benefit you in trading; planning and discipline always do.

3) Focus on the daily chart time frame first

Next, if you focus your efforts on the daily chart time frame you will have a much better chance at achieving long-term success in the markets then if you immediately start focusing on being a day-trader trying to scalp the 5 minute charts. The reason being, higher time frames are inherently clearer and thus more accurate than time frames like the 5 or 15 minute charts that contain a plethora of random market noise. Remember, the higher in time frame you go the more meaningful the price action becomes. This means you will inherently take less trades but it will simultaneously improve your win to loss ratio as well as help to keep your emotions in check, in turn you are far more likely to make money over the long run. It is a proven fact that longer-term swing traders make more money than short-term day traders or scalpers.

4) Make a Forex trading plan

Ah, the all-mighty Forex trading plan. Perhaps the most ignored aspect of successful trading by amateurs, as well as one of the key reasons they remain struggling traders forever. There is not a whole lot to say about creating and using a Forex trading plan besides the fact that discipline and organization are KEY to consistent success in the markets, and have a trading plan is the cornerstone of being a disciplined and organized trader. After you learn to trade forex successfully, you need to develop your new-found knowledge into a comprehensive yet concise and practical trading plan so that you always have a guide to what your overall strategy in the market is going to be.

5) Track your progress in a trading journal

Having a good trading strategy and a trading plan are both wonderful and necessary things that you need to learn to trade successfully, however if you aren’t recording your trades and creating a track record of your progress, you are going to have a very hard time staying disciplined and accountable. You need a trading journal that includes all the parameters of each trade you take; entry, exit, price levels, reason for the trade / setup etc. The reason why you need this is to see how your trading strategy is progressing as well as to have something tangible to reflect your discipline in following your trading plan or lack thereof. If you get passionate about a trading journal it can be the best tool to keep you on the path of consistent and successful Forex trading. In short, a Forex trading journal will keep you from giving in to the temptations of emotional trading.

6) Don’t over-trade or over-leverage

Now, if you do everything that we’ve discussed in points 1-5, but you over-trade and / or over-leverage your trading account, you are going to quickly destroy all your progress and end up losing a lot of money very fast. The previous 5 points, if followed, will largely keep you from over-trading or over-leveraging, but you still have to be consciously aware of making these two critical mistakes at all times while analyzing and trading the forex market.

7) Remain disciplined

Last but certainly not least, you need to not only become disciplined and emotion-free while trading, but you need to REMAIN disciplined and emotion-free. If you trade for a month or two doing all the things we’ve discussed above in a very disciplined and consistent way, but then you see some trade setup that you are convinced is “perfect” and so you decide to double or triple your risk and then you lose it all, you are going to immediately tail-spin into an emotional trading cycle that will very quickly undo months or years of hard work and positive trading habits. So, don’t be that guy, instead, be the guy who accepts the reality of Forex trading and learn to control your emotions in Forex trading by following the 7 steps discussed here today.

In Forex trading, perhaps the most important component to succeeding long-term is learning to effectively control your emotions as you trade. Many traders unknowingly trade in an emotional manner that systematically destroys their trading accounts. If you are unsure whether or not you are trading emotionally, look at this list of emotional trading traits to help you decide, then read on to figure out how to fix your emotional trading problems.

Traits of emotional Forex traders:

• Risking more money than you are comfortable with losing per trade

• Jumping in and out of the market with high frequency

• Not having a trading plan to preempt your trading activities

• Not having a trading journal to track your trading performance

• Feeling an overwhelming sense of urgency to jump back into the market after a losing trade

• Feeling an overwhelming sense of urgency to jump back into the market after a winning trade

• Sitting in front of your computer for hours staring at your charts in near-panic mode

• Having a general feeling of “loss of control” over your trading

If you think that you exhibit one or more of the above traits on a regular basis, you are probably trading from an emotional mindset and need to fix this problem as soon as possible. The longer you go on trading emotionally, the longer you will lose money in the markets. No matter what trading strategy you are using, you must manage your emotions correctly as you learn to trade forex.

Tips to help you control your emotions in Forex trading:

Here are some tips to help you manage your emotions and get off the track of haphazard, out-of-control trading, and on the track to controlled, disciplined trading:

• First, you need to master an effective trading strategy so that you know exactly what you are looking for every time you enter the market; if your setup is not there, you don’t trade, it’s that simple. One effective and simple trading strategy is price action, learn to trade forex price action.

• Next, you need to take the trading strategies you have mastered and create a comprehensive yet concise Forex trading plan around them. This trading plan will specify the setups you will trade, how and when you will trade them, your money management plan, and anything else you can think of. The point is to know what you will do BEFORE you do it, this way you will preemptively eliminate the potential to become emotional as you trade.

