How To Become a Pro Forex Trader: Building the Foundation?

Part 1: How To Become a Pro Forex Trader: Building the Foundation?

Building a Foundation for your Forex Trading Career

This week, I am starting a 4-part blog series on “How to Become a Professional Forex Trader”. It will be laid out in a step-by-step easy-to-follow manner. However, before we get started I must issue a note of caution; simply reading this 4-part series alone is not going to make you a pro trader. You have to actually use the information provided within this series and understand that there is no “quick-fix” to trading the market for a living.

Becoming a pro trader is going to take time and effort on your behalf, and you will probably experience some ups and downs along the way. However, you should not be discouraged, because the sooner you accept this reality, the sooner you can get on the path to becoming a professional currency trader. Now, let’s get cracking…

Step 1: Be honest with yourself

First off, let me clarify something; becoming a professional trader is the result of first being a consistently successful trader and building up your trading account and trading skills over time. Thus, your aim as you begin your Forex trading journey should be to FIRST become a consistently successful Forex trader, but that does not necessarily mean you will become a “professional” or full-time trader right away. As I mentioned in the opening paragraph, becoming a pro trader is probably going to take a good deal of time if you are starting from a small trading account, but that does not mean you can’t make consistent money each month in the meantime.

Consistently successful trading and professional trading might sound like the same thing, but they are not. Your aim should first be set on making consistent money each month relative to your account size, not on becoming a pro trader right out of the gate.

You see, if you have a $1,000 trading account for example, you will not be able to make enough money each month to live off of, and if you try to trade your $1,000 account like it’s a bigger account, you’ll end up blowing it out.

So, if you eventually want to be a full-time professional Forex trader, you have to first aim a little bit lower; you need to aim to make consistent money each month while simultaneously implementing effective Forex money management. This is called being honest with yourself about what is really possible given your current financial situation, and many traders simply don’t do this.

You need to think about your trading in terms of dollars risked vs. dollars gained, not in terms of “how much money do I need to make to quit my job and buy a Ferrari”, which is how most beginning traders think. Pretend that you are trading a 1 million dollar account even if your account is only 1 thousand dollars. If you can consistently average a 3R reward each month (meaning a reward of 3 times your overall risk) then that means you are making 3 x 12 = 36R per year. Now, if your per-trade risk on a $1,000 account is $25, that would be $25 x 36 = $900 in a year, or a 90% yearly return; a very very good performance by any professional’s standards. Now, take that 36R and imagine you are trading a $100,000 account; it would equal $90,000 over a year if you risked $2,500 per trade. The return would be $900,000 on a million dollar account if you risked $25,000 per trade.

Do you see my point here? Sure, $900 a year might not seem like a life-changing amount of money, but what you need to understand is that if you are consistently making 36R per year on a $1,000 account for example, the exact same processes and thinking that resulted in that $900 and 90% return WOULD result in a life-changing amount on a $100,000 account. So, the point is that focusing on the actual process and mechanics of trading is far more important than trying to make a lot of money on a small account. If you are pulling a number like 36R or even 15 or 20R a year, you will have no problem finding funding for your account or getting a job with a prop trading firm.

Before you begin learning how to trade or before you open a demo account, you need to sit down with a pen and paper and make a monthly budget. You need to list all the expenses you have each month and then subtract them from your monthly after-tax income, if you have any 100% disposable income left over then it’s OK to use that money to trade with. If you find you don’t have any disposable income left over each month, you’re better off saving your money or finding a different job until you are able to make some money to trade with.

The reason why I am telling you this is because most traders never do this; instead they end up trading with money they really should not be trading with, and also because if you truly trade with only 100% disposable income you will significantly reduce the potential of becoming emotional on any one trade. So, if you really think you have what it takes to become a Forex trader, and you are going to be honest with yourself about what is possible given the amount of starting disposable income you have, then it’s time to move on to the next step of learning the basics of Forex trading…

Step 2: Learn the basics of Forex trading

Next, if you have fully accepted that you need to focus on the process of trading rather than the money, and you know you aren’t going to get rich quick on a small trading account, you should focus on actually learning to trade.

