the most important things in forex

one important thing if not mentioned is NEVER GIVE UP the moment you stop is the moment you lose, I blew a couple of accounts when i first joined hotforex a couple of years back, its painful its stupid but it helped me learn

Yup, one has to learn from one's mistakes in order to become a better trader..and that's the truth.

I had a friend who traded Forex and few years ago, he earned a lot but last year, he lost about 5K$, in my country, that is not a small amount and he completely left forex. But I think it's good for him. Sometimes we have to accept a truth that we are not suitable with forex and try to find a new job.

I came across this article about practice being important in your trading strategy and I'm inclined to agree
http://leaprate.com/2014/05/22254/gu...are-helps-too/
Even the best athletes, sportspeople and musicians need to practice, so trading forex is no different.

A demo account only lets you try out a platform and test your skills in real-time, but if you can, use a trade simulator that lets you speed up time to review conditions and practice looking for entry/exit points and test strategies. Works for me!

Of course, it goes without saying that forex is not for some..and yes, it is always good for a trader to understand whether they want to continue trading or not..and they can always move on to other career options.

Most important thing is experience. Knowing how the indicators work is one thing, but know how to use them properly is another.

Money management
Position sizing
Being a good trader

money management
risk management
the right strategy
discipline
patience
knowledeg
Experience
and lots of painful memories

I'm not too impressed with the answers in this thread. The closest we get to precise action regards psychological risk is 'Write is down'. There's a lot more you can do than that. You are probably already doing some of it but you need to be water tight if you're going to be profitable.

Here are some real strategies for firewalling against psychological risk, which is pretty much the entire problem. I haven't read this anywhere, I just know I'm an idiot and I'm looking for anything I can do to help me. This is what I got:

1) Once in a trade, set a time when you will reassess the trade _before_ you even place the trade. Do not look at the chart before this time. Know what you are going to do before you do it. Preplan.

2) Preplan various scenarios. What are the various scenarios and how are you going to react. You MUST preplan this to firewall against emotion. How long are you going to give it if price doesn't breakout as expected?

Not just this, but outside the box. What do you do if your internet goes dead?

3) Get it all written down before you do anything. Your mind can play tricks on you. 'I'm sure I was going to leave it 3 bars... now was that 1D TF or 4H...?'

4) Minimum risk:reward has to be 1:2 or better. Some say 1:3 is the minimum. If you're going to set a SL how likely do you think you're going to be stopped out? Honestly? What about if you move your entry to where your SL was? Now how do you feel about it? Any bad feeling, no trade. Any good feeling, no trade. Yep... you're not going to be doing a lot of trading probably.

5) You have to find 100 no-trades before you place a trade. Write down your 100 no trades to prove it to yourself. 50 of those should be trades that look good but due to the SL:TP ration being less than 1:3.. are not good enough. Teaching patience... takes a long time.

There are basically cheap tricks. They help but I'm sure you'll find a new way to screw up. Such as trading a currency that might just die overnight, a bust broker, whatever. To really get it you have to get your subconscious on side. All our lives we've been shown films like Wolf of Wallstreet, the devil being rich, this kind of thing. If you think money is evil or that you're not worthy it ain't going to happen. Close your eyes, visualise the win. Difficult? Then don't trade. This can be turned around. It's like when you want to chat up a lady... visualising and reframing until it's right. Layers of enlightenment. It's not easy. Can be the most painful thing.

Regards feelings. If you're in a casino winning, they change dealer and you get a feeling change, that's the feeling. Digging into the subconscious.

Discipline and Patience along with Money Management.

1. THE MIRROR
2. Patience
3. Discipline
4. Focus
5. Belief
6. Confidence
7. Consistency

Udine

#1. Proper risk management, and adequate capital to implement it.

#2. A proven, robust strategy for entries and exits, that's ideally grounded in a solid understanding of market behavior.

Sure, psychology (discipline, patience, nerve, self-belief, consistency......) is vitally important, but:

i) Without a strategy, you have nothing to remain disciplined to.
ii) If your strategy generates overall loss, you'll never gain the confidence needed to trade it with any discipline or consistency.
iii) And even if you do succeed in maintaining discipline, without a winning strategy you'll lose anyway!

most important thing in forex is higher time frames . love them

SL and Patience !

Yes.

DIGGING DEEP INTO THE SUBCONSCIOUS parts of the human mind, this is the key.
By now this is the only means to be profitable here, imho.
The advice to have more practice is right about training these parts of the human mind.
All of these lines, beams, digits and figures are only shamanic toys trying to switch on your intuition.

We still don't have good science behind our researches, imho, this is why the key issue now is shamanic dreaming.

We don't even have a good scientific definition of Forex. Is it, say, about banks trading currencies? If so, what are we people doing here, if it is only for banks?
We are not banks, aren't we? Is it a contradiction in this popular definition?

So basically we have two main options.
1. To learn shamanic dreaming (http://www.wikihow.com/Learn-Shamanic-Dreaming).
2. To come up with a good definition of Forex at fist at least (haven't find any proper link).

I wouldn't say psychology is not important - that is, one's own psychology is important. If you are impatient, impulsive and you allow your emotions to guide you instead of rational thought then you're likely to get into some deep trouble as a trader. Training yoursel to overcome such flaws is quite important. Knowing basic technical analysis and gaining enough experience is also helpful.

IMHO, psychology (emotions) is not important, otherwise emotionless 'fully rational' 'trading robots' would rule, but they do not.
So, please disregard those advices that teach you to give up your emotions and to become a robot, because real software robots are not profitable.

You have to train your intuition by experience taking all this lines, beams, and digits only like a means for description of the market, not like a guide for trading,
or you have to come up with a new 'Forex science' as the existing 'Forex science' (i.e. all kinds of 'analyses') is not helpful.

Take a trading system which doesn't depend on market conditions and based on common sense and price action only and make it work for yourself. That's all

Regards!

So, it seems like there is another suggestion?
Except 'ratio' and 'intuition' (subconscious parts of the human mind) now we have a suggestion to make 'common sense' as a base for Forex trading?
What is 'common sense' exactly? Is it a mixture of rational and subconscious parts of the human mind?

))Shortly, the common sense is ability to perceive understand and accept basic rules,and it is a base not only for FX trading ,but for everything we are building in our lifes. The main difference when you go against common sense in your life very long the affects may not be felt, but in this field retribution not have to wait long.
I prefer the concept of totally rational ''feeling the market''(sooner or later it becomes an integral part of trader and the system he trades) than abstract ''Intuition'' or ''subconscious''.

Take care.)