Average system + great discipline =great results?

Pip spread/SL + TP ratio, mm, pyschology, broker, and trading system are all vital.

Lets face it...say you are trading the euro with a 2 pip spread. TP = 50 and SL = 50. Your odds of winning are 48/100 or 48%. The chance of you losing is 52%. Thus...on average you are losing 4% of all of the money that you risk. Your trading system must be good enough to overcome that 4% deficit. Hence...you must have a good trading system. If your Broker is a cheat....your odds are even tougher. And there are many ways they can cheat you......unfair swap...stop loss hunting...spread widening...slippage...I could go on and on.

My thinking is...keep the trading system as simple as possible....keep your pip spread/SL +TP ratio as low as possible. Find a system with an edge because you must have an edge or the odds will defeat you. 4hr or daily candles for instance would allow for you to use larger SL and tp levels....thereby reducing SOME of the edge against you. Find the fairest broker you can.

I've played craps many times at the casino. You can win sometimes....but it is tough to be a winner overall. If you play the game the smartest way possible...you can reduce the casino's odds to just under 1%. Thats better than the 4% above with a flip of the coin type of system.

So with forex....you need to have a good enough long term system to overcome the 4%+ advantage that is against most systems in Forex.

Sometimes a system stops working because market conditions change. Are we good enough to all know when that is? Should we change as the markets change? Or...just stick with a system that we believe in come hell or high water?

Emotional Control is the key to the game. It has cost me a fair amount of money and time till I got over my own arrogance and started listening to people that have been in the game for years and making a living at it. Since then I started to look only for top notch trades. I look for a trade that looks like it has the potential of 20+ pip run and take 50% profit at 10 pips. I can let the rest keep running and set the SL to BE and adjust that as we move higher. I know a lot of people will tell me this is bad MM, I'm leaving the money on the table, etc.... but it is what works for me emotionally. Since I have started trading like this I'm seeing a steady increase in my account and higher rates of success. I have also learned not to trade for the day if nothing shows up.

I think the key of this is to find what works best for you, not other traders in the forum. Listen to them and see if it works for you, if not, you learned a little and move on. Only way to learn this is through time, work, testing, learning, and even sometimes huge amounts of frustration.

Good luck to all and happy pips

Simple

Yes having a well documented trading system and following it with discipline give some structure in trading markets.

Remember markets are highly unstructured and people loose money by following unstructured trading in an unstructured markets.

Get a trading system, back test it for 2 years, then test it live for 1 year and then you have arrived in trading circles.

Rules and structure really help prepare for the day.
With the crazy days we've been having lately in the EUR/USD, it is easy to be "thrown off your game". I know... because last week I was myself.

Systematic rules help you stay disciplined.
(Of course, you must follow them also!)

Side note:

I keep a folder on my desktop called "Mindset" with stuff I like to read during the trading day to keep me focused.
(a quote from Dialist, years ago, in this thread, obvious but well stated...)

"Individual trades are essentially meaningless. It is only a series of trades placed by consistently following the rules of your system that has any significant meaning. Trade to trade well, not to make money. By trading well I mean for each trade you place, as long as you follow the rules of your system exactly the same each time, then it is a trade well made. Whether the trade wins or loses is irrelevant."

just trade 4 hours and u will be safe