I’m going to tell you a true story that has stuck in my mind for a very long time… and this story about “being 3ft from gold.” Keep persevering in trading because many times you will be very close to being a successful forex trader but you don’t know it.
But how can you know how close you are to success until you actually get there?
Its like this story here…
HE WAS JUST 3 FEET FROM GOLD-A TRUE STORY ABOUT PERSEVERANCE
There was a gold prospector in Alaska, who had gold fever so he staked his claim and got to work-digging. It was hard work but he kept digging and digging until he found a gold vein. He realized this was a good find and he would need quite a significant sum of money to bring the gold ore to the surface.
So he covered up his find and went home to raise some money to buy machinery that would be needed to bring the gold to the surface. He raised the money, bought the machinery and went back to the site to make his fortune.
Things were looking good and he made enough money to pay of his debts. Once they debt was clear, he was excited because from now on, its was pure profits after subtracting the operating costs.
Then suddenly, the supply of gold ore stopped. There was no more gold vein-it simply disappeared. He kept on digging but found nothing. Nothing! Zilch! Nada! The vein of gold simply disappeared!
He quit in frustration and sold all his machinery to a junk man for a couple of hundred dollars and went home in disappointment.
But that was not the end of this story.
The junk man was a bit smart.
He figured out that there’s got to be a reason or explanation why the gold disappeared like that and he needed somebody smarter than himself who was knowledgeable in such things who could investigate and find out.
So what did he do? He hired a mining engineer.
The mining engineer checked the mine and calculated that there was a vein of gold just 3 feet from where the other guy had stopped digging!
The junk man went on to make millions of dollars from that mine.
Are you feeling sorry for the other guy now? Well, you should be…because he went home almost empty handed.
But hang on, that is not the end of the story just yet!
Long story short, the other guy learnt a very valuable lesson about perseverance. Even though he walked away 3 feet from gold, he learnt that one must never give up in life about what you set out to do-keep persevering.
At the point where you want to throw your hands in the air and say “I’ve had enough. I quit!” At the very point, your success may be very closer than you think!
Guess what happened to the other guy? He ended up becoming a very successful insurance salesman making many more millions of dollars than he would have made from that mine. That one mistake was the lesson he learnt from to change his fortune around.
That’s a happy ending.
Now back to you: how many mistakes you make in forex trading that you continue to do time and time again? What would happen if you stop completely doing all these mistakes?
Well, the answer is very simple…it brings trading success much closer. Seriously.
FOREX TRADING SUCCESS MAY BE CLOSER THAN YOU THINK
A lot of you may be right on the verge of success in your trading but you don’t know it. You may be just 3 feet away from gold and one more dig of the shovel and you will hit the gold vein and BAM-the gold starts flowing.
Now with traders, its not about shovels and digging but its that moment when you understand…you simply just “get it”. This is a moment where you understand or come to a realization of something you have previously not fully understood. It is this moment that will help you in the future.
Whatever it is, this thing is something you have battled with for a very long time in your forex trading path until it finally clicks and you have the “aha” moment.
You see, there’s only two paths for every trader, one path is a very wide path where majority follow and the other path is very narrow, only a few find it and follow it.
The narrow path leads to success in forex trading. To find the narrow path, every forex trader much reach their “aha” moment. That’s your discovery. Things can only get better from that moment on.
I will share with you some simple strategies and tips that you can use to get you started in the right direction so you get closer to your gold.
STOP JUMPING FROM ONE TRADING STRATEGY TO THE NEXT
You need to pick a trading strategy, commit to it and then perfect it. Rain or sunshine, stick to it. Success will follow when you do that.
One of the reasons many traders are not making money at all is that is that they are jumping here and there. This is called trading system hoping.
Now every trading strategy out there has its weakness. For example, if you using a moving average cross-over strategy, you know that this trading strategy is a really good if the market is trending nicely. If the market is ranging or going flat, you will get too many false signals and your stop loss gets hit.
What happens when a trader starts using a system in a market condition that is not good for using this system? The system won’t perform well. So after a month of trying this strategy, he thinks the strategy is rubbish and looks for another one to try. But if he could have just waited one more month, the system could have performed extremely well and all the trading loses for the previous month could have been insignificant compared to the profits he could have made.
Now, the trading system is all about rules…when this happens, you buy here or sell here. That’s what a trading system does.
- A trading system does not tell you to over trade.
- A trading system does not tell you to take trades even when you know you you shouldn’t but you did anyway.
- A trading system does not tell you take revenge trades to recover your losses…in fact revenge trades cost you more-you lose more in doing that.
All these actions are self-sabotage actions cause by the trader himself/herself.
You’ve got to be able to learn to handle losing streaks. Even though it can be emotionally nerve wrecking, you’ve got to stay cool. You need to continue to follow your plan even in losing streaks. Don’t panic, don’t worry. Eventually the system will win if you stick with it.