Now, it might seem obvious that you should learn the basics first, but most beginning Forex traders simply have no clue what they are doing as they learn to trade. Many of them ignore the basics of Forex trading and of learning how to trade; this is a big mistake because if you really want to become a professional at something you have to start by understanding and building a foundation on the introductory concepts. You should first get a solid education in the foundational concepts of Forex by taking my free beginners Forex course. After you have done this and you thoroughly understand what the Forex market is, why it exists, and how to make sense of it, then you should move on to learning a real-world trading strategy like price action.

I can assure you that if you take this one extra step of learning the basics before you start buying trading systems and strategies, it will save you a lot of frustration, time and money, as well as put you far ahead of most beginning traders who simply dive-in head first without first building a solid foundation to trade off of.

Step 3: Learning to trade with an effective strategy

After you have completed steps 1 and 2, it’s time to learn some real-world trading strategies and really start getting into the “meat” of Forex trading. Now, there are thousands of different ways to trade the market out there, but if you want to learn how to read the raw and natural price dynamics of a market, I suggest you learn to trade forex price action strategies. By making price action trading your primary trading strategy, you will develop chart-reading skills that will last a lifetime and make any other strategy or system you use even more effective. As you probably know by now, I am a huge proponent of “pure” price action trading, and I really feel that it’s the best way to trade the Forex market.

The price action strategies and methods that I trade with and teach my students have served me well for many years now, and it’s because there is nothing complicated about them. I simply use my ability to read and interpret the overall market structure to find high-probability price action setups, and I watch for these obvious price action setups forming at key chart levels. Thus, there is no confusion or uncleanliness to my trading approach; it’s all about taking advantage of high-probability price action events in the market and knowing how to make sense of and read the ever-changing market conditions.

Part 2 – How to Become a Pro FX Trader: Testing Your Trading Skills?

Testing Your Skill in the Market

Last week, in Part 1 of this mini-series we discussed how to build the foundation of your Forex trading career. If you missed Part 1 click here.

Here’s a quick review of what we covered last week:

Step 1) Be honest with yourself about Forex trading

Step 2) Learn the basics of Forex trading

Step 3) Learn to trade Forex with an effective trading strategy

In today’s lesson we are going to continue where we left off last week by moving on to developing a Forex trading plan, trading journal, and demo trading. Like it or not, these seemingly “boring” aspects of Forex trading are essential to achieving success as a trader. If you ignore these critical pieces of the “pie”, you will quickly join the crowd of failed traders. Creating a trading plan and journal is the basis of becoming a disciplined trader and developing positive trading habits. After you have completed steps 1-3 in Part 1 of this mini-series, as well as steps 4 and 5 in this part, you can demo-trade your new trading strategy and see how it performs in real-time market conditions.

Why this part of the mini-series is CRITICAL to becoming a pro trader

Before we dive into the next 3 steps in this mini-series, I want to take a minute to explain to you guys why the points discussed here today are absolutely critical to becoming a professional Forex trader.

I know what you are thinking right now in the back of your head, “Trading plans and journals and demo trading are boring, and I don’t really need these things”. I know you are thinking that because I thought it before too.

However, I quickly realized that thinking something alone does not make it true. As much as you might think Forex trading plans and journals are boring, and maybe even demo trading, that does not change the fact that they are critical tools to developing yourself into a professional Forex trader. So, SUCK IT UP and do whatever you have to do to make yourself enjoy the process of creating these tools and using them CONSISTENTLY. If you don’t want to follow these next three steps then I suggest you pack your trading bags now and pursue a different career, because you won’t make it without them, here’s why:

Step 4: Create (and use) a Forex trading plan

In step 3 from last week’s lesson, we left off talking about learning to trade Forex with a high-probability trading strategy like price action. The next step to becoming a professional trader is to turn your trading strategy into a comprehensive yet concise forex trading plan, and actually using that trading plan after creating it.

Creating a trading plan around your trading strategy is critical for refining your trading approach and developing an organized and structured trading routine that will guide you when you switch to real money trading as well as help you avoid becoming an emotional trader. Yet, the vast majority of traders never even attempt to create a trading plan, instead, they think they can just “plan” on the go or that they are “so good” at trading that they just don’t need a plan. Well, the vast majority of traders also lose money in the markets…no it’s not a coincidence.

