
daniel tay
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Currency trading success can be achieved by anyone, as everything about trading currencies can be specifically learned, by any trader wishing to put it in the time and effort to do so.
Trading currencies successfully is a combination of two factors:
Firstly, you need a successful trading method for long term currency trading success to predict market direction and these systems fall into two categories:
1. Fundamental analysis
A currency trader who makes trades based upon fundamental analysis, will look at the supply and demand situation relevant to the particular currency studied, and try and predict the impact of such factors as:
路 The health of the economy
路 Interest rates
路 Balance of payments
路 Employment
路 Trade deficit
路 Other factors
In today鈥檚 markets with the all-fundamental information available in seconds anywhere in the world, fundamental news is quickly reflected in the price.
Traders therefore, can have difficulty acting quickly enough to position themselves in the market in relation to breaking news.
In light of this, more traders looking for currency trading success are using a technical approach to the markets.
2. Technical analysis
Technical analysis is the study of a currency, based strictly on using only the price history of the currency.
Technical analysis uses no information about the currencies supply and demand situation - it simply focuses on price action.
The common belief is that the currency price reflects all the known information about the currency as it is immediately discounted in price action.
Technical analysis however does something more - it indirectly studies human psychology.
Since price patterns reflect shifts in human psychology, one can assume that certain patterns, cycles and trends, will repeat themselves again, as human nature has remained constant over time.
Technical analysis takes into account both the fundamentals and the market participants psychology and this gives us a simple equation:
All known fundamentals + human psychology = Price action
The fundamentalist studies the cause of market movement, while the technician studies the effect.
For currency trading success, you need to catch the longer-term trends that yield the big profits. The technical trader does not care how and why these trends develop; all they want to do is make money from them when they occur.
Look at any currency price chart over time and you will see long-term trends and many of them last for years.
The secret of currency trading success is using technical analysis to spot them.
Long Term or Short Term Trading
For long term currency-trading success, is it better to be a long term trader, rather than a short-term trader.
While traders can, and do make money with short-term methods of trading, the fact is, currencies trend longer term and these are the trends that yield the biggest profits.
The reason for this is obvious:
Currencies reflect the underlying health of the economy.
These cycles of expansion and contraction, tend to last for many months or even years and a long term position trader has huge profit potential, if they can lock into and hold these longer term trends.
The choice between long term, and short term trading is subjective, but generally the longer-term price trends tend to be easier to predict, and offer better risk / reward, so a long-term approach is the one to focus on.
Choosing a Trading Method
While there are many ways to achieve currency-trading success, all methods have the following salient points in common:
1. Simplicity
Most of the best trading systems are simple.
There is no correlation between how complicated a strategy is and how successful it will be.
In fact, the simpler a system the more likely it is to be robust in the face of changing market conditions.
Some of the most successful systems of all time have been extremely simple and you don鈥檛 need much mathematical knowledge to understand them.
2. Liquidate Losers Quickly and Run Big Profits:
The basis of any successful trading systems that deals in leveraged products is:
You need to be able to run the big profitable trends and exit losers quickly.
All good trading methods do this, and use strict money management rules, to ensure preservation of equity.
3. Understand your Method
This may sound obvious, but you need to understand your trading method, and the logic behind it, so you can execute it with confidence and discipline.
4. The Importance of Discipline
Currency trading success is rooted in a successful method applied with discipline. This means a trader has a method and follows it. This however is much harder in practice than many traders believe.
When money is on the line all traders emotions come into play and unless they can maintain discipline, currency-trading success will elude them.
Let's look at some ways to maintain self-control and discipline when making trading decisions:
Firstly, you must be confident in your trading method. You should know exactly what you are going to do:
路 When a signal indicates that you should enter a trade
路 When a signal tells you to exit
You must execute your trading method in a disciplined fashion; if you don鈥檛, you won鈥檛 have a method in the first place!
Secondly, and perhaps the best way to maintain self-control and discipline, is to feel confident in your trading method from the start.
If you have confidence when you execute your trades, you will "know" that over time they will be successful - even if you are suffering a string of short-term losses.
You must execute the buy and sell signals with confidence - these signals will lead to currency trading success in the long run, as you rigidly adhere to your method.
You need to stick with your method through good and bad times, and confidence in the underlying logic, will help you remain disciplined.
The more disciplined you are in trading, the more profits you will make longer term.
You should not underestimate the need for discipline, if you want long-term currency trading success.
If you read Jack Shwager鈥檚 Market Wizards, and the New Market Wizards, where he interviews the top traders of all time, you will see how all of them place an influence on discipline.
Currency trading success relies on a number of factors and these are:
Robust trading method + discipline = currency trading success
Remember, when trading any method, it will be of little use to you, unless you have confidence in it and can execute it with discipline.
There are a number of variables involved in longer-term currency trading success and the above are the salient points to keep in mind when deciding how to trade currencies.
However you can compress your learning curve by choosing the right platform to trade currencies to reduce your margin of error. Go to http://tinyurl.com/27tymz and check it out! Cheers! Daniel Tay (danieltayhh@gmail.com) |