• Next, in order to maintain discipline and control over your emotions, you should create a trading journal so that you can track your trading progress over time. This journal will allow you to see how you are doing in terms of profit / loss, winners / losers, but also in terms of discipline. If you are trading in a disciplined and controlled manner, your Forex trading journal will reflect this and you will thus create a track record of disciplined Forex trading, this is a very valuable thing to possess because it proves to yourself and to the world that you can trade disciplined. If you can create such a track record you can then find people to fund you in order to trade large amounts of money.

Hopefully, from reading this brief article on Forex trading psychology, you will have a decent grasp on why controlling your emotions is so important when you trade and how you can go about controlling them. You should do everything within your power to put the odds in your favor as you learn to trade and learning to control your emotions is necessary to increasing your odds of Forex trading success.

Trading Forex effectively is not technically difficult. However, what can be difficult for many beginning Forex traders is knowing where to begin and how to go about learning to trade Forex in order to make the best use of their time and money.

Indeed, most traders spend way too much time trying to learn messy and confusing indicator-based systems or other overly-complicated trading systems and strategies that simply do more harm than good. Many traders also spend way too much money learning to trade; a solid forex trading education does not need to be expensive. There are some very good options on the internet that offer in-depth training and on-going support and education for a relatively small amount of money. However, perhaps the most important thing for any aspiring Forex trader to do in order to start trading effectively, is to accept the reality of the markets and to know what you are getting into before starting to trade.

The reality of the Forex market and trading it:

The very first thing you need to do before beginning to learn to trade forex strategies or systems, is to fully accept the reality of the market and the reality of what is possible given the amount of money you have to trade with. Most traders do not have beliefs that are in-line with the realities of either of these two things. So, by understanding the following concepts you can get a leg up on other beginning traders:

• You cannot control the Forex market, it does not know you exist and it does not care about you or your money. Sound harsh? It’s not meant to, but it is true. The point is that many beginning traders try to control the market, whether they admit it or not, but you simply cannot control the market, unless you have hundreds of millions of dollars, which most of us do not. You must learn to accept what the market gives you. If you try to trade too large a position size, over-trade, or meddle with your trades when you shouldn’t, you are trying to control the market, and this will always end in you losing money, sooner or later. Before you start trading with real money you should try forex demo trading so that you understand how the market moves and how uncontrollable it is; indeed, you can only control yourself.

• Next, you need to understand that if you want to properly manage your risk on every trade you simply won’t be able to make a ton of money super fast on a relatively small trading account. Most retail traders are starting with $5,000 or less in their accounts, and most of them also think they are going to quit their jobs in a month and move to some exotic beach location and leave the high-life. This is not reality. Reality is that if you are properly managing your risk on every trade, you will only be able to build your trading account slowly, but consistently. Slow and consistent wins the Forex trading race, not fast and erratic; remember that, it’s a great piece of insight.

If you want more excellent Forex trading insight and trading training, learn to trade Forex with Nial Fuller, he offers a comprehensive yet concise Forex trading educational package that teaches traders simple yet effective price action based strategies.

Learning how to trade the Forex market is something you should approach with patience and healthy skepticism. That may be surprising to hear, but you need to be a bit skeptical of any trading system or trading strategy that sounds too good to be true or that makes bold claims right out of the gate.

• What should you do first?

When first learning how to trade Forex, you should take your time to find a trading method that is logical and based on common sense, rather than one based on hope or big claims. Generally speaking, the less complicated a Forex trading system is, the better off you will be. You should aim to learn trading strategies that are built around classic technical analysis techniques like price pattern and price action trading, trend trading, support and resistance levels, retracements, and other “classic” trading techniques. Learning to trade the natural price movement and levels within a market is one of the most effective things you can do as a beginning trader. No matter what system or strategies you ultimately end up learning to trade Forex with, having a solid foundation in classic technical analysis will only help you.

• Where should you learn to trade Forex from?

The best place or person to learn to trade Forex from is an experienced and successful Forex trader. This may seem like common sense to you at first, but most traders do not get the help of someone who is already successful at trading the markets, this is a really big mistake. Trading seems to invite people who like to teach themselves and who may be a bit more independent than the rest of the world. However, while these are good qualities to have, they do not help you a whole lot while you are learning to trade. Just as with any other profession, when you learn Forex trading, you will greatly reduce your learning curve and make far fewer mistakes if you learn to trade from a professional trader.

If you’d like to learn how to trade with simple yet effective Forex price action strategies, one very successful price action trader is Nial Fuller. If you learn Forex with Nial Fuller you will get a very good education in the strategies that he uses, this will greatly help you on your Forex trading journey.

• What do you need to know going forward about Forex trading?

Probably the most important piece of advice any beginning Forex trader can learn, is that trading the Forex market is not a get rich quick scheme. You will have to actually do work and learn and study. You need to make sure you are realistic with yourself at all times, don’t rush. Many traders end up over-trading or over-leveraging their trading accounts, or they simply do not have an effective trading strategy mastered yet. These are all very common mistakes that if you learn to avoid, will put you well ahead of most other traders. These are all very important things to keep in mind as you learn to trade Forex.