When you actually take the time to boil down your trading strategy to its core components and create an effective trading plan out of it, you gain a deeper understanding of your trading strategy and how to use it. You also create a tangible daily guide for your Forex trading that will work to keep you objective, on-track, and disciplined, THIS is the most important reason for creating a good Forex trading plan.

After first trying to trade without a trading plan like most traders do, I found that I was straying off course a lot and starting to just gamble my money in the markets rather than sticking to my high-probability forex price action trading edge. I soon realized that it’s one thing to understand your trading strategy in your mind, but it’s another thing all together to actually execute it with discipline and consistency in real-time market conditions.

HERE is where a Forex trading plan comes in. It is a written (or typed) outline of your overall trading approach, and you have it by your side whenever you are trading. Your trading plan helps you stay true to your trading strategy and to the principals that you decided were best to trade with when you created your trading plan and when you were thus totally objective and unemotional. So, a Forex trading plan gives you a predefined guide to make your decisions off of while analyzing the markets, this allows you to make logical and objective trading decisions rather than the emotional knee-jerk trading decisions that so many traders end up trading off of. If you don’t know how to make a Forex trading plan you should read this article: how to make a Forex trading plan.

Oh, and don’t make the common mistake that many traders make of spending the time to create a trading plan and then never using it. If you don’t actually use your trading plan it’s not going to help you (surprise surprise!). Also, you may need to tweak your trading plan as you progress as a trader; nothing wrong with this, as long as you are working on your trading plan while you are not in the market and thus totally objective, you are on the right path.

Step 5: Create (and use) a Forex trading journal

After you’ve created a successful Forex trading plan, it’s time to create a Forex trading journal so that you can track your progress as a trader.

Your trading journal can be thought of as the “engine” that keeps your trading moving in a disciplined and organized manner. Here are the main reasons to create and use a Forex trading journal if you want to become a pro Forex trader:

• Trading journals keep you disciplined – Whilst creating a trading plan will help you become a disciplined trader, it can be another thing all together to remain a disciplined trader. Becoming a disciplined trader means nothing if it all goes out the window after you hit a few losing trades and start trading emotionally as a result. A trading journal provides you with a tangible tool that helps you stay accountable, in essence, you become accountable to your trading journal. At least that’s how you need to think about it. Your trading journal will be a direct and in-your-face reflection of your ability as a trader. If your trading skill is not quite where it should be, you will see this reflected in your trading journal, if your mindset is not quite where it should be, you’ll see this reflected in your trading journal as well.

You are creating an on-going journal of your ability or lack thereof to trade the markets successfully. The longer you maintain your journal and trade your trading plan in a disciplined and consistent manner, the more discipline and consistency you will see in your trading results. Over time, you will begin to think of your trading journal as a testament to your ability to trade, and you will be PROUD of it, as you should be. This will work to reinforce your desire to maintain positive trading habits and to not stray off course into emotional-gambler trading land.

• You need a track record – You need a track record if you want anyone to take you seriously as a professionally trader. If you are trading Forex with a small account and hoping to find an investor to fund you, you absolutely have to have a consistently documented track record that shows 6 months or more of successful trading, in most legitimate cases that is. Furthermore, even if you aren’t looking for funding, your track record should be viewed as an integral part of your overall trading strategy that you passionately love to maintain, if you think of it like this I promise your trading will improve.

• Trading journals develop winning trading habits – As I mentioned previously, a trading journal will work to develop and reinforce positive trading habits. The process and routine of keeping a running journal of all your trades will work to make trading seem like more of a business. Since you need to learn that Forex trading is a business anyways, this is a good way to do that. You will work to reinforce the benefits of discipline and patience when you keep a trading journal. Once you see your discipline and patience paying off over a period of time, you will gain a deeper understanding of why they are important and this will work to make you ENJOY being a patient and disciplined trader, rather than wanting to “run and gun” like so many other traders do.

Step 6: Demo trade first

After you’ve completed steps 1-5 of this series, it’s time to try out your trading strategy, trading plan, and trading journal in real-time market conditions. The process of demo trading is a good testing-ground for traders, and it’s essential for working out the kinks in your trading plan and really forging it into something you can be confident about when you move on to real-money trading.

