How to be consistently profitable... but I bet you won't do it

We are talking about CONSISTENTLY profitable, therefore your question is irrelevant.

So, are you teaching trading courses? I don't want to offend, but you know there is a saying "He who can does; he who cannot, teaches.". There are too many bullshits on FF already.

Putting it all together: Make a WRITTEN trading plan
So by now you have stopped the bleeding and begun an introspective approach to YOUR reactions and thinking process. You are tracking the results of your decisions in a spreadsheet and now can directly correlate your decisions to actual results. In addition I would imagine that you are making notes in your journal about what you believe the market does and doesn't do. And how you seem to respond to the various conditions.

You now have the basis to formulate some hypotheses and and test them. This process is very much like the scientific process. (1) Make and observation (2) formulate an hypothesis (3) Test your hypothesis, (4) observe the results...these observations will eventually lead you back to another round starting with #1. And so it will go until you actually formulate a market belief that works for you.

Once you do...WRITE IT DOWN. Write this belief that you have now proven to yourself and then formulate a written plan around how you will use that to trade with. If you believe that your market trends more often than it ranges...write down how you intend to take advantage of that.

This is your strategy: The overall plan or objective to use your market beliefs to your advantage.

Then you will need to move on to specifics about this strategy. This will be your Tactics. You must be as specific as possible. It is far more than saying I will enter when xyz condition exists...and exit when abc condition exists. It involves HOW you will recognize these conditions, how (in detail) they are defined, and what you must see to prompt any action on your part.

Once you have your strategy and tactics worked out. TRADE these in a demo environment for a minimum of 100 trades. Yes you are starting over and testing your hypothesis. For each action you with you modify or develop you must test it and gather data. Then go over that data once it is completed, and make new observations, correlate those to you decision making and thinking process and make adjustments...then gear up and start again.

The process is long...tedious...and at time frustrating. You MUST make the adjustments and trade them in a demo environment until you have each and every little piece of your trading methodology in place and can comfortably execute it without any qualms (doubts) about whether you are following your plan.

Once this plan is in place you will see it is consistently making money...in a demo environment. Now you have an idea of how far your chosen market moves against you and where you should place your stops...now you have a good idea of what kind of profit you can expect and then balance these two aspect for form a cogent trading plan. Keep in mind...each little tweek or adjustment needs yet another 100 demo trades to gather enough data to evaluate its effectiveness.

I can confidently say the following about this process: You will quickly find that it is NOT the markets you are evaluating. It is yourself. You are keeping notes on how YOU do YOUR business and your unique way of seeing the market flow. This is unique to YOU and no matter where you look no one will be able to do it better than you do. As you improve your technique you WILL become more atuned to yourself and what you are seeing, feeling, and doing. You will know with very little doubt what to expect with each and every action you take...AND if your expectation is not realized (ie the market doesn't cooperate) you will know to close that position quickly and efficiently thereby limiting any further risk or preserving some profit (how ever small you think it might be).

This process is not quick but it is efficient. And if you can discipline yourself to follow it, you will find this kind of self control will extend to every part of your life. You will become acutely aware of how YOU interact with your world...your world view will become very clear to you and that clarity will pass back through to your trading. Others will ask, "what happened to you?" And you will posses the ability to pull money out of the market, seemingly at will.

As soon as you find yourself in this condition...you can hold your head up high and say, "I trade for a living." I would ask that you then try and pass on this process...your unique process for improving your trading to someone you deem might benefit. Ignore the "geniuses" that tell you that if you are teaching its because you don't know or can't do it yourself. Help some individual who you think might benefit...

Well you have! Thanks to "geniuses" like you, many who actually have a wealth of knowledge and ability won't come into these forums because the ignorant ramblings of the uneducated or trolls makes one ask the question, "Why am I doing this for free?"

I have tried to pass on what I think is valuable information and in fact information which others have paid literally thousands of dollars for specifics on this kind of process. You can chose to ignore it...that's fine...but why devote YOUR valuable time belittling others simply because you don't feel the information is useful? You can't use or don't think this information is worthwhile...fine move on...and stop trolling!!

Thanks to comments like the above "genius" and others I have recieved via PM...this is very likely my last post here on FF...I think this forum is a great tool for self and trading improvement. It has been a long journey for me but I was hopeful that perhaps someone might benefit from my point of view - freely given. But as I stated in the title of this thread...

Yes!! You can be consistently profitable...but you probably won't do it. OK...I'm done. You may now continue with your pedantic "blind leading the blind" mentality...best of luck

I fully understand how you feel DP. At least you can take comfort that your threads can help someone out there. Good job!

what bullshit is this actually? the true saying is: the ability to teach is the true sign of knowledge. (Aristotle).
you have no idea of things and even worse, you are destructive.

@DonPato thanks for an insightful and highly useful thread.
The trolls don’t realize the significant depth you have detailed in here, which takes a career worth of time to grasp...many will never reach, let alone be able to share it in a simple and effective way.

Although I’m new to FF, this is a thread I will refer back to and send others to.
Thanks for your effort.

Many thanks for starting this thread . You have made so many points that i will refer to from now on.

Thanks for posting this.

i have learnt something from you post.

Sorry to see you go. Don't let the desire to help burn out from the people with the can't do attitude. Agreed, some brains are set in stone but others, like mine, are ready to hear your wisdom.

