What helped you the most to be profitable?

for me it is actually account size - there are ways to trade which cannot be done if you are trading a small account.

I almost want to say this I think many traders cannot be profitable simply because they are trading too small an account.

I think its no coincidence that the survey done (i think by citi) about the profitability of retail traders, brokerage has state that their profitable customers are those who have larger account

By the way Keep it seriously simple (KISS)

My turning point was when I designed a method to satisfy Part 1 of the secret to successful trading, but it took me a long time to figure it out. I nearly quit once, thinking the whole thing was a big roulette wheel without any form of predictability, but fortunately I persevered and figured it out.

That was only half the battle though. My continuing success is based on applying Part 1 to Part 2

Waiting for the trade to setup, patience

Not chasing the trades and thinking that there is going to be another opportunity, fear of losing out

Using right trade lot size for the account balance, so that I don't blow up the account too soon, leverage

My first steps to become profitable was by reading Jamea16 thread and stopped using indicators so I could have a clear view of my charts. This allowed me to see what price is doing now and not what it did minutes or hours earlier, also trading from Daily time frames instead of shorter time frames.

I then developed my own trading technique and learnt to take trading losses on the chin and never seek revenge after a loss.

All the other things needed are confidence in your trades and leave them to mature as confidence breeds success.

Understand that all trading techniques will have good periods and bad periods so don't try to change a winning strategy or look for a new one just because its had a few losers, this will just be your winning and loosing percentage levelling out.

Correct money management which includes account size, low leverage, position sizing and risk management are all important parts of success.

Last but not least are Patience and Discipline.

So there you go nothing that hasn't been said before but traders still ignore one or more of these important parts of trading

Finally understood these lessons after 8 years of trading losses and pain:

1. Trading strategy is NOT the most important factor in determining your profitability. It is just one of the four "legs" of a "chair" essential for profitable trading. The other legs of this chair of profitability are EQUALLY important as well: Risk Management, Trade Management and "Myself" (personality and psychological) management. All four "legs" contributes to my profitability, so I will not "fall" if I ever "sat" on this "chair" so long all four "legs" are present and strong.

2. High Win rate is irrelevant to profitability. I can still make money with win rate as low as 20% so long my risk and trade managements are solid

3. Focus on a series of trades instead of a single trade. I might have lost money on a single trade, but I know that given my edge and over a big number of trades, my overall gains will eventually be larger than my overall losses.

4. The best trading plan is not the one which will "guarantees" you the most profits but the one that fits your personality the most. If there is no fitting between these two, I will STRUGGLE to follow the trading plan and keep my discipline. When trading rules are broken, any edge in the trading plan will be gone and I'll just be trading randomly.

Awesome viewpoint Caeser. Exactly what I needed to hear! I saved your points and print them out. Thanks

Rex

Trading less and trading only when I see a good setup according to my strategy has helped me a lot in making profit from forex. This has also reduced my unnecessary loss.