Now, let me first say that there are some obviouspsychological differences between demo trading and live trading, but that doesn’t make the process of demo trading insignificant. Demo trading is an important step for any trader to take after they master their trading strategy and develop it into a solid trading plan. It can also be a tool to use to rehabilitate yourself if you’ve been on a big emotional losing streak in the markets. So, if you find yourself “out of control” in the markets, stop real-money trading and go back to demo until you have successfully regrouped and gained your discipline back.

After you have traded your demo account with consistent success for a period of 3 to 6 months, you can then try your hand at real-money trading. However, don’t take demo trading lightly; you really need to see profitable trading results that were born out of consistently following your trading plan and updating your journal for 3 months or longer before trading live.

Part 3 – How to Become a Pro Trader: Taking Off the ‘Training Wheels’

Taking Off the ‘Training Wheels’

Last week, in Part 2 of this mini-series we discussed how to test your skills in the market.

Here’s a quick revew of the points we covered last week:

Step 4: Creating and using a Forex trading plan

Step 5: Creating and using a Forex trading journal

Step 6: Demo trading your Forex trading strategy

In this week’s lesson we are going to pick up where we left off last week by getting you mentally prepared to “take off the training wheels” of demo trading. Trading with real money is significantly more intense than demo trading, thus it requires that you are aware of and accept the reality of real-money trading before you take the plunge. Most beginning traders simply dive in to the markets head first, risking their hard-earned money with no real plan in place. Hoping that you will somehow “figure it out” on the fly is not a plan; it’s what gambling traders do. Thinking that you will somehow parlay your trading account money into a small fortune within a short amount of time without any plan or strategy in place puts you on a fast-track to failure as a trader.

The truth is that reaching a point where you can honestly trade for a living without having any other job is a result of not trying to get rich quick, and of accepting the reality of what it takes to become a consistently profitable trader and doing those things consistently.

Step 7: Making the jump to live trading – Preparing yourself for the emotions

When you are demo trading the markets you naturally have no emotional problems to battle with, because you have no real money on the line. Thus, many traders do exceptionally well when demo trading only to find that their fake-money success goes out the window when they switch to real-money trading. That’s because there are drastic psychological differences between demo trading and live trading that you need to come to grips with prior to switching to a live account. Here are some points to consider before you begin risking your hard-earned money in the markets:

• How to trade like you did on demo – As I mentioned previously, traders usually do better on demo than they do on live accounts as a result of the fact that there is naturally no emotion in the mix when you aren’t risking real money. While it is certainly easier said than done, what you need to do on your live account is forget about the real money you are risking, here’s how you do this…

• ONLY trade money you are OK with losing – In order to not get emotional while trading with real money you need to never trade with money that you need for anything else in your life, as well as never risk more than you are truly OK with losing. If you can manage to consistently do these two things, you will experience little to no emotion on any one trade. Most traders end up trading with money they really shouldn’t be trading with, or they risk more than they are OK with losing per trade, thus they become emotional.

• Understand you CAN lose on ANY trade – You are much more likely to have a calm and objective trading mindset if you always remember that you can lose on ANY trade you take. Even if you see what you think is a “perfect” price action strategy  in a very strong trending market, it can still fail. The truth is that you can never know for sure what is going to happen on any given day in the market, so if you truly accept that and believe it, there is no reason to ever risk more than you are comfortable with losing.

• Don’t get caught-up over-analyzing the markets – If you want to become a professional Forex trader you are going to have to learn how to accurately read and trade off of the daily charts first. Most traders end up taking the opposite approach; they start by trying to trade off of lower time frames like 5 minute or 15 minute charts, and then after they lose enough money they eventually figure out the daily chart is a lot more conducive to trading from a relaxed and objective mindset.

• Not every trading opportunity is created equal – Understand that you shouldn’t stray from your trading edge once you start trading live. You probably traded your edge very consistently on demo, because you didn’t feel any “urge” to make money, try to recapture that same feeling when trading live and forget about the money. Over-trading is a result of feeling “pressure” and greed to trade. The more you feel these emotions the more likely you are to trade when you shouldn’t and thus lose money.