As I said above, every trading strategy is designed for certain market conditions. If the current market condition is not good, that’s where loses come in.
So right now you may be in a market condition where the trading strategy is getting beaten up so bad. But you’ve got to stick with it during the storm. Don’t jump ship yet. See it through. Maintain your risk per trade-if your risk 2% per trade, make sure you stick to that.
Don’t force trading setups to happen by going to other timeframes where you would not normally go. Don’t try to look for other types of trading setups based on other trading systems you’ve used before. You need to maintain consistency…
- Trade the same setups time and time again.
- The storm does not last forever. A sun always shines after a heavy rain has ended.
YOUR TRADING EDGE IS WHEN YOU STICK TO THE PLAN.
Legendary CEO Jeff Welsh has been quoted saying:
This applies to trading as well. There’s no big secret about it. To have a trading edge, you need to really stick to the same system regardless of what is happening. And after a period of time, when you take into account all the wins, loses and breakeven trades, you will see that you are doing well. But when you stop in the middle just because of a few trading losses and start trading a different system, you really kill your edge.
WINNING STREAKS DON’T LAST FOREVER
When the market conditions are good for your trading system to perform well, you will have winning streaks and make a lot of money. This tends to make many traders confident and aggressive and cocky. They feel like they are the king of the forex market.
Now there’s nothing bad about being aggressive and confident but the problem is that if you are on a winning streak, you will generally tend to increase your risk level per trade and trade a lot more. What’s changed in the mind of the trader here?
- You did not realize it but the old fella called “Greed” just crept into your mind and you did not realize it yet. GREED! Aha! See?
- So what happens to you is that once your winning streak has ended, you start losing.
- But winning streaks are like being on a drug-your are still high from your winning streaks.
- So you get upset and hurt that you are losing and you wan’t to get back the feeling that you had when you were wining.
- You were like an expert and knew exactly when to buy and sell at the right time and you were making a killing. You were the master of the market! But now, every trade you take is not turning out winners…you are losing and you are angry!
The sooner your realize that the winning streaks are gone and know by the name what that old fella in your head is (greed) saying, then you will survive. Otherwise, you will blow your trading account.
Now, no matter what trading system you use, there’s a lot of uncertainty in the markets. The conditions can be perfect for a buy or sell signal based on your trading system but then a news comes out and your perfect trade turns into a loss. That’s not your problem, don’t stress about such a loss. These things have nothing to do with the strategy. Keep your cool, keep your edge and keep going.
TRADING WITH “I WANT TO BE RICH OVERNIGHT” MENTALITY
The quick rich approach to trading is when you don’t want to put the time and effort to genuinely learn and want to study. Trading system hoping from one to the next looking for the perfect trading system, the holy grail that will make a million dollars in a month.
Do you know how traders who have the “be rich overnight” mentality do in their trading?
- They are traders that trade like crazy.
- You will trade with large risks to your account because you know, if you risk more, you make more, right? Yes, that’s right.
But what if you lose? Well, then you lose a huge chunk of your trading account, right? Yes.
Then why did you do it? Because you wanted to get rich overnight! That’s old fella Mr. Greed right there again.
You cannot be trading for a few weeks or a few months and you think you can be a profitable trader. Far from it. You’ve got to learn. You cannot succeed with only a minimal time exposure to your charts and trading system. Apart from picking a trading method and sticking to it, you need to make a commit to yourself that you are going to study the method and perfect it. You also need to pick a method the fits your personality as well.
Pilots and doctors takes years of study to become what they are. Traders too need that kind of time to become successful. For some of you, you may have been trading real money for some years now and even now you are still not making money yet. You’ve most likely blown a couple of trading accounts too. But Hey! Take it as a Tuition Fee for the “Forex Trading University!”. Your education is not yet over!
If you are very smart and think you can succeed with only a minimal trading education, be my guest. You’ve got to pay the price first: time and money.
HEALTHY FOREX TRADER
I don’t mind a few cold beers once in a while with my close circle of friends over a barbecue. If it comes to food, there’s an old saying “you are what you eat.” Especially when you have too much of something…in excess, that’s where you have problems.
Which means, if you eat fat, you become fat. You are what you eat!
No, I’m not a nutrition guru. As a matter of fact, there are some very nutritious food that I should be eating but I don’t eat at all because I just don’t like the taste or the look of it. That’s just me.
Let me tell you a story:
Recently, I was doing my my groceries with my wife and daughter and I saw this woman, she was obese…I just thought in my head “What is she eating to make her fat like that?” as she walked past me with her trolley.
As if to answer my question: out of the corner came a little girl, about 4 years old, she was her daughter. Her two little hands were very small in comparison to the massive donut she which she was eating and she was chewing on that huge donut like there was no tomorrow.
