When Not To Trade….

Whatever type of Trader you are, there are some periods or points in your life when it probably isn’t in your best interest to trade and I’m not referring to unpredictable economic events such as FOMC and NFP etc or non-favoured days of the week or month.

Profitable trading nearly always relies on thorough market analysis and timing and being in the right mind set, rested, fit and alert to all the possibilities and prepared to have the courage of your own conviction to take the trades that you see.

Over the years I have learnt that there are definitely times in your life when it isn’t in your own interest to be trading and that isn’t just the likely unprofitable outcome but also in terms of one’s relationships and mind set.

Such events are:

Continue Reading

Do You Hope & Pray?

When learning to trade it is easy to get seduced into making impulsive unplanned trades with no Trade Plan or trying to force the markets into giving you some profit when the market isn’t ready to give it to you. Plus, of course, there is the issue of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) and Revenge Trading or trading with so much open Risk that you are near to blowing up your trading account! On top of all that is the likelihood that you are not using a Stop Loss All the above can lead you to being in a losing position and starting to stress, worry, sweat, swear and ‘Hoping’ and ‘Praying’ that the market will turn around and get you back to a Break Even or better position.

Continue reading

Do The Prep – Get The Pay Back

One of the key elements to being a successful discretionary swing trader is ‘Preparation’.  I’ve written about this to some extent before and covered the 5 or 6Ps.  The best trades I have had, have all been pre-planned.  Thorough preparation before taking any trade, particularly swing trades, tends to pay off handsomely.  This entails the following: Continue reading

The 4 Cs..

In previous posts on my Blog I have written about the the 4 Ms and the 5 or 6 Ps.  I thought it about time I added the 4 Cs!  The 4 Cs came about through Swing Trading.  When I am looking for Swing Trades I use Multi-Time Frame Analysis (MTFA) in my trade planning. People have asked me in the past why I ‘laboriously’ look at all the different time frame charts when looking for and planning a trade, rather than stick to a single time frame.  Here is why.. Continue reading

Forex Trading – The Essentials

Forex Trading Essentials - www.ForexTradingLondon.comWhilst doing some Housekeeping in my email account, I came across and was reminded of an email I had sent as a reply to a prospective student, who unfortunately could not afford our Personal Mentorship Programme (PMP) lessons.  In my reply I wanted to be helpful, so I tried to summarise the Key areas that he should work on until he was in such a position to be able to take advantage of our PMP.   Here is the main body of the email, with a few additional tweeks, containing what I suggested:

‘No problem, the key things you need to concentrate on are: Continue reading

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

Happy Christmas from Forex Trading London

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

Firstly our very best wishes to you and your familes at this Christmas time and thank you for reading our Blog posts and for following our Forex Trading Success Formula, which has plenty more to come in the New Year.  As the trading year draws to a close, it is a good time to take stock and analyse how you have done, what you have achieved and what could be improved upon in the coming year.  If you can spend some time reflecting on your trading year you should be able to: Continue reading

Successful Trading Is Managing Uncertainty

When you are trading the ‘Hard Right Edge’ of the chart on whatever timeframe, you must always try to ‘Manage Uncertainty’.  What do I mean and how do you do you that?

gbpusd 4hr pot bear bat - 10 June 2015 - mwWhen you enter a trade, from that point onwards you do not know for sure what the market will do next and so all you can do is to try and manage that uncertainty by doing the following: Continue reading

The Importance Of Context

When you plan and take your next trade, please ask yourself this question:

‘Do I know the Context of this trade?’

Knowing the Context of a trade is an important part of planning any trade.  Knowing the Context means:

  • Is this a Counter-Trend or Trend Trade and on which Time Frame?
  • Is it a short term or longer term trade?
  • How many reasons are there to take the trade?
  • Is this a Lower Time Frame entry into a Higher Time Frame Setup?
    • If so has the Higher Time Frame setup triggered yet?

Knowing the Context for your trade can give you a Bias and therefore an edge, but how do you do this in practice?

Continue reading

Forex Trading Survival Rules

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?

Forex Trading Survival Rules - www.ForexTradingLondon.comWhilst 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?
Continue reading

Happy New Year – Turning Resolutions into Reality!

So Christmas is over and the New Year has started and you’ve made your New Year’s Resolution:

‘I’m going to learn how to trade Forex!’

Then what? If, like many others, you are psyched up and raring to go but don’t know where and how to make that resolution become a reality, then stick with me and read on:

Firstly, you might want to tweak your resolution and add ‘and be consistently profitable’ on to the end, because you no doubt are doing this to make money.

Or you may have been trading for a while but are struggling to become consistently profitable, well the following may also apply to you too …

Around 90% of people fail in their attempt to become consistently profitable Forex traders for a myriad of reasons, please don’t let that be you!  Also, you will probably need to temper your expectations regarding time scales to achieve your goal, as it may take anything from a year to as many as 3 years or so, to really make the grade.  One way to fast track your Forex Training is to get yourself a good Forex Mentor, someone who is a successful Forex trader and also an honest straight talking teacher and mentor, they do exist! This will cost, but it will be money well spent, plus you will get to see what they are trading too.

The aim of ‘Learning to trade’ is laudable but encompasses a myriad of things so the best approach is to be able to break it down into Bite Size chunks that can be tackled bit by bit.

The key elements to learning how to become a consistently profitable Forex trader are: Continue reading