Ultimately, there is a fundamental difference in how amateur traders think vs. how professional traders think. The difference lies mainly in the amateur’s “need” to make money from their trading as well as their inability to trade emotionally undetached from any one trade. Essentially, professional traders do not become emotional from any one trade because they know their success is defined over a large sample of trades, not by one or two. Professional traders also know that the key to keeping the emotional trading demons at bay is to consistently control their risk in the market. Your trading psychology is what dictates how you interact with the market, and this psychology is almost entirely a result of how well you manage your money as you trade.

Step 8: Managing risk effectively – The KEY to successful Forex trading

As I just mentioned, risk management is the “key” to managing your emotions correctly; and thus it is also the key to becoming a successful trader and eventually a professional trader. If you practice proper risk management on every trade, it will make managing your emotions and maintaining the proper trading psychology a very simple task.

However, most traders do not manage their risk effectively, and as a result they experience huge emotional swings in their trading, as we all as in their equity curves. To avoid the account-destroying emotional trading mistakes that most traders make, there are some specific forex money management guidelines that you can follow:

• Trade with only disposable income – I mentioned this in the previous section, but it’s worth mentioning again because it really is your first line of defense against becoming an emotional trader. If most traders would only take the time to honestly decide how much truly disposable income they have to trade with and ONLY trade with THAT money, there would be a lot more successful traders in the world.

• Understand risk / reward and position sizing – It really is amazing how many traders start risking their hard-earned money in the markets without a thorough understanding of risk reward and position sizing. If you take the time to understand the math behind the power of risk to reward ratios, it will allow you to see that you can actually lose on the majority of your trades and still make money, to learn how this is possible see this article: Case Study – Random Entry & Risk Reward in Forex Trading

Position sizing is equally important, yet many traders seem to have no idea that they can still trade a their ideal risk amount even if they need to place a large stop loss on a trade. I get questions about this everyday; “Nial how can I trade the daily charts with a small account, am I not better off trading the smaller time frames?” The answer is you simply need to reduce your position size down to meet the larger stop requirement of daily chart time frames compared to smaller time frames. There are no advantages to trading 5 minute charts on a small trading account or on any account really.

• Know what your risk-per-trade tolerance is and STICK TO IT – Professional traders know before they enter a trade how much they are going to risk on it and how much they are emotionally OK with risking on it. If you are staying up all night watching your trades, you are risking too much. You should risk an amount that truly allows you to set and forget about each trade you take, because being preoccupied with every trade you take all the time is a sure sign you are risking too much.

• Avoid taking on more risk from adding positions – Some traders like to trade multiple markets at the same time, and they will actually double or triple their normal risk while doing so. This is basically trading account suicide. First off, if you are a shorter-term swing trader like me, you are only in the markets for 1 to 3 days on average, sometimes a bit longer depending on the trade. But, there’s really no reason to be in 5 different trades at the same time unless it’s part of a long-term diversified investment strategy. If you do see a good reason to trade multiple Forex pairs at the same time, make sure you divide up your risk amongst them so that your pre-defined risk tolerance is always maintained.

• Measure risk and reward in dollars, not pips or percentages – If you are still calculating your risk and reward by percentages or pips, you need to stop. Think about it for a minute; if you risk 100 pips on a trade that doesn’t really mean anything because you can trade many different position sizes for that amount of pips. One trader might have $10 at risk on 100 pips and another trader might have $1,000 at risk on 100 pips. Thus, through position sizing, a trader can risk different dollar amounts than another for the same stop distance. So, the point is that you calculate your risk and your reward in terms of “R”, R is the dollar amount you risk per trade. Check out this article later on how to measure your trades in dollars not pips or percentages to learn more.

Finally, as you progress from the early stages of learning your trading strategy, building a trading plan, and demo trading, you will move to the “big leagues” of real money trading. I hope that the points discussed in today’s lesson provided you with some insight to get you ready. In the end, no amount of advice or insight can substitute for real trading experience, but it can help you to accept the realities of trading and let you know what to expect.

Part 4 – Become a Professional Trader: Putting It All Together

Putting It All Together

In Part 3 of this mini-series we discussed how to “take off the training wheels” of demo-trading and progress on to trading with a real-money account.

