Typical backround of a successful Forex trader?

Just like the title suggests... What is the typical backround of the successful Forex trader - particularly in education and maybe work experiance? What educational studies and/or other experiances lead up to someone being a successful Forex trader?


Thanks.

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check here

http://www.forexfactory.com/forexfor...t=educationks.[/quote]

Simple..I will only begin to believe if he/she can string together 5 live trade calls with a minimum of RR greater than 2x with at least three hits out of five. RR is derived from the stop used.
As this is a easy and primitive method of background check any successful trader should be able do this quite easily.

GS

I will throw in my inputs of various traits which I feel a successful trader might possess. Be in FX, stocks, commodities etc.

Grit & Determination
Number 1 on my list is determination, the "never say die" attitude. This is true for other areas outside of trading. A good trader will never give up even when faced with major setbacks.

Competitiveness
Similar to an athlete who trains day and night to excel in his chosen sport. A trader must be competitive. Researching, studying, analysing, planning for hours every day for that 1 good trade.
You will hear that an athlete shouldn't settle for second best. Why should a trader settle for being breakeven standard?

Patience
Success isn't built overnight. It may take months, years, or decades to be successful. Take Colonel Sanders of Kentucky Friend Chicken for example. After failing for nearly his entire life, he finally opened the KFC franchise at 64 years old. This ties in with point number 1, if he gave up after failing a few times, there may not be a KFC at all! Similarly, a good trader need patience to hone his trading. Like a kung-fu fighter practicing the simple roundhouse kick a million times in the mountains... Patience is a virtue.

Discipline
Admit it... We all placed a trade just because we were itching for some action once before. One must have the discipline to abstain from hitting that buy/sell button until we have our signal/reason! Also, when faced with a loss. DO NOT DOUBLE DOWN! Trust you and your system/strategy. If there is truely an edge, you will eventually come up on top. The legendary chinese general once said: "Sometimes we need to lose the small battles to win the war"

Intellect
Although it is not necessary to have an IQ of 200, a good trader should possess some level of intelligence. Okay you have a profitable system. But you don't know the logic behind the system, what types of market conditions it is excels in and what market conditions it will totally crash in. What if youre caught in a period of prolonged underperformance? Is it your system? Or is it the markets? This will assist you in avoiding throwing away your system just because you got caught with 6 months of poor performance!

Awareness & Common Sense
Will you race in a car when you know the brakes are faulty? No? Then why trade a currency whose underlying country is in a mess?
Its probably okay if you trades during news releases such as GDP, inflation etc. But unless you know your sh*t, steer clear of trading the US dollar during general elections! And if you do trade it, for heavens sake please practice safe risk management! Set your stop loss or manage your position sizing accordingly. It's not worth getting margin called!
All this ties down to awareness of current affairs as well as the common sense to take neccessay steps to mitigate unwanted risks. Always do your due diligence and study the economic/political climate before placing your trade.


Due Dilligence
Oh you backtested your strategy eh? Sorry to say backtesting isn't enough. Markets can and will change. That system that you backtested all the way back to 1989 is probably overfitted. And will probably suffer in the field. Go read up on some model validation methods. The simplest of which is to simply split your data into 70% training set and 30% test set. Devise, tune and optimize your strategy on the training set. And try it out on the test set. If a highly profitable system suddenly becomes unprofitable, theres a high chance your system has overfitted the test set. Its back to the drawing board!
Of course all this takes some serious time and effort (unless you're some master programmer or something). That is why it is called due diligence: you need to ensure that you even have an edge!


That should be all for me

This^^^^^

education wise...

mathematics
music
engineering
finance

Nothing in terms of specific educational background. Much depends on being a master of oneself and a master of the chosen trading techniques and strategies.

KP

I would read a journey into the typical background of a successful Forex trader for dummies, I believe they are releasing a fifth edition of the book. give it a read, enjoy.

I feel all successful traders key trait is patience. Also majority traders I know are big gamblers including myself lol

traders with no college education are the best ones.

in the process still being a trader looking for a strategy as well. Trader himself cannot be sure he has "Grit & Determination or Competitiveness or Patience or something". It was only when I was really a successful trader that I understood. @synicz's 7 criteria is also a way for me to remember.

How would anyone know here...there probably isn't one successful trader here who makes money for extended period of time...lol

I like your mantra. Overthinking and specialized training will not help in Forex. You are or you are not. You execute with your edge. You are a trader or not. You find your edge and you execute. There is no time to think about what may happen in forex and the future. No college degree will teach you that. Having too, much knowledge about the forex market may be a pitfall.
Cheers.

This is true.

Typical background of a successful Forex trader?

I know a few, they all have life time career in large banks.

Grit & Determination

Competitiveness

Patience

Discipline

Intellect

Awareness & Common Sense

Due Dilligence

I would add to your list :
Left Field Thinking. regarded as being outside the mainstream; unconventional thinking.

Maybe one typical successful trader is already handling big money in account trading and work in the bank as a trader,
understand with the market news and take smart action in every single order fully discipline