We all enter this business of trading for one reason and that is to be profitable. I started this journey about 4 years ago and have had my ups and downs but throughout all this have stayed positive and relentless in my pursuit of success. I did this by studying, reading, backtesting, forwardtesting, and many hours of watching charts. I can say that I have reached the point of being consistently profitable and that to those who are looking to get there you will with hard work and discipline. If there's one thing that I have learned by trading the markets is that there is no one way to reach your goal but many. The reason for this I feel is because there are so many entry points, ways to manage your trade, where you set your stoploss, where you take your profit, how much you risk, etc. You get the picture, there are so many variables to look at that its impossible to not have different outcomes. But even with all this chaos in trading there are solid practices that one can follow and they are the following. Most of these are cliches that you have heard through your learning process and one day as they start to make sense you will say "oh thats why they say that".
1. Trend is your friend. Staying with the trend will allow you to be on the side of the trade which has a higher probability to run in your direction.
2. Let your winners run. With the systems I trade this allows me to be profitable by making my winners larger than my losers.
3. Exercise proper money management. Never put your account in danger by allowing a few bad trades to bust your account or even damage it to a point where it will be difficult to bring it back.
4. Treat trading as a business. Keep a journal and document all your trades like a court reporter. Note your thoughts and reasons for doing what you did.
5. Demo trade. Demo trading will allow you to practice and apply your findings. Trust me if you can't demo trade profitably you won't trade live profitably.
6.Discipline. Practice consistantly on your discipline, remember we are not gambling we are taking trades based on probabilities. Yes sometimes we will lose but are goal is to either win more than we lose or when we win those winners are larger than our losers. Keep great discipline and only enter when your system and the market tell you to.
7. Multi Time Frame Analysis. Looking at multiple time frames allows you to better determine the trend and make decisions based on that trend.
These some of the most important facts to keep in mind when trading and building a system. Again, by no means is this the only way to be consistently profitable but I found this to work for me.
1. Trend is your friend. Staying with the trend will allow you to be on the side of the trade which has a higher probability to run in your direction.
2. Let your winners run. With the systems I trade this allows me to be profitable by making my winners larger than my losers.
3. Exercise proper money management. Never put your account in danger by allowing a few bad trades to bust your account or even damage it to a point where it will be difficult to bring it back.
4. Treat trading as a business. Keep a journal and document all your trades like a court reporter. Note your thoughts and reasons for doing what you did.
5. Demo trade. Demo trading will allow you to practice and apply your findings. Trust me if you can't demo trade profitably you won't trade live profitably.
6.Discipline. Practice consistantly on your discipline, remember we are not gambling we are taking trades based on probabilities. Yes sometimes we will lose but are goal is to either win more than we lose or when we win those winners are larger than our losers. Keep great discipline and only enter when your system and the market tell you to.
7. Multi Time Frame Analysis. Looking at multiple time frames allows you to better determine the trend and make decisions based on that trend.
These some of the most important facts to keep in mind when trading and building a system. Again, by no means is this the only way to be consistently profitable but I found this to work for me.