Here’s a quick review of the main points we covered last week:

Step 7: How to handle the emotions of trading with real money

Step 8: Successful Forex trading money management

We are going to wrap up this 4-part blog mini-series in today’s lesson by discussing how to “put it all together”. I am going to walk you guys through an example of how a professional trader operates in the market by taking you through a trade step by step. Hopefully, in today’s lesson you will understand how all the steps in this series work together to provide you with an effective trading approach. Now, let’s check out how a pro price action trader would progress through a trade:

Step 9: Finding a price action signal

If you’ve completed all the previous steps in this mini-series, you will be ready to take the next step which is to actually look for a price action signal to trade on your real-money account. This is where your Forex trading plan comes in; it will give you a checklist to guide you through the process of finding a valid price action signal. It is not a concrete rule-set, but rather a guide or an outline that you follow to make sure any potential setup that you find meets certain criteria. Here’s an example:

• What time frame am I looking at? The daily chart time frame is best.

• What market am I trading? Is it a major Forex pair or a more volatile exotic pair?

• What condition is the market in? Trending, consolidating?

• Where are the obvious key support / resistance levels in the market? Have I drawn them in?

• What are the 8 and 21 daily EMAs doing? Where is price in relation to them?

• Is there an obvious price action signal on the chart?

• If there is an obvious signal, does it have confluence?

• What confluence does it have? Trend, static support / resistance, dynamic support / resistance, 50% retrace level? Event area? The more the better…

• Is the signal showing rejection of a key market level?

• Is the signal showing a false-break of a key market level?

These are just some of the things you would want to look for as you analyze the market and try to find a high-probability price action setup; it’s not a ‘complete’ trading plan or checklist. Aprofessional Forex trader will have gone through the process of making sure any potential trade setup meets his or her checklist so many times that it turns into a habit and gets ingrained into their mind. Trading success is all about developing and maintaining the proper trading habits.

Here’s an example chart of the Kiwi/Yen pair, we can see this was a pin bar trading strategy that formed at a key level in the market and with the dominant daily trend. This was a very obvious price action setup that any professional trader trading this market would have caught. Note that it provided a very nice profit as the trend took off after the pin bar broke out to the upside:

Step 10: Calculating the risk to reward ratio of the trade

After a professional Forex trader finds a valid signal to trade, the next thing they will do is concentrate on the risk. That’s right; the RISK is the first thing a pro trader concentrates on…not the reward, like most amateurs.

Depending on the particular setup you are trading and were the nearby key support or resistance levels are, a pro trader will place their stop loss at the most logical place that gives the trade room to breathe. Logical stop placement is a crucial difference between winning and losing Forex traders. Winning traders will take the time to focus on finding the “safest” place to put their stop, while beginners usually place too tight of a stop just because they want to trade a bigger position size…or they place no stop at all, which is just insane.

Professional Forex traders calculate their risk reward ratio in terms of dollars at risk. So, if you have 100 dollars at risk, 1R (1 times risk) for you is $100, 2R is $200, and so on. Most pro traders are not very concerned with percentages or pips, because at the end of the year all that matters is how much money you lost relative to how much money you won. That’s why I measure my risk and reward in dollars, not percentages or pips.

In the chart below, we see the same NZDUSD pin bar trade, but this time we are calculating the potential risk reward on the trade. This trade actually ended up moving about 5R higher, meaning it would have returned 5 times what you risked if you had your stop loss just below the low of the pin and you entered at the high; a very good risk reward ratio indeed.

Step 11: Managing the trade after it’s live

Managing trades after they are live is perhaps the part of trading that gives traders the most trouble. The reason why traders have difficulty managing their trades is primarily because they over-complicate the process. I am a strong believer in “set and forget Forex trading”, and indeed this is a core part of my overall trading philosophy. Meddling in your trades after they are live and second-guessing your trade setups are things amateur traders do. Professional traders only take trades they are 100% OK in risking their hard-earned money on, thus they don’t second-guess themselves usually, and they rarely meddle in their trades. If you have a Forex trading plan and actually follow it, there should be no reason to mess around with your trades a lot after they are live. I personally have found that just letting the market run its course is usually the most lucrative forex trade management technique out there.