Focusing your trading efforts on the higher time frames in Forex is the most efficient and effective way to make money as a trader. Most traders get caught up in trying to trade the lower time frame charts at one time or another in their trading career. Eventually most traders realize that lower time frame charts contain a ton of “noise” and random price movement, and so they are simply not effective tools to aid in making money in the markets. However, it’s very easy to not fully understand why trading lower time frames is much more difficult and confusing than trading the higher time frames.

When we discuss “higher time frames” we are generally talking about the 4 hour time frame and above. The most effective higher time frames to trade are the 4 hour and the daily chart. As you learn to trade Forex you really should be concentrating most of your efforts on these two time frames. The weekly chart is also very useful for identifying trend movement and significant support and resistance levels.

The problem with learning to trade Forex on the 1 hour chart or below is that the overall market picture is very unclear and “muddied” up by all the random price movement that occurs on these low time frames. Also, trade signals on the lower time frames are not nearly as effective as the same Forex trading signals on the higher time frames. The general rule of thumb is that the higher up in time frame you go the higher-probability the signal becomes. So, if you want to improve your overall win percentage, the easiest thing you can do is move up in time frame.

Another great aspect of trading higher time frames is that they make it much easier to manage your emotions correctly. It’s very easy to get stressed out and over-trade or over-leverage when trading the lower time frames because they are much more volatile and contain many more “false” trading signals than their higher time frame counter parts. Trading psychology is perhaps the most important part of successful Forex trading, so it’s very important that you learn to control your emotions and manage your trades correctly, trading the higher time frames makes this much easier.

As you learn to trade forex you need to realize that many people are going to try and sell you trading systems or strategies to use on the lower time frames. The problem with this is that they are just trying to sell you something and they aren’t actually teaching you how to trade or how the markets work. So, you need to find an educational system that actually teaches you something of meaning; that teaches you HOW to trade, and no matter what system or strategy you are using, this is most easily conveyed by teaching people on the higher time frames.

Click the following link to read more about how trading higher time frames drastically increase trading success.

Trading the Forex market does not need to be a time-intensive activity. It is entirely possible to trade the Forex market while keeping your full time and job and hardly changing your schedule at all. There are a few things you can do to learn to trade Forex part time, let’s discuss exactly what it takes.

• Trade off the daily charts

By focusing your trading efforts on the daily charts you will be able to spend a short amount of time each day looking for your trading edge, this is of course assuming you know WHAT your trading edge is. If you do not currently have a definable trading edge that you could easily and instantly describe to someone else, you should learn about simple price action trading strategies. You can learn them from Nial Fuller, and as you learn forex with Nial Fuller you will discover that not only is he an excellent trader, he is also an excellent teacher and mentor.

Trading with price action setups on the daily charts allows you to simply check the charts after work each day. After you know exactly what you are looking for it will really only take you about 20 or 30 minutes to determine whether or not there is anything worth trading, then if you do find an obvious price action setup you just enter your trading parameters and then come back the next day at the same time to check your trade. There is no reason to meddle with your trades or sit there and watch them, just use set and forget forex trading methods.

• Learn a simple yet effective trading strategy

As alluded to in the above paragraph, you can trade the daily charts with a simple trading strategy like price action. There is no reason to over-complicate the process of Forex trading; all you need is a simple yet effective and easily identifiable edge to determine whether or not to enter the market.

• Have patience

Above all else, as you learn to trade Forex, you need to have patience. Patience is a virtue that will reward you many times over in the world of FX trading. If you want to trade part-time and focus your efforts on the daily charts, you will need to understand that there simply will not be a trading signal worth taking every day. Some weeks you might only get one or two signals that are valid and worth taking. But, since they are occurring on the higher-time frame charts, they will be higher probability; it is truly a case of quality over quantity.

Trading part-time is a blessing in disguise, because many traders end up spending way too much sitting in front of their computers staring at the charts. This leads to over-trading and over-leveraging of one’s trading account. If you have a trading routine that you follow each day, you are far less likely to fall prey to over-trading and over-leveraging. If you want to get a good introduction to the world of Forex trading check out this Learn to Trade Forex Introduction Mini-course.

Forex demo trading is very important if you want to learn to trade forex effectively and efficiently. Many traders overlook the simple fact that mastering the strategy they are trying to learn on a demo account before going live can literally save them thousands of dollars.

• Why demo trading is important - You need to demo trade first in order to familiarize yourself with your brokers platform to eliminate silly trading mistakes. Also, demo trading your forex strategy is critical so that you understand how to trade it when you go live. Mastering your strategy on demo account first, by doing this you aren’t just trading randomly when you switch to live trading; it makes the transition much smoother.

• If you can’t make money on a demo account you won’t make money live. Live trading has emotion involved and demo trading does not, that is the bottom line. So, if you lose money on demo accounts you will certainly lose money when trading live, and probably a lot more. Many traders overlook this simple fact and they jump the gun due to the temptation to trade live before they have proved themselves successful on a demo account. It is critical that you learn to trade on a demo account before risking your real hard-earned money.