And that little girl was obese…fat, like her mum.
That image of that fat mum walking past with a grocery trolley obviously full of junk food and a fat 4 year old girl hungrily eating away a huge donut whilst following her mum has stuck in my head since then. I can’t forget that.
Its sad.
Poor kid had not control over what she ate. She was only a child. The mum (and possibly the dad) have really poor eating habits, eating too many junk food. This was passed on to their children. When these children grow up and become adults, what’s the likelihood that they will continue to pass on this bad eating habits to their children?
I’m talking about food here but there’s a lot more to good health than just food. But you get the idea?
You don’t want to die 6 months from now, do you?
Your body’s state of condition affects your mental and emotional state. Your health is mega important if you want to succeed in forex trading. If you don’t feel well, you will not trade properly…its simple as that. A successful forex trader is a healthy trader.
Here’s why you need to be a healthy trader:
- because you need to be at the top of your game
- because your memory need to be functioning at its best and the quicker you think and act, you will trade better and this will be reflected in the trade results you get.
- because fixing your health problem can be a very costly exercise…you lose time when are supposed to be trading and you can spend a lot of money fixing your health issues.
If your health is not in top shape, whether you realize or not, your trading will be affected. You won’t think as fast or as clearly as you should. You won’t be as sharp.You may get overly emotional.
When it comes to health, you need to be at the top your your game. Eat well, sleep well and at least do a little bit of exercise or morning or afternoon walks to stay in shape (if you are not in shape).
TRADE FOR THE LONG TERM-NOT JUST ONE DAY OR ONE WEEK
Many traders want to make so much money too fast! They want the money now, this week, this month. Its like they are in a trading competition with everybody else. So what they do is trying to take heaps of trades trying to make huge percentage gains in their trading account in record time. They want to make this huge profits in just one day or night of trading or even in just one week.
Can it be done? Yes! The leveraged nature of forex means you can achieve huge gains in such a short period of time. On the flip side, you can lose a lot in a short period of time. How do I know? I’ve done it myself.
You see, when I was starting out trading forex, I once took an live $8,000 trading account and made $20,000 within two weeks. I was over the moon. I did my little dance and sang ” We are the champions my friend“.
Guess what? I was cocky and confident. I thought to myself, “Heck! I can increase this account to $50,000 in a week!” So what did I do? The following week, I took that account to $0!
Yep…that’s what I did.
So I took two weeks to make 150% profit and it took a week to bring it to zero. Great! Man, it wasn’t great, I was deflated.
What’s the lesson here? Do you wan’t to know what I did to bring a $20,000 account to $0? Interested??? Yeah???
Ok, I’ll tell you, here’s what I did:
- when I was trading that account for the first 2 weeks, I was following everything according to plan. I wasn’t trading to get rich overnight. I stuck to my plan and traded the plan.
- But once I reached that $20,000 mark, something changed in my mind. I wanted more. To make more money, you either have to trade more or risk a lot more per trade. I did both. I traded a lot and risked a lot more in each trade.
- That strategy backfired. I exposed my account to huge trading risks. I was losing like $2000 to $3000 on just one trade where I was trading anywhere from 3-7 contracts per trade.
- when I was losing so much at each trade, I was angry so took revenge trades, took recovery trades to make up for my loses, but these trades where even more risky than those loss trades.
- The result? I blew my forex trading account!
So the lesson here is this:
- change your mindset from trying to make so much money quickly in a short period of time to start thinking long term
Why not think about being profitable in a month instead of thinking about profitable daily? When you think this way, your daily loses and wins seem insignificant because you are now working towards a long term goal or objective which is to be profitable in a month or a year.
Because when you think about being profitable everyday and even every week, you forget that trading is supposed to be for a very long time.
The thing is, you’ve got to continue to follow the system, follow the trading plan. On the daily or weekly perspective, it may look like you are not performing well, but that’s not important. You are in for the long term. Your goal should be that at the end of the month or the year, you are in profit.
Imagine you are on a boat and you are travelling from Fiji to Palau and the sea is rough…
A big wave starts to come your way and you see the nose rise and rise. Wow! You can see the horizon. (That’s how you feel when you make a profit). Its like your are on top of the world!
Then once the wave passes by, the nose dives into the waves and you think, “this is it, we are going to sink, I’m dead” as you see the next wave come and you are looking up at it. (These are the days you have trading loses…its seems that you are sinking).
Now, you can do that for every wave that comes and goes or you just enjoy the ride knowing that the engine is still running and every second the ship is getting you closer to your destination. Your destination is the long term outlook. Its there, you just need to get there and you are on your way. Whatever ups and downs on the way is just the path you have to take to get to your destination.
Now, lets back to trading…similarly, you trading account will have its ups and downs, no doubt about that. It happens to the billionaire trader to the one trading only a $50 trading account. It happens to all.