In the NZDUSD pin bar trade below, we can see this market easily presented us with more than a 2 times risk reward. I personally almost always take a reward of two times my risk, as more often than not, the market is ready to retrace substantially after pushing in one direction long enough to net me 2 times my risk. However, in strong trending markets like in our example trade below, there is usually a good probability you can get a reward of more than 2 times your risk. Indeed, in the example below this NZDUSD trade provided a 5 times risk reward.

I get a lot of emails about exits and how to manage them. The simple truth is that I almost always set and forget my trades; it’s a rare occasion that I meddle in my trade by closing it out before it hits my stop or by moving my profit target further away. I like to either take the loss or take the profit. Over a longer period of time, this trade management technique will work out in your favor, because you are not acting emotionally. Most traders who meddle in their trades are trying to “control” the market or force their will upon it.

You are far better off just entering your high-probability price action setup and letting the market “do its thing”. You will get better at this and at taking profits from your Forex trades, but it’s not something that will magically happen overnight. It takes a solid understanding of price action and market dynamics as well as putting in the screen time to develop your discretionary price action trading skills. All of this adds up to obtaining a keen “sense” of how to read and trade the raw price action in the market, and this is an art and a skill which will reward you many times over.

Step 12: Controlling yourself after a trade

Finally, we come to the last step of this mini-series on becoming a professional trader, and it is perhaps the most important one:

I know that most of you have had some good trades and made some money in the markets. But, what did you do after your trade? The honest answer to that question is truly what defines a professional trader. Your mindset right after a trade is at its most fragile, because you are likely either feeling a bit euphoric over your winnings or angry and frustrated over your losses. Granted, you should not experience these emotions too intensely if you’ve manage your risk properly, but you will likely still feel them to some degree no matter what, after all, you are risking your hard-earned money.

Whether you win or lose on a trade, you are at the greatest risk to make an emotional trading decision immediately after a trade closes. While there is no miracle-formula for making sure you avoid these emotional trading errors, if you understand and accept the following points you will be far less likely to make them:

• If you have just lost on a trade, remember that jumping in the market again to try and “make back” what you lost is an emotional reason for trading, not a logical one. Do not enter another trade right away unless there is a valid price action trade setup that meets the criteria in your trading plan.

• If you have just won on a trade, remember that you are not some “perfect” trader who can do no wrong in the markets. Beginning traders tend to get over-confident after a winner or a string of winners, this can cause them to veer of course and “run and gun” rather than trading Forex like a sniper.

• Remember, your trading success is not defined by your last trade; rather it is defined by the result of a large series of your trades. To become emotional and react defensively to any one trade is to say that you think your success as a trader hinges on one trade, and it simply does not. You have to learn to take your losses as just a part of doing business in the Forex market.

• In regards to taking losses, it will be a lot easier to swallow the inevitable losses if you are only risking an amount per trade that you are truly OK with losing. When you start trading with money that you need for other life expenses, or risking too much per trade, you put yourself at a very great risk for wanting to enter a “revenge” trade after you lose.

• Perhaps the best way to control yourself after any one trade is to simply take some time away from trading. Rarely are you going to exit a trade and then get another high-probability opportunity immediately after that. It usually pays to separate yourself from your charts for at least 24 hours after you exit a trade, whether it was a winner or loser. This will give your emotions time to die down and cool off before you begin analyzing the charts gain.

Where to go from here…

Now that you’ve finished this mini-series on becoming a professional trader, you should have learned a lot and have a deeper understanding of what pro trading is all about. I am not implying that you will be a professional trader just because you read this blog series. You need to understand that becoming a pro trader is the result of months and likely years of disciplined trading and making small steps toward your ultimate goal of professional Forex trading.

The first thing you should aim to do now is to follow all the insight in this series and aim for making small yet consistent gains each month on your trading account. If you are making money each month while managing your risk effectively on every trade and trading like a sniper…YOU ARE A SUCCESSFUL TRADER. You don’t need to be a professional / full-time trader right out of the gate to be a winner. Rather, this should be a longer-term goal that will sort of just “happen” if you trade consistently and remain disciplined over a long enough period of time.

Every trader is different, and so every trader will take a different amount of time to become successful. But, I promise you that if you learn and master a high-probability trading strategy like price action, and combine that mastery with a realistic attitude and a disciplined trading approach, you will be well on your way to becoming a profitable trader.