• How long should I demo trading for? Until you see a minimum of 2-3 months of consistent profits and feel that you have completely mastered your forex trading strategy. If you are a price action trader this means you should have mastered 1 price action trading setup and traded it consistently for 2-3 months before thinking about trading live.

• Demo trading as a tool for continued trader improvement - If after going live you find yourself losing tons of money, go back to demo trading and “work out the bugs”. Demo trading is a great way to scratch your itch to trade without having to risk real money. You should use your demo account as an on-going tool to refine and master your trading strategy. If after a losing trade or a winning trade you find yourself with an overwhelming urge to jump back in the market but you know there is no real setup, trade your demo account instead, this will serve 2 purposes; it will scratch your itch to trade and it will also teach you that you likely would have lose money due to emotion.

• What charts do I use for demo trading? - It is essential that you learn to trade forex off of charts that close at the end of trading in New York, this 5pm New York time. The reason this is important is because closing prices are very important in all financial markets and the end of New York trading marks the end of the current forex trading day and the beginning of the new one, many price action setups are formed at this time as well. Click here to open a New York close demo account.

Many beginning forex traders believe they can learn to trade forex completely on their own with no help from a mentor or from another experienced trader. However, just like any other skill or profession in life, forex trading takes time and effort to excel at, and you can either go through a vast amount of trial and error or you can enlist the help of an experienced forex trader to speed up your forex trading progress.

You may have heard the story of the “Turtle traders” who were the result of an on-going dispute between famed traders Richard Dennis and Bill Eckhardt about whether successful traders were born with some genetic gift or they could be “made”, so to speak, by education. Dennis won the bet because over a 4 year period in the 1980s the Turtles earned over $100 million dollars simply from following the trading strategies and rules that Dennis outlined. So, Dennis had proved that a simple set of trading rules could be used to educate people with little or no trading experience and turn them into very profitable traders.

This does not mean that a forex trading mentor will make you rich overnight. In the end you will need to develop your own feel and trading instinct, but it is very important that you get started on the right foot and with a quality forex trading education. Successful forex trading can be obtained much more quickly and efficiently through the use of a reputable and effective forex trading coach or mentor, but you must make a strong effort to really learn the forex trading methods that your mentor is teaching you. You can really only be shown the door to trading success by a forex mentor, you must take the effort and time to walk through the door, no one can do it for you, but they can indeed guide you down the right path.

The example above of the Turtle traders is very brief and doesn’t go into a lot of details. You can rest assured however that the Turtles who became successful from Dennis’s trading methods were the ones who were the most focused and disciplined to learn to trade exactly what was being taught. When you learn how to trade from a professional, if you truly listen to them and implement what they are telling you, the odds are in your favor to become a profitable forex trader much quicker than if you go it alone.

If you want to learn to trade forex in a simplistic yet flexible and effective manner, Nial Fuller is considered the “authority” on forex price action trading strategies. Price action trading will give you the skills and ability to read a “naked” or indicator-free price chart, it is a trading strategy that everyone can benefit from, even if you don’t use it as your primary means of trading the market. When you learn forex with Nial Fuller you are getting an exceptional price action trading education because Nial teaches the same strategies that have enabled him to trade forex successfully for years. Just like anything else worth-while in life though, learning these price action strategies will take time and effort on your part, but once you get it down it will be a trading strategy that will not lose effectiveness and that you can use to trade the markets with on an on-going basis.

As a brand new forex trader it can be a little bit intimidating to remember the most important points of what it takes to become a successful trader. There is a sea of information and misinformation on the internet that causes “analysis paralysis” in many newbie forex traders. So, refer back to this checklist often as you learn to trade forex in order to refresh your memory to some of the more important aspects of forex trading.

• Never trade with money you can’t afford to lose.

This seems obvious, but many beginning and experienced traders alike are trading with money they shouldn’t be trading with, right now. There are all sorts of psychological reasons why traders do this, but what really matters is that you simply cannot operate from the correct psychological mindset if you are at all “attached” to any one trade emotionally, and if you are trading with money that will be painful for you to lose, you are most certainly going to end up trading emotionally.

• Learn to trade logical and commonsense trading strategies.

Many traders get all wrapped up trying to trade complicated methods that require them to paste a million different indicators all over their charts or execute some rigid rule-based trading system. The trading strategy that you ultimate use does NOT need to be complicated to understand or to implement. You can actually learn very simple yet effective trading strategies when you learn forex with Nial Fuller.

• Model yourself after a pro trader.

What is the most time-tested and “sure” way to become successful in ANY field? Model yourself after someone who has already achieved the level of success that you desire. This method has been proven to work by every single person who faithfully executes it. When you want something bad enough it has to become your all-consuming desire, and when you make something your all-consuming desire the best way to make this desire a reality is to learn from someone who has already done it!

• Don’t over-trade or over-leverage.

