Forex Trading Survival Rules? | Forex Trading London

Have you got what it takes to SURVIVE in the markets whilst learning to trade Forex? Will you survive to trade another day? Or will you just become another of the 80 to 90% that fail? How practised are you in your Forex Trading Survival skills?

Whilst learning to trade Forex or any other financial market there are certain things that you must do and that need to be in place, if you are to stand a chance of surviving to trade another day. What are they?

Don’t trade live until you have learnt your strategy inside out in a Demo account and preferably to have Back Tested it hundreds if not thousands of times to prove that it is, and you can be, profitable.
When you do start trading in the Live markets make sure you start off in a Micro-account and trade cents per pip or a Spread Bet account that allows trading 10p a pip.
Make sure you employ strict Risk and Money Management, we always look for a Risk :Reward of at least 1:2 or better.
Make sure that the leverage on your account settings is around 30 to 50 max. 50 to 1 should be more than sufficient and this will also prevent you from over trading and having too many positions open. Just remember the Swiss National Bank debacle in January 2015, where those who were highly leveraged and over exposed were caught out.
Make sure that you do not take unplanned impulsive trades! This will kill your account. Never rely on ‘Hope’!
Make sure that your account is sufficiently Capitalised so that you are able to only risk 1-2% Max of your account balance on any one trade and no more than 5 trades open at any one time, but preferably less. We only ever risk 1% of our trading accounts on any single trade, which may have multiple positions included in that 1% and generally a maximum of 3 trades open at any one time which have yet to be moved to break even or better.
Your Trading Capital funds should be separate and in addition to your normal savings and investments as this is RISK capital, so that if you do have a disaster and lose your trading capital then it won’t affect your chosen lifestyle too much.
Always use a well placed Stop Loss beyond a Technical Level and keep to that 1% Risk Rule and alter your position sizes to match your trading Capital and the size of your stop loss and the number of positions you take on each trade.

Most people when they start to trade live will lose money and you have to persist until it all clicks and comes together and then you will start to make gains and recover the account. Even when profitable, there will be periods when nothing seems to go right, so your account needs to be able to absorb these periods as well, hence the need for good Risk & Money Management and to be sufficiently Capitalised.

As well as the above, the key things which will get you through this learning process are:

Practice, Practice, Practice!
Determination (stick ability) and Drive (motivation) to see you through this period of initial loss making until you get to that tipping point of profitability.
Gaining Experience as Experience counts – if you stick with it and learn from your mistakes you will get there, provided you have sufficient funds to carry on trading live.
Exercising Patience and Discipline in your trading and being able to wait for the good trade setups to come to you, never try and force the markets. Sometimes, No Trade, is the best trade. The markets will be there tomorrow and the next day!
Vision – if you have a clear vision of what you are trying to achieve and why, then this will keep you focussed through the ups and downs.
Make yourself accountable to someone for your trading results and network with like minded people.
Having a Forex Mentor should shorten the painful initial loss making period and provide a level of accountability.

Top Trading Tip: Make sure you have everything in place as listed above and the expectancy to lose money in the first instance, rather than make millions overnight. Always focus on how much money you are risking in preference to how much money you will make. Also try and have a clear vision of why you are trying to learn to trade. If you do all the above then you may stand a good chance of succeeding, as the odds against you will have been lessened significantly. So make sure you will survive and if you do need some help then we can do that.

Will you survive Learning to Trade Forex or will you need rescuing?