How to identify a winning strategy is the most elusive answer for the 95% of traders that are not succeeding in Forex. The reason for it is that most traders lack the discipline to find a trading strategy that's proven to work and sticking to it. Every strategy will have some short periods where they lose money, however, the periods where they make money are longer and more frequent.
The problem is that most beginners think that they are going to start making money quick and abandon winning strategies after a few losing trades. By constantly changing strategies trying to find the Holy Grail of strategies, these traders can't create consistency and, furthermore, can't fully learn how a winning strategy works because they are too fast to abandon it.
As a trader, you should follow these four rules to implement your winning strategy and achieve success:
1. The KISS rule
The most successful strategies and systems are the easiest to learn and master. By Keeping It Simple S... , the more likely that you'll be able to follow the rules of your strategy, implement them, be successful, and, more importantly, you will stick with it.
There are plenty of very complicated strategies in the market and, even for the most experienced trader, they are very hard to implement because of their complexity. Stay away from complicated strategies and automated systems. Learn to stick to strategies and systems that are easy to use and implement and you will see your trading improve tremendously.
2. "I have the need for some speed!"
When entering a trade, the shorter time you are in it, the better your chances to succeed. For example, when you enter a trade because of a breakout, you are better off taking just a few pips and exiting the trade than staying in the trade trying to maximise your profits. What you want to avoid is to be caught in the big sell off and the trend reversal. I personally like to sell 50% of my holdings when I get to my desired first level profit (10-20 pips depending on the pair), 25% on the second level (another 15-20 pips), and let the remaining 25% ride the trend until it reverses. That way, I don't miss on a big trend, but am minimizing my risk by taking profits along the way. An added benefit is that your level of stress will be greatly reduced when you trade this way.
3. Set a goal for the day and turn your computer off
Most people think that a winning strategy will require them to spend all day staring at their screen waiting for the good trades to come. What the most successful traders do is establish realistic goals for profits for a day and finish the day after they reach their goal. By that, I don't mean to say that if you are in a trade with a strong up or down trend that you should exit the trade when you reach your goal. I that case, you should end your trading for the day after closing the trend comes to the end a laugh all the way to the bank with your additional profit.
Important note here is that the goal is set for both sides profit and losses for the day. Once you reach your limit of losses for the day, you must stop trading! The biggest mistake traders make is to try to recover their losses immediately after a loss and they end up losing even more. There going to be days where our trading is just not working for whatever reason and you will be better off turning off your computer and starting over the following day. You will be surprise how effective setting your goals are in making you a better trader.
4. Discipline rules!
The hardest thing to do for traders of all levels is to keep their discipline. I can't say how many times I got impatient with my trading strategy and deviated from it only to keep accumulating more losses. Only when I've gone back to KISS by following the rules of the strategy the way it was designed to work have I been able to start generating consistent profits again. Proven winning strategies and automated system require discipline to be successful. You must stick with the system as they were designed to work and you will succeed.
If you follow these simple rules of trading, you will succeed. These 4 rules are time tested and they work. They will work for you too!
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