The two-headed devil of emotional trading is over-trading and over-leveraging. These two things are what cause more traders trouble than anything else. Over-trading induces more emotional trading, and it is actually the result of the trader becoming emotional, but it is a self-perpetuating problem because the more you over-trade, the more you are likely to continue doing it until you reach a level of financial devastation that you cannot tolerate.

Over-leveraging one’s trading account is another huge problem among forex traders. This tends to happen when traders think they “know” something about the market “for sure”, this causes them to ratchet up their risk level to a point that sets them up for huge failure if the trade goes against them. Even if the trade works out when the trader is over-leveraged and they end up making a lot of money really fast, they have just reinforced a negative trading habit that will now surely come back to bite them even harder in the future. Keep all of the above points in mind every day that you plan on having interaction with the forex market.

Becoming a consistently profitable forex trader is obviously the main goal of everyone that tries their hand at trading the forex market. However, as all beginning traders quickly discover, making consistent money in the markets is no easy task to accomplish. In fact, most traders lose money, this is a well-known fact, and so as you learn to trade forex it is very important that you obtain a quality forex trading education that will prepare you properly for what it takes to succeed as a trader.

• Model yourself after a professional trader

The quickest and most effective way to make consistent money trading the forex market is to model yourself after a professional trader. When you learn from a professional trader you are essentially skipping months or years of trial and error that you would likely go through on your own. Some professional traders like Nial Fuller, have authored forex trading courses that take you from complete beginner to someone who understand what it takes to trade successfully. When you learn forex with Nial Fuller you are learning the exact same trading strategies that he uses to achieve significant success trading forex.

Learning to master any skill, profession, or activity is best accomplished from a mentor or a professional. Trading the forex market is no different; the most efficient and effective way to learn how to trade successfully is from a professional trader. This all seems very logical and obvious, but many traders refuse to get professional trading education because they think they can teach themselves. Well this may be true, it will take significantly more time and more money via losing trades, than if you were to simply employ the help of a trading professional, likely for the price of one losing trade.

• The internet is full of forex trading-scams

One very important thing to consider is that the internet is full of websites and companies trying to sell you forex trading software or other trading “systems” that are nothing but well-marketed hype. To put it succinctly, you do not need a complicated trading system or strategy to make money in the forex market. Instead, all you need is a simple trading strategy like price action analysis that has been used successfully by many traders over many years. You also need to learn exactly how a professional trader implements a simple yet effective trading strategy like price action. As you learn to trade forex it is going to dramatically decrease your learning curve and time spent doing trial and error if you simply learn a high-probability trading strategy from a trusted trading professional.

It is important to remember that forex trading is very deceptive; it seems exceedingly easy on the surface, but once you dive below the surface you see the rest of the “ice berg”, so to speak. It is because of this deceptiveness that many traders try to teach themselves to trade, and one of the main reasons so many aspiring traders lose money in the end is because they teach themselves to trade in a haphazard manner without the aid of someone who has already achieved the same success they are looking for. So, as you learn to trade forex keep in mind that one of the best investments you will ever make is to employ the help of a trusted forex trading professional.

As you learn to trade the forex market you will need to know all of the important factors that go into actually placing a trade. This seems simple enough, yet most traders overlook the benefits of learning how to place a trade properly, the result is usually silly trading mistakes that end up in lost money and time.

Placing a forex trade

• Trading platform / broker

The first variable you will want to consider before placing a forex trade is which broker you will use and which trading platform you will use. While there are many quality online forex brokers at this point, there are not many brokers that offer the “correct” charting platform. It is important use charts that close each day at the end of trading in New York; 5pm Eastern Standard Time. The reason for this is because closing prices are very important in all financial markets and the end of the New York trading session marks the settlement of one of the highest volume forex trading sessions, as a result of this many forex trading setups form around this time. Also, the end of trading in New York marks the end of one forex trading day and the beginning of a new one. So, make sure that the charts you use to make your trading decisions are based off New York closing times, not GMT. Here is a link that you can use to get the correct New York candle close charts if you don’t have them already: New York Close Forex Charts.

When it comes to brokers your options are a lot more flexible than the particular charts you should use. Competition and accessibility has resulted in many quality forex brokers out there. While you learn to trade forex just make sure that you use a brokerage that is trusted and well respected throughout the industry, you should be able to determine this by doing some research online and reading some user reviews.

• Forex chart setup and mental preparation

Setting up your charts is something that many traders become confused about and often end up over-complicating. Chart setup should be very simple and straight forward, this website does not recommend using many, if any, lagging indicators outside of a few simple moving averages. So, you want to use candlesticks instead of regular OHLC price bars because candlesticks give a clearer representation of price dynamics and they are also just more fun to look at. Start with your anchor chart, this should be the weekly or daily chart, it is the main chart that you use for trend determination and analyzing the overall market structure. Once you get your anchor chart setup you can then begin to setup and analyze one or two lower time frame charts, preferably the 4hr and or 1hr, but never go under a 1 hour time frame, as price data below this time frame is full of noise and “random” meaningless price movement, to the point where it makes accurate chart reading nearly impossible.

