What is Your Currency Trading Strategy?

Every new forex trader hopes they will quickly find the magic currency trading strategy that will make them rich overnight. In their desperate search to make money fast, newbies tend to believe that every new strategy they encounter is the one that will make them a millionaire, so they immediately ditch whatever they were doing to follow the next new system. They never learn to apply any system profitably or even sort out the good systems from the bad. Inevitably they finish up by taking a loss.

Skipping around from course to course without delving deeply into any of them is, of course, is a surefire recipe for failure. So let’s take another look and see if we can construct a recipe for success.

Brace yourself for a reality check: there is no perfect forex system – gasp! No set of instructions to follow that will guarantee you make millions. What works in practice is sound analysis that enables you to spot a trend and then open an order to back it.

This is very different from trying to predict the market. If you trade on predictions you are effectively gambling on which way the market will jump. If you follow trends, you are waiting until a movement is clearly established before opening an order.

Of course you need to be sure that it is a solid trend and not just a momentary fluctuation that will soon go the other way. That is where the analysis comes in. Use indicators to give you a clear idea of whether the market is oversold or overbought so that when you see a movement in the right direction you can be fairly sure it will continue that way for long enough for you to profit from it.

This is the first step in setting up your successful currency trading strategy – identifying the emerging trend. It is something that will become easier with experience. In order to minimize your losses, you probably want to gain that experience in a demo account.

The next step needs to be taken as soon as you have entered the market, and it involves setting up a stop order. This is an order that will be triggered if the price goes against you and it prevents you taking a large loss. Never hang on to a losing order hoping that the movement will reverse. It probably will not, and you could be wiped out waiting. So get out, then take a good look at what went wrong. You should be glad to have losses like this in the beginning because you can learn a lot more from a mistake than from a winning trade.

Where to set your stop can vary according to your system and the risk that you are prepared to take, but 10% is a good working figure to start with. If you find that your stop is being triggered too often, move it out. Equally if you find that a shorter stop would have saved you money almost every time without being triggered by random fluctuations, you can move it in a little.

Does that sound too simple? Remember, the secret is not in the strategy itself but in how you implement it. That’s why it is pointless to hop from system to system. Develop your trading techniques and discipline, and you will soon be in a position to see that a successful currency trading strategy is very simple indeed.

When you know WHEN and WHERE the best times and places are to place your forex trades, there’s no need to waste your day (and your life) fumbling around with chart after chart.