Many people say retail traders lose money. Actually the reason is because retail traders do not have the time to practice as they are busy working or doing other things or no proper environment to trade. But they cannot quit their jobs. Otherwise, they will have to worry about income. Institutional traders are different, they are able to focus and practicing throughout the day in an equipped environment. There is also guidance in the trading office. Most retail traders do not have a good mentor. However, there is a solution for trading problems and ways to make money in Forex trading is to keep practicing and back testing your strategy until you become very seasoned before opening a live account and this will take a few years.
Retail traders want to succeed fast but trading requires a lot of relevant experience. For example, searching some proven and suitable strategy, understanding the trade rules, analysing the charts from left to right and managing the emotions etc. If we do not have a good mentor, we have to be resilient and solve the problems ourselves. The charts will provide the answers.
Besides demo trading on current charts, our daily homework is to practice on the past 5 years charts about 2 hours each day. Each pair of currency works differently. Look for common patterns based on trade rules. For example; support, resistance, trend lines, divergence, Fibonacci, Elliot waves counting, price action, doji, engulfing candlesticks, certain big news impact, continuous trends, genuine breakout and false breakout etc. Keep improving by practicing on your demo account until achieving profitable results consistently.
Serious back testing includes looking for repeated profitable patterns on your charts, these are considered high probability winning trades and avoid repeated false signal patterns. While you are doing homework, try not to be overwhelmed. Take a break when necessary. It is normal that new patterns will come out and during some months, there will be no profits.
Intuition is developed after the brain is able to identity the repeated patterns. It is important to ensure your strategy being tested for a long period of time and you should memorize all these familiar patterns for your real time trading. Try to write down the notes or draw patterns on your notebook. It is a lot easier to make money and less stress to trade your live account compared to anyone who starts to trade after back testing for a few months only.
ConclusionIdeally, it is better to practice on a demo account for 4 years before opening a live account. Otherwise, continue to use a demo account until you have mastered the skills.
A reasonable size of capital is required for profitable live trading. Retail traders have to save a big sum of money in order to keep the judgement stay objective. Traders should not worry about money. After you have accumulated a lot of experience in trading, there is less emotions in psychology and profits will come.
Be happy and carefree and be calm – do not let environment, illness, work stress, family, financial issues or mood swings affect you. It is important to set your priority and learn to control your emotions.
Be patient to learn from scratch and be successful at the end.