It is important to be realistic and recognize that trading success does not come easy; it takes discipline, time, and dedication. Before you enter a trade you need to make sure that your mindset is right and that your expectations are not too high about what you can realistically achieve given the amount of money you have to trade with. Obtaining and maintaining a realistic forex trading mindset early on as you learn to trade, while repay you many times over.

Simple trading strategies are often over looked by beginning traders because many beginning traders hold the erroneous belief that profitable forex trading would have to be technically difficult, complicated, and expensive. As a result of such inaccurate beliefs, many beginning forex traders spend thousands of dollars on trading strategies and systems that look and sound elaborate and effective on the surface. However, as these novice traders dive deeper into these overly-complicated trading strategies they find that they are too confusing to be useful, unfortunately this realization doesn’t happen until after a lot of money has been lost.

The advantages that traders obtain who learn to trade simple trading strategies are many and varied, however, they often are not entirely apparent until these simple strategies have been utilized for a significant period of time. Patience is a very important piece of the puzzle of successful forex trading; many beginning traders simply do not have the necessary patience to profit consistently in the market, or they do not think that such patience is necessary. As you learn to trade forex you will undoubtedly learn new lessons each week about the market and about yourself, the lesson of why patience is critical to profitable forex trading is one that you will likely learn through over-trading. As you learn to trade simple trading strategies you will eventually figure out that trading more frequently does not lead to greater average monthly or yearly returns, in fact, typically traders who take fewer positions each year are the ones that make the most money.

If we stop for a minute and think about the fact that complicated and expensive trading methods do not help us succeed as forex traders, along with the fact that over-trading does not help us, what can we infer? The logical inference from this information is that the particular trading strategy one uses is not the most critical component to focus on as you learn to trade a profitable forex trading method. The strategy a trader uses pales in significance to the amount of discipline and emotional control he or she possesses. This highlights yet another reason why you should learn to trade simple trading strategies; they can help you remain disciplined and objective. Just think about it for a minute, do you think you are more likely to obtain and maintain the proper forex trading mindset through a trading strategy that is overly-complicated and difficult to understand or from a strategy that is very simple in design and makes perfect logical and commonsense? Obviously, the latter is more conducive to achieving the proper forex trading mindset.

When you commit to a trading strategy make sure it is one that you feel comfortable with, it shouldn’t be super difficult or expensive to learn, and make sure it isn’t too heavy on lagging indicators, as they are often much more trouble than they are worth. Take your time as you learn to trade forex, pick a solid trading strategy that makes use of core price chart technical analysis principals, and remember that traders have been profiting for centuries on these principals, long before the invention of most lagging indicators or software trading robots.

A profitable forex trading method is one that you will have absolute confidence in; you will not second guess yourself or your trading decisions when you are trading with a profitable forex trading method. There are many trading methods on the internet to trade the forex market with, and as you learn to trade forex it is important that you pick one that other traders have made money with, otherwise you are basically shooting in the dark.

One trading method that has been proven to be profitable since the 1700s is price action trading with candlesticks. When you learn to trade forex with simple price action setups on a “naked” or indicator-free price chart, you are learning a method that has been used successfully over the years by thousands of professional traders. There are different versions of price action trading and every forex educator that teaches it seems to have a slight “twist” that sets apart their price action strategies from others’. One forex educator teaching the profitable forex trading method of price action is Nial Fuller, when you learn to trade forex with Nial Fuller you are getting instruction from a pro trader as well as someone with a flair for teaching. It will help you immensely in your forex trading journey if you obtain instruction from someone like Nial who enjoys teaching and knows what it takes to profit in forex.

There is so much misinformation being passed around the internet about what it takes to be profitable in forex that many traders can easily become confused and frustrated when trying to learn a profitable forex trading method. This causes many beginning traders to throw in the towel before the journey even begins, and understandably so, but keep in mind that there are genuine forex instructors out there teaching genuine trading methods like price action.

Assuming that you do indeed learn to trade forex price action strategies, and you find it to be an enjoyable and lucrative trading method, you still must put in a lot of time and effort to maintain consistency, as it is easy to fall off the wagon of profitable forex trading. Patience, discipline, and passion are all required to maintain consistent profitability as a forex trader, if you lack of any of these by a significant amount you are likely to experience a very difficult time as you learn to trade the forex market. Many traders have passion but lack enough patience and (or) discipline to see their passion pay off, as forex trading is a get rich slow endeavor, not a get rich quick one.

Price action trading is not the “only” profitable forex trading method you can trade with; there are many other solid trading methods that you can learn to profit from if you put in the necessary time and energy. However, one thing that you will find to be true as you learn a profitable forex trading method is that most profitable trading methods will be relatively uncomplicated and won’t require you to constantly monitor the markets. Most professional forex traders use methods that are inherently simple in their design and function, and this means trading is almost entirely stress-free and very enjoyable for many pro traders.

