Profit. This is the objective of any trader.

In Forex trading, the road to profitability is similar to speculating other financial markets. However, the retail trader fails to understand the true costs of Forex trading. Hence, he/she fails to understand the actual profit made.

A profit in Forex trading is the difference between the opening and closing prices of a trade. On a short trade, the closing price MUST be lower than the opening one. In a long trade, it MUST be higher.

This simplicity of the Forex trading process makes it so appealing to traders. But the road to profitability is filled with a lot of hours dedicated to financial markets.

What it Takes to Make it Every Month

To make a profit in Forex trading is one thing. To continually make a profit is another.

Knowledge is just one thing traders must have. It can be taught.

However, other traits of a successful trader can’t be taught. Instead, most traders struggle to make it in this line of business and the ones who end up trading for a living have found a solution to at least a few of the following:

1. Patience

Some traders have it; some don’t. Depending on the trading style, this may be a tremendous problem that stays in the way of making a profit in Forex trading.

Traders that don’t have patience usually settle for scalping. That is, they go in and out of the market multiple times during the trading day, targeting very small profits.

In swing trading and investing, though, patience is critical. Hence, if you are a trend following trader that analyzes the market on medium-term timeframes or an investor that trades changes in the macroeconomic sphere, you have to give the market time to move.

Despite the general belief, the market spends a lot of time in ranges. In Forex trading, ranges can take months or years, and for some traders, that’s a lot of time.

Take the EURUSD for instance. It spent over one and a half years in a tight range (a triangle, more precisely) before marking a temporary top.

Bulls looking for a reversal allocated a lot of time and energy for a long trade. Eventually, it came, but those that lost the patience lost the future reversal too.

Or, consider the first half of 2018. The pair spent a lot of time in a tight range before breaking lower.

Those trapped in such ranges will have their patience tested day in and day out. Believe it or not, human nature is the worse enemy in trading, and when the market doesn’t move, the best thing to do is to sit on your hands. Or, to be patient.

2. Enough Capital

Capital is key to Forex trading. Because the currency pairs do spend a lot of time in ranges, as shown above, traders feel the need to do something just for the reason that the markets are open.

Imagine the range in the chart above and a trader that has a bullish scenario. All the time the market spends in the range, the trader is tempted to add another position, and another one, and so on.

In the end, the trading account becomes too heavy, and a move in the opposite direction can wipe it out easily.

Hence, by capital, we don’t refer to as much money as possible in the trading account. Instead, ‘enough capital’ refers to the free margin available in the trading account so that it can sustain reasonable drawdowns.

3. Rules

This is the money management part. So far in this Trading Academy dedicated to Forex trading we covered many things related to money management and what traders must do.

Money management can be taught, and it goes hand in hand with the first two points already mentioned in this article. Lack of patience influence the money management system and when there is not enough free margin (or capital) in the trading account, the money management rules are surely bent.

4. Time

Time is an issue. Unless trading with an automated strategy, time can be a problem.

Most retail traders have a day job. Therefore, the time to watch the market and analyze it is limited.

A proper analysis requires time as traders need to put in many “screen hours.” Take, for instance, the Elliott Waves Theory.

We’ve dedicated many articles to this beautiful theory, but as accurate as it is, its major flaw is that it is incredibly time-consuming. A trade comes at the end of a top-down analysis, meaning traders analyze cycles from the more significant timeframes to the smaller ones.

More precisely, traders start from the monthly chart and continue on the weekly from where the monthly count started. And so on, until they reach a timeframe suitable for a trade.

But this process is time-consuming and if you consider all the currency pairs offered by a brokerage house, time becomes an issue.

5. Stay Up-To-Date with Market News

Everyone knows the importance of the economic calendar. However, it isn’t enough in Forex trading.

Automated execution dominates Forex trading. Robots of all kinds buy and sell automatically, buying and selling thousands of trades every second.

For this reason, the market makes large swings during the trading day, but not only when the economic news part of the economic calendar comes out.

Instead, during the trading day and in-between the crucial economic news, other news also influences the market. Central bankers’ statements, political decisions (politicians quitting, for instance), can quickly turn the markets.

The GBPUSD four-hour chart above illustrates just that. The big red candle wasn’t caused by economic news part of the economic calendar.

Instead, it is the market reaction to Boris Johnson’s resignation as the U.K. foreign minister. As a result, the GBP plunged across the board, unexpectedly.

How to prepare for something like this? Unfortunately, there’s really no way.

However, the quicker the traders know what the reason was behind a market move, the better. They can react faster!

Twitter can be a great part of the solution. There is a powerful financial community on Twitter and news related to Forex trading travels with the speed of light.

Hence, to be up-to-date with the latest financial market-moving news, make sure you follow the Twitter financial community.

Conclusion

The things listed in this article are only a few of the things necessary for successful Forex trading. Knowledge, passion, ambition, desire…are all traits of a successful trader.

The art of speculation requires more than knowledge. A trader needs capital, good instincts, a successful strategy, perfect timing and implementation of a trading plan, among others.

For the retail Forex trader, all of these aren’t impossible. What traders need to know is that there is only one market for all players, rookies, amateurs and professionals alike.

The ones that find their edge faster will succeed every time. And this is what this article was about: helping retail traders find their edge in Forex trading.