The key to surviving these “downs” is simply sticking to your plan. If you stick to your plan, you will not risk more, you will not take revenge trades, you will not over trade.
You must also survive the “ups”. That’s when you are making profits…you need to protect those profits. The moment when you become confidently cocky and arrogant, you can be reckless and lose all that money you’ve made in the good days.
So what really matters is the long term:
- will you be profitable at the end of the month?
- Will you be profitable at the end of the year?
- will you still be profitable after a year,even if you have 6 losing months during the year?
This is long term thinking.
What happens to your mind and behavior when you start thinking long term? Well, here’s what happens:
- there’s no pressure to trade everyday which means you trade less
- so when you trade less, you are only looking for the best trading setups to take
- you do not freak out for loses that you suffer during the day or the week as long as you stick to plan, you know eventually you will get back up.
- you will not take large risks in your trades because now you are thinking long term and you will protect your trading account from self sabotage like revenge trading.
- because of your long term outlook, you are not overly concerned about the day to day profits and loses of your trading account…you are more concerned about if you are going to be profitable in a year. That’s the kind of mentality to have. So that means, even if you can have losing months but for the whole year, you are profitable. That’s the way to look at it.
THE ONE THING THAT IS HOLDING YOU BACK-WHAT IS IT?
Look at this list below and then tell me:
- over trading & risking a lot per trade
- not following the rules of the trading system
- not sticking to the trading plan
- jumping from one trading system to the next
- revenge trades
- hunch trading
- lack of confidence
- fear of losing
- whatever others that I’ve not listed above.
If I were to ask you: what is the one thing, if you were to remove from your trading would really make you a better trader?
Just one thing…just one thing. What would it be?
There’s no doctor that can fix all the problems listed above because its all mental issues. You’ve got to find it yourself and change it.
Do an honest evaluation of yourself. Get out a notebook and write down in big capital letters what that one thing is.
Now you’ve identified the thing that holds you back…the big question is: what are you going to do about it?
Because…
SETTING CLEAR AND DEFINED TRADING GOALS
So now you have at least identified what’s your biggest issue in trading is, and its that one thing that is sabotaging your success to be a profitable forex trader. That is a problem, that is an issue that has to be solved, sorted. And solving it does not happen overnight, it takes time.
So how are you going to do it? Well, this is how…
You must set your trading goals.
Now its very easy to set goals but the greatest challenge is will you commit to reaching those goals, even if reaching those goals means removing that one thing that is holding you back?
You see, many people at the start of the year make new year’s resolutions…resolutions are in fact goals. And they say such this as:
- this year I’m going to stop smoking
- this year I’m getting fit
- this year I’m going to be a vegetarian
- and the list goes on.
But what may surprise you is that, a month or two later, they are back to their old lifestyle.
Why did they fail? Well, I’m my opinion, I think that they did not ” feel” their goal.
What do I mean by that? It simply means, whatever goal you set must really really mean something to you. Goals need to mean something and really be enjoyed when you reach them.
Have you ever set some goals in your life that you’ve achieved? And after you’ve achieved that goal, did you pinch yourself saying: ” I can’t believe how many years ago that I said I was going to do this and I didn’t have any clue how I was going to achieve it, or money or resources to do it but look! Now I’ve done it!”
When you set your trading goals, they have to be SMART.
When you set your goals, you need to be so clear about it in your mind and write it down. Why write it down? When you transfer your thought from your mind to paper, it becomes visual, it becomes specific and its is clearly defined.
You trading goals need to be measurable, attainable, and its relevant,have a time frame where you are going to achieve it (like 3 months, 6 months, 1year, 5 years etc) and placed in a spot where you you can always see it.
Setting trading goals like these will not work :I will make $50,000 in 3 months. Why? Because you can’t control the market and what it does. And setting monetary goals in trading like that forces you to be under pressure to reach your monetary goal and this will cause you to make bad trades.
SUMMARY
Its up to you now. Where do you want to be 6 months or one year from now? I can’t make that choice for you. Trading success comes when you think, act and cope mentally when you are placing and managing your trades.
You’ve got to understand that trading strategies are for dealing with uncertainty in the forex market. So maybe you may spend a huge amount of time focusing on trading strategies but really if you are disciplined, any profitable trading strategy will work.
So, here’s a bit of summary:
- don’t jump around between trading systems, stick to one, rain or sunshine and make it work for you or until you’ve traded it long enough to see how it works.
- maintain your trading edge
- a healthy trade is a successful trader.
- trade for the long term and remove the “get rich quick overnight” mentality.
- find the one thing that is sabotaging your trading and work to remove it.
- Set goals that are SMART.
Many profitable Trades To You!
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As they say: ” Stay the course and you will persevere. “