PM me if you would like to share but not here

Man your such a leecher. You are providing zero value to this thread other than negativity which is a sign of a failing trader in of itself. You sir have no right to accuse others when your very behaviour is a give away to what you are accusing others for.

Regarding DonPato, your logic is a give away you are incapable to trade. You make the logical fallacy of thinking all apples are fruits then conclude that all fruits must be apples. Just because there are "gurus" out there that don't or can't trade and just sell courses to the newbies don't mean all teachers can't or doesn't trade. I can name you a few teachers throughout history in trading and others in their respective fields that preach what they teach.
What Don is sharing here is very logical and a real mythology and an approach to trading the markets. If you have not been so lazy and actually took the time to research and learn, not just from Don because Don has not invest this he is someone that learned what real trading is all about, you will start to understand the value in what he is doing. I am grateful and I told him this in a PM I believe because he and @HiddenGap are providing so much value and people like you rather than research they like to take the lazy route and attack because it is the easy road, just like 95% of failing traders do, believe illogical things about the market or what trading actually is and not do any real research and therefor lose their hard earn money or their live saving then blame others and pull down others to feel good about themselves and not take responsibility. This is another sign you are incaptable to trade and this business is just not for you. Laziness and not willing to research, is the route to doom.

@DonPato is doing this from the kindness of his heart. There is nothing wrong with asking for compensation in exchange for his time and experience, I would do the same. Or teach. But when he started seeing ungratefulnes from others this is the moment where he considered if what he is doing is worth it anymore. Forexfactory is like this, a very toxic place where trolls and loser traders strive and want to drag anyone down because they see success of others as a personal attack because they feel inadequate and as a hit to their ego. They don't want to admit they are simply not enough to trade and cut their losses and move on to something else, maybe a 9 to 5. Very very few winning traders actually post here for a reason and one of them is because of trolls and losers like you. It simply too much bull to handle and not worth the time and effort to have to constantly get attacked for showing people what trading really is. This is another thing too, people would rather like to believe in lies (lies such as MAs, TA, that has no value or provide any edge..etc) about how the market operates and also like to believe if they work hard enough based on these lies and easy routes they can entertain the fantasy of being millionaires. They don't want to do the hard work to research, test, thinking..etc. The real work it takes to understand the markets is just too much and when one presents that to them, the real work that is, they attack to not feel not good enough or to feel they got to work, again laziness. That is not to say you should believe what everyone or anyone says. This is foolishness. You need to research everything and think and test. Then make your conclusions based on data. In your case, based on your posting you didn't do and don't seem captable of doing.
The loser traders, they want the get rich quick route, the easy route.
There is a reason Don's threads don't get anywhere near as much attention compared to other "guru" threads here on ForexFactory. I dont have to explain the reason because it should be apparent by now. If you didn't catch it by now, then you got some serious mental retardation my friend.

I went over your posts and was not surprised at all. You have zero trading knowledge. The advice you gave someone about trading psychology and that successful trading is a mindset or whatever made me chuckle. If you are trading with the right mindset based on the wrong principles, you will still lose. No wonder this thread went over your head. Your right, forexfactory has a lot of bullshit as it is. I agree.

The reason I posted this long post when I didn't intend it to be is to show novice traders the difference between winning traders and loser traders, how they think etc I hope this shed some light and opened someone's eye to the pitfalls of trading that one can fall into because I did and it was not pretty.

My advice to you is to first, simply take a hike, trading is not for the likes of you. Second, get out of here if all you're going to do is continue to troll and provide zero value other than being the thread clown. I imagine you will reply to me but I won't reply back because you are simply worthless and your replies are equally as worthless as you are.

I hope to see @DonPato again because this place really needs more people like him.

DonPato I would like to see you continue your posting. People like you are rare. If you were hopeful someone would benefit from your point of view. This has happened. You are looking at him right now. I would like to stay in touch with you, that is if you don't mind.

I think the most easily mistake is over-trading. There arent as many opportunities to make money in the markets as you think there are. In one year you can have about 10 really good trade setups.

Great theoretical stuff...but I will give you(the trader) my personal best practical advice, in a very simple term.

Enter a trade based on your edge, as you get to 2:1 go to BE + 5 pips...you will never lose money on this trade and perhaps the trade can surprise you and go 10:1 to compensate for previous Stop Losses.

You can write me a PM to thank me later .

Only if it was that simple...

I wanted to click thumbs down to this post not because I dislike this post but because this seems the last post from you here (which I hate). But then again doing that would disrespect you so I stopped. We need more people like you. But more and more people like you leave this place daily. I am also rarely comes to this forum now. and I only come to see if any of you posted anything new.anyway thanks.

Some times it breaks my heart to know and see how some people's hard earned money wasted by following these so called systems and get rich quick schemes. But what to do..that's how it works.And they have given a choice to practice and trade with out real money. But yet they jump in with all their money hoping to become millionaire with in a year.And lose all their money.

Trading forex is easy way to lose money for most(some exempted)

Respect.wish you the success..and health(of course)..

Suranga

Let's remember first things you heard about forex/trading when you first come.
1. Only manual trading on high tf charts
2. Always use stop losses
3. You must be disciplined and have a good money management system (refers to #1 and start the cycle)

So, to be profitable do not use manual trading, do not use stop losses and do not rely on yourself.

Nice thread.

I am a new trader, basically a beginner. Most important thing i learned so far is to ask your self how much can i afford to lose on a trade versus how much i will make.