Most traders entering the forex market want nothing more than to start making money as soon as possible. Yet, most of them go about it the wrong way because they do not understand how important or how helpful learning from a forex mentor can be. A forex trading mentor can give you the educational assistance you need to get your trading career started off on the right track. By absorbing the years of live trading experience that any reputable forex mentor should possess, you can drastically reduce your learning curve as you learn to trade the market.

Learning how to trade on your own terms can be an intriguing and enlightening journey, however, it also is usually a very expensive one. There are many common mistakes that all traders make at one point or another if they are not aware of them, having a forex mentor to model your trading after and to teach the correct way to trade, can help you avoid many, if not all, of the most common newbie forex trading mistakes. Most traders simply do not accept that they would benefit greatly from a quality forex mentor because they believe they are smart enough to learn to trade on their own, or they do not like paying a fee to utilize the assistance of a forex trading mentor.

The reality of the situation is that forex trading success depends very little on how intelligent one is, but mostly on how well one manages their emotion. This is often why the best forex traders are not the typical people you would expect like doctors or lawyers, instead they are more often retired poker players or ex military personal. Also, the small fee you might pay up front to employ the services of an experience and professional forex trading mentor will pale in comparison to the thousands of dollars you will likely lose and hundreds of hours of lost time if you try to learn to trade completely on your own.

Some advantages of using a forex mentor as you learn to trade forex:

• Allows you to avoid months or years of the trial and error that learning to trade independently naturally comes with.

• Saves you potentially thousands of dollars and a lot of time in the long-run because you have an experienced guide helping you to avoid many newbie trading mistakes.

• Helps you understand and implement an effective trading strategy as fast as possible; this means you don’t have to waste time searching the internet for an honest and effective trading strategy.

• Learning from a professional in any field or for any skill is the oldest and most effective way to learn. If you decide to trade forex you should learn to trade from a professional forex trader and mentor, as this is the most efficient and effective way to learn to trade forex.

• Provides you with a reliable source of information on forex trading that you can use to provide you with answers to any questions you might have as you begin your trading career, instead of guessing or assuming.

• Not all forex trading strategies are effective.

As you learn to trade forex you will undoubtedly come across many websites that promote forex trading products which promise to fully “automate” you’re trading. These products typically make very big claims of insane yearly returns, in other words, they usually are too good to be true. Yet, each day novice forex traders fall for these products, simply because they claim to be able to help them make a lot of money really fast.

Trading strategies that are truly effective are those taught by professional traders, and they will usually have been around for a long time. Learning to read “naked” price charts and other “classic” technical analysis skills is what you want to learn as you learn to trade forex. You can learn price action if you learn forex with Nial Fuller, other educators like Martin Pring teach classic technical analysis skills like price pattern recognition.

• Forget about “getting rich quick”.

What you need to really understand as you learn to trade, is that there is just no such thing as “getting rich quick” by trading forex. You can make consistent money in the market, and if you have A LOT of money to start with, you can make a lot relatively quickly. But, most traders simply do not have enough money in their trading accounts to make a lot of money quickly while still managing their risk effectively. What typically ends up happening is traders will over-leverage their trading accounts or over-trade in a vain attempt to make some fast money. Some traders even get lucky and make a decent chunk of change in a small amount of time, but trading in this manner reinforces negative trading habits that will almost ALWAYS come back to bite you, very hard.

• Learning to trade is a gauge of your emotional “fitness”.

Learning to trade is about more than just learning a trading strategy or system and then opening an account. The success, or lack thereof, that you find in the forex market will be directly linked to how proficient you are at managing your own emotions and remaining patient and disciplined. Most traders fail to make money consistently simply because most people cannot manage their emotions consistently when their money is on the line. This is why most traders experience success when demo trading but then begin losing as soon as they switch to live trading; essentially when you demo trade you have very little to no reason to become emotional because there is no real money on the line, and it is this lack of emotion that causes most traders to perform well on demo trading accounts.

• Proper forex education is key.

Obtaining a systematic and high-quality forex education is far more important than many traders think. Due to the large amount of literature on the internet about forex trading, many traders think they can teach themselves how to trade effectively with little money or time lost. What ends up happening to most traders who try to learn on their own is that they go about the learning process in a very unorganized and haphazard manner, this causes them to skim over important fundamental forex information, and it essentially results in indecision and fickleness. When you learn in a systematic manner, such as from a forex trading course, you acquire a “formal” forex education that will likely take you from complete novice to an experienced master of a particular trading strategy. Just like any other skill or profession, you need to learn in a logical and progressive manner as you learn to trade forex.

Having realistic expectations about how much money you can earn as a forex trader, given your particular financial situation, is crucial to achieving a consistent track record, and to actually making any money in the forex market. Traders often come into the forex market with high hopes and dollar signs in their eyes; unfortunately it is this greed that can ultimately lead to the demise of their trading account. It is important to carry a long-term attitude when trading the forex market; you must not give in to the temptation of trading the forex market like a casino. The paradox of forex trading is that the more you try to “get rich quick”, the faster you will actually lose money, so as you learn to trade you must understand early on that getting rich quick is not a realistic goal.

