What helped you the most to be profitable?

What turned you a better trader and profitable?Turning points?

Books mostly. And some rather big live account losses.

having every closed trade, from entry to exit, plotted on the chart at all times.....h

I found Trading Wizards and New Trading Wizards really helped. Before that I was basically stabbing in the dark (less fun than it sounds).

In no particular order of priority:

1. A basic understanding of why price moves, and the chart patterns that it subsequently creates. In short, supply & demand, support & resistance (see here), candle ranges and (believe it or not) volume.

2. An understanding of correlation and currency strength, i.e. how to maximize the probability of finding the strongest, cleanest moves.

3. Understanding that many widely believed trading 'maxims' are in fact myths. I posted a list of them with brief supporting explanations, here.

They day when I started to place stop loss orders on all my trades was probably the most important day in my trading career.

trading simulator ....fastened my learning curve...was able to test most systems in FF. in a matter of months instead of years and found some concepts that really work also helped me refine my entries and where to set sl

Which trading simulator have you used, could you share?

A few things, main ones were clearing my charts of rubbish, and only using pivot zones along with price action.

Only using a set percentage risk per trade no matter what.

Being more picky on my setups.

probably the biggest one was moving to DAILY CHARTS, i couldnt stress enough that if you are losing or even breakeven down at the m5, m15, h1 etc then try the daily, really turned me around big style.

After a few wins and more losses admitting that I didn't really have a clue what I was doing and that maybe it was time to actually learn this shit.....or give up!

A nagging wife and a diminishing bank balance were prime motivators!

The single most profitable thing I learned?

Learning when NOT to trade!! Still working on it, but it can save you hundreds of pops

Using TPs larger than SLs.

blowing an account made me realize a lot of things, and one of the most helpfull thing I've learned is to stay calm and do things slow, when unsure do not trade for not trading means not losing

joining forex factory

this is my first post!

seriously though, i'd have to say never giving up. i'm not yet a profitable trader but if i gave up.. then i'll never know.

experience, reading, trying more than on broker ) hanging out with friends who used to trade .... ) its a whole thing !

Shorting without a signal (parabolic chart, new highs). Becomes intuitive after awhile.

The biggest thing for me was changing my forex broker after blowing my account because they only had set lots minimum of 10000units...an easy way to blow a mini account. after that, setting take profits at specified targets on all trades 20 pips...so what if it when on for 100 more pips, a profit is a profit.I rarely use stop losses because my target profit pips is so low. Once i get this constantly on all setups iĺl decide to increase it in increments. Also avoiding the times lower than 1 hour and trade in the direction that the daily is going, most of the times.
On a practice account start it with the amount you will really use in your live account. If you plan to go live with $250 and practice with $20000, you will find that you do great in practice but loose all your money using the same method when you go live, so if you going to go live with $250 practice with making $250 profitable, I would say for at least 6 months. if you cant do that, u will just loose all your money when u go live. Lastly learn how to use bollinger bands and basic charting patterns.

Please explain further.Your method.Thank you

Thank you guys for your inputs.
I opened live account 2k after demo trading 2weeks.Needless to say certain bad habits learned from demo hurt me badly.Mainly that I was risking way too much and after each loss kept doing the same only to get deeper in the hole.
My account shrunk to low 1.190 in 3 weeks and that's when I started really disciplining myself.Reduced my risk.Added unexpected benefit- less stress and more clarity.
I made 60 last 3 days which brings my account to 1.250. 2 of biggest wins were shorting EU on longer time frame.
Most of my earlier losses were due to 1m time frame.Now I realize how damaging that was.
So far I am using Stock+TDI as a guidance.I don't blindly follow but use it to confirm. I find Heken Ashi candles real helpful.
Here is how my chart looks like.
I am still confused about proper way to draw fibo lines.From which highs to which lows.Can someone explain this to me without referring babypips because their explanation is inadequate.Thank you.

the more I failed the closer I got to winning, easy to see now...

I dont think I could have been where I am today without doing the mistakes I did, even if I knew what I know today... the pain and the tears is the price we all profitable traders have to pay...