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What Makes a Good Forex Trader?
In this video:
00:24 – Characteristics of a good Forex trader
01:08 – Results from trading and travelling
01:56 – The Person, the Trader
02:31 – The amount of work behind the scenes
03:05 – What you need to become a good trader
05:15 – Don’t be scared to take a trade
05:58 – Forget the money, focus on the percentages
06:58 – Contact me if you have any questions
So you want to become a forex trader, but what makes a really good forex trader? Let’s discuss that and more right now.
Hey traders, Andrew Mitchem here from the Forex Trading Coach with video and podcast number 335.
Characteristics of a good Forex trader
And I want to give you some information about what makes not just an ordinary trader, but what makes a really, really good forex trader. What characteristics do they have that other traders don’t have? Because everybody has the dream when they start trading of flashy, fast cars, or beaches, or travelling, and all those kind of things. And look, it can be done because it doesn’t matter whether you want to be trading for the enjoyment of it, for the passive income, or for a full time career because you hate your job. It doesn’t really matter, any of those, because there’s characteristics that make good traders and bad traders.
Results from trading and travelling
And if you’ve been following me over the last few months, you would know that in July I had a family holiday, or vacation, if you’re in the U.S., over to the U.K. and Europe, and in that time I traded for 10 to 20 minutes once a day, took the trades that I placed on my membership site, and we made over 6% in the three weeks I was away and made another 6% in the two weeks that I got back. If you watched my video and podcast from last week, you’d know that we made plus 7.4% in the week on the membership site, all with low risk, by the way. And this week, we’re up by 1.7%. So it can be done, and the trades are there, the setting up; everything’s all able to make your money. That’s not the difficult part.
Results from trading and travelling
The difficult part really is about the person behind the scenes, the trader. You see, we all see sports people or musicians, people that we idolise, and we see them … whether you watch tennis or soccer or cricket, whatever it might be, or whether you watch your favourite band, your guitar player, your drummer, and we will idolise them. We all think, “Wow, wouldn’t it be awesome to be like them,” or, “I can be like them. Wouldn’t it be amazing to be up on stage playing guitar or be the lead singer and everybody just idolising you?”
The amount of work behind the scenes
The problem is, is that we fail to recognise all the work that goes into their lives, get them to have those skills to get to that stage where they are so good. And it’s a big failing, I suppose, that we see the instant answer everywhere with modern technology and social media, et cetera. And if you’re the sort of person that gets excited by the next shiny object, then trading really is not for you because it’s likely that you’re not going to end up having the right characteristics.
What you need to become a good trader
Now what you do need to be a good trader is a number of things, and I’ve made a list of them here, in no particular order. I put strict. You have to be strict. You have to be strict with your strategy and sticking to it. You have to be disciplined of trading sort of when your strategy suggests you need to be trading, and keep doing it. You can’t go, “Oh, yesterday I had a terrible day, I’m not going to bother trading today.” If the trades are there, you take the trades. You’ve got to be able to study. Like the sportsman, like the musician, none of this comes instantly. None of it’s like they took up singing lessons two weeks ago and now they’re on stage as a superstar. That’s not how it works. Trading’s no different. You have to study, you have to put the time in up front.
Consistency. You have to be consistent. You’d notice that the free information that I posted on my website, it’s there consistently everyday at consistently the same time. You’ll notice that these 335 videos that I have now consistently made on the same day and I notify you about them consistently on the Monday at the beginning of each next week. When I place my daily trades, it’s consistently on my membership site; it’s been for the last 10 years. It doesn’t matter where I am in the world, they are there every day. So consistency is very, very important.
There’s other things like that: the low risk side of it, the high reward, the risk, that’s the trading side of it. But there’s lots of other things about the characteristics. Don’t be too emotional. Sure, it’s great to celebrate great trades. 7.4% I had last week, I celebrated it. I talked about it on the video, but it’s not like this complete and utter: “Woo-hoo, let’s go stupid the next week.” The same is you have a losing trades or losing weeks; yeah, it’s not great. No one likes it, but don’t get too doom and gloom about it and then all of a sudden you’re just throwing your toys out of the cart because trading’s suddenly this horrible thing that’s against you. You cannot have those ranges in emotions to be a good trader; it needs to be slow and consistent and steady. To be honest, good trading’s actually quite boring and it needs to be that in order to keep trading well.
Don’t be scared to take a trade
Other things that I mentioned there about not being scared; don’t be scared of placing trades. I knew a guy once who was a fantastic theorist, he understood all the theories of trading far more than I’m ever going to know. But you know what? He couldn’t take a trade. He actually was scared to take a trade. He was actually scared to take a trade on demo, let alone live account. But this guy was an absolute genius in terms of understanding the markets. You also need to respect the markets, and just don’t expect that last week I made 7.4%, this week I’m going to go silly and I’m going to suddenly double my account. You have to respect the markets, the different conditions, et cetera, like that.
Forget the money, focus on the percentages
And also the last thing I want to mention is don’t look at the dollars or the pounds or the yen, whatever your currency. Forget that. Look at the risk that you’re taking and the gain that you’re making as a percentage, because a lot of people go, “Hey Andrew, it’s all really good for you saying you made 7.4%, but if I made 7.4% on $1,000, it’s pointless.”
That is very, very wrong. You shouldn’t look at trading that way. If you can make 7.4%, you can make it on $1,000 or $10,000 or $100,000 or $1 million; it does not matter. It’s still the ability to have those profitable trades with the low risk. So forget the monetary gain for now, especially if you’re new or you’ve got a relatively small account size. Forget that that’s not … The account size today doesn’t matter. It’s having the ability to learn how to trade is what matters. But also the characteristics, the discipline to be able to do it properly. And that’s what makes the difference between an ordinary trader and a very, very good trader.
Contact me if you have any questions
So I hope that helps. Anything you need me to discuss on future videos and podcasts just like this one, drop me an email, [email protected], and I’ll see you at this time next week. Bye for now.
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