• What are realistic forex trading goals?

If you think you are going to double or triple your account in a matter of weeks or month, you had better adjust your expectations. The average annual return of the U.S. stock market is somewhere around 12%, yet many beginning forex traders come into the market believe they will make 50% or more in a year or less. To be perfectly honest it IS possible to obtain these high percentage returns in a relatively short period of time, but you will have to over-leverage your account or over-trade, and both of these will eventually lead to your demise as a trader because they both reinforce negative trading habits.

Approaching the forex market as a way to diversify your investment portfolio, and not expecting triple digit yearly returns, is a more realistic way to think as you learn to trade forex. If your aim is to become a full-time trader, that is fine, but you must take baby steps to get there, set shorter-term goals first, and build up to becoming a full-time trader instead of trying to “force it”.

So, your first goal could be to master one forex trading strategy on the daily charts only, and on a demo account only. After you have been consistently profitable with this strategy on a demo account over a period of months, then you can try out this strategy on a live trading account. Work to build your trading account slowly once you start trading live, if you make 5% a month, that is excellent and something to be very excited about. Don’t think you are going to make 50% a month right out of the gate, or ever. Too many traders want to make a lot of money really fast in the markets, and it is this mentality that causes them to over-trade and over-leverage their accounts, and this of course ultimately causes them to lose a lot or all of their trading account money.

• Being realistic about how to learn to trade

Having realistic expectations about your forex trading education is crucial to succeeding long-term in the market. You need to understand that learning in a haphazard and unorganized way is not conducive to setting the proper foundation for lasting forex trading success. When it comes to getting a proper forex trading education and where to obtain this from, you really need to be realistic. The best way to learn how to trade forex is from an experience forex trader, just like the best way to learn any other skill or profession is from someone who is experienced in the field. You will learn much quicker and avoid many newbie trading errors by employing the services of a genuine forex trading mentor.

• Know the risks

Most traders concentrate too much on getting rich in the forex market and not enough on how much money they could lose. The fact of the matter is that you never know when you will have a losing trade, even if you have a trading edge that is profitable 80% of the time, you will still lose 20% of the time, therefore, why would you over-leverage your account if you never know when this 20% is going to pop up? The reality is that most trading edges or entry techniques are at best 60% accurate, so there is actually a much larger chance of losing on any one trade than most traders think. The key to making money consistently in the forex market is making sure that your winning trades make substantially more than your losing trades, in other words you need to devise a way to let your winners run and cut your losers short. Typically, a thorough understanding of risk reward scenarios and learning to think about trading in terms of risk to reward will give you the power to make sure your winners are substantially bigger than your losers.

• Master your own emotions if you want make money

Successful forex trading is about discipline, you have to have the discipline to follow a trading plan, and this gives you the power to pre-define all aspects of your trading so that you do not fall into a tailspin of emotional trading mistakes. You need to be very conscious of what you are doing and feeling at all times while interacting with the market, because it is very easy to commit emotional trading errors without even realizing it. As a general rule of thumb you should not usually do what you “feel” like you want to, but what you “know” you should do, while trading forex.

• Learn from people more experienced than you

As you learn how to trade the forex market it is going to seem a bit overwhelming at first, mainly because there is such a large amount of information on the internet about forex trading, for this reason and others it is wise to learn from people who have walked down the same path you are on and found success. One such trader and mentor is Nial Fuller, when you learn forex with Nial Fuller you are learning from a professional trader and a professional mentor, this way you can be sure you are learning effective trading strategies and learn them in an effective manner. In any skill or profession it is always wise to learn from those who have achieved what you are trying to achieve, it is no different in forex; you must learn from the best if you want to be the best.

• Don’t over-analyze

“Analysis paralysis”, as it is commonly known, is very wide-spread in the forex market, most traders fall into this trap at some point in their trading career. The best way to avoid this over-dose of information as you learn to trade is to simply believe the fact that you can make money consistently by only reading a price chart. You don’t need to know about or interpret every single piece of economic data that comes out each day, this information is all reflected via price movement, so, if you can learn to read price movement you will also be interpreting the effect that every piece of economic data in the world had on price that day. Why would you want to stress yourself out trying to decipher every single economic variable when you can just learn to read a price chart?

• Don’t get discouraged

Often times, traders get discourage early on in their trading career as they usually fail to make consistent money for quite some time. It is important to not give up if you REALLY want to make consistent money trading the forex market, you have to believe that you can do it because it can be done, people are doing it every day, you just have to believe in yourself and do what it takes to achieve what you want from trading the forex market. As you learn to trade forex you must not doubt yourself, the minute you doubt yourself and whether or not you can succeed as a trader, is the minute you begin preparing your mind for failure. What your mind dwells on and expects is what it usually gets. So, dwell on what you want from your forex trading, but also dwell on what it realistically takes to obtain it, and you will eventually get it.