How To Be Part Of Big Moves In The Forex Market.

How often do you see big moves in the market like we have seen recently, but you never find yourself profiting much from them? How often do you close a trade out prematurely just because it’s gone against you a bit and you ‘freaked out’ because you thought it would result in a bigger loss?

Making ‘fast money’ and building a small account into a large one, aren’t things that just ‘happen’ to successful traders. As any consistently profitable trader will admit, it takes a consistent conscious effort to hit big winners in the market. The inevitable retracements and ‘whip saws’ that hit a market are events that shake out most amateur and inexperienced traders. The mental discipline required to simply ‘do nothing’ after you enter a trade, and instead let the market do the ‘work’, is something that not many traders possess. It’s not acquired overnight, but it is something that you can develop and grow over time.

Here are some tips on how you can give yourself a better shot at catching big moves in the market…

The psychology of holding a trade.

A simple fact of trading is that if you want to make a lot of money, you’ve got to have the mental fortitude to hold trades for longer than you might be comfortable with. The irony of trading is that to make money ‘fast’ and build your account up, you’ve got to have patience, and to be clear, I’m not talking about your average daily-life type of ‘patience’. What I’m talking about here is an iron-clad, bullet-proof, bad-ass type of patience that 90 to 95% of the world’s population simply doesn’t possess.

Think about this for a minute…

Most traders do very well on a demo account before they go live. Think back to when you were on demo, or maybe you’re on demo right now. I’m willing to bet you’re holding trades for a few days or a few weeks even, and you’re not interfering with them very much. Maybe you’ve even entered a demo trade and not checked it for a week because you were too busy at work, then when you did check it again you were up 20 or 30%, this is not uncommon.

On a demo account, traders tend to be less-involved with their trades because they simply don’t care that much since there’s no real money on the line. The end result is that they stick with their original trade idea most of the time. This is the main reason why people tend to do very well on a demo account.

Thus, traders often do very well on demo for the reasons just discussed, then they get all psyched up to start trading live and open a live account. However, what happens most of the time, is that traders become far more involved with their live trading account, simply because there’s now something at stake; real money. This over-involvement leads to the trader changing their mind on trades, jumping in and out of the market with high frequency, second-guessing themselves, and a whole host of other trading mistakes. The end result is that they don’t catch any big moves in the market, and they will eventually probably lose money.

The point is this; the psychology of holding a trade is a very tricky thing. To succeed on a live account, you need to do what you did on demo; which is basically just “less”. It’s hard to achieve, since real money is on the line, but if you really want to catch big moves in the market and make big money, you’re going to have figure out a way to ‘sit on your hands’ more often when trading a live account.

The power of ‘doing nothing’

Trading might be the world’s most rigorous test of one’s mental discipline and strength. In the face of a trade that’s moving against you and in negative territory, how will you react? Conversely, in the face of a trade that is up a nice profit, but has not yet hit your target, how will you react? The most difficult thing to do in each of these situations is also the most profitable thing to do over the long-run; NOTHING.

Closing out a trade for a small loss, before it hits your stop loss, is an example of letting fear control you, and doing so directly limits your profit potential because you’re not giving the trade proper time to play out and you’re also voluntarily taking a loss.

Closing out a profitable trade too soon can also be detrimental to your overall trading success. If you have pre-defined your profit target or profit taking / exit strategy before entering the trade, you will only be doing yourself a disservice most of the time by not sticking with that exit strategy.

Remember: Anything you predefine, before entering a trade, is going to be more logical and objective, and thus profitable over the long-run, than any decision you make whilst in a live trade, under the influence of your hard-earned money being at risk.

The POWER of simply sitting on your hands and doing absolutely nothing whilst in a live trade, cannot be over-stated. Your true power and advantage as a retail trader, lies in your ability to remain patient and in control of your behavior in the market.

Here are some tips to help you stick with your original call / trade which will help you catch bigger moves in the market:

• Don’t look at low time frame charts because even small / meaningless daily chart retraces will make you nervous and shake you out if you’re fixated on them on small time frames.

• Learn to trust your trade and trust your gut. If you don’t learn trust to your trade decisions and see them through, you will never make consistent money over the long-run in the market.

• Don’t over complicate your trading. Trade a simple method like price action trading method and stick to a simple trade management plan, which can be as simple as ‘set and forget’.

• Closing trades early guarantees a loss, don’t ever guarantee yourself a loss in the market unless you really have to! Stick with your original call most of the time unless the price action is clearly changing against your original position. About 90% of the time the best decision is to simply let the market do the ‘work’ and let the trade play out with little to no involvement on your part.

Catching big moves in the market, building your trading account from a small one into a big one and becoming a successful long-term trader are all things that can only happen if you are willing to simply ‘do nothing’ most of the time as your trades play out. So, you need to ask yourself, are you ready to ‘do nothing’, or are you going to over-complicate your trading, over-involve yourself in it and lose money and time as a result?