Sophia Todorova is the host of the live trading room for the London session. She has a background in teaching and psychology, and as such relishes the idea of assisting new traders on their journey to Forex trading success. Technical Analysis is her passion. The charts speak, and she listens. To Trade Live with Sophia Join Winners Edge Trading Premium Services.
As we all tend to agree, psychology plays a major role in a Forex trader’s success. As such, the state of mind of the individual will, to a large extent, determine the level of success she’ll enjoy. Therefore, as a trader, I am constantly aiming, and sometimes struggling with all the psychological feedback the market throws at me. This information presents a great learning opportunity to me, because the market reflects back to us the kind of persons we are, and will ALWAYS punish or reward us accordingly. There are some distinct character traits that sets the successful trader apart from all others. Some examples are:
Confident: Self-confidence is what separates a successful trader from another who has the same training and knowledge, but lacks the courage to transfer the information into successful trading. A major reason for lack of confidence when trading is also a lack of preparation. Therefore it is essential that every trader does the initial work involved, by taking the time to acquire forex education. Once that is accomplished focus can then be placed on finding a winning strategy and sticking to it.
Disciplined: Patience is often a derivative of discipline. It takes discipline to wait for the right trading opportunity to set up in the market. Once there is an opportunity, it takes discipline to make a trading plan and trading according to that plan. This character trait helps the trader to adhere to a pre-defined risk plan. It also will prevent her from holding onto losing positions that are clearly not working out.
Objective: Take two traders, and show them a chart of the same timeframe, and they will potentially produce exact opposite analyses. While this could be a result of varying trading strategy or method, often it is due to biases held in relation to what the market ‘should’ be doing next. This is often the downfall of many a trader. Instead of trying to dictate to the market, wait for the market to show you where it wants to go, and go with it.
Humble: A certain level of success in trading often results in ‘cockiness’, or over- confidence. It is at this point that many begin to make simple trading errors which can prove disastrous to their trading performance. I once heard a trader say that he welcomes losses sometimes because it reminds him to stay sharp.
Dedicated: Due to the level of effort involved in getting to the point of being consistently successful, it is a near-impossible feat to accomplish without a strong level of dedication. It is this lack of dedication, coupled with any number of personality flaws, that significantly contributes to the so-called ‘statistic’ of a 90-95% failure rate in Forex trading.
The good thing about life, and trading is that it is an ongoing process where there is never a final destination. Therefore we should always be seeking to grow and improve upon our performance. If we do not currently possess the necessary character traits that help to ensure success in trading, then we can work at acquiring them. In the market environment we pay dearly for the mistakes we make, so we might as well make the best use of them. We do this by learning from our errors or mistakes, and use them as a platform from which we can grow and become the world-class traders that we all aim to be. Focus on improving yourself, and that will automatically be transferred to your trading.
Thank you for reading my article. Have a fantastic weekend, and see you all next week. Same time…Same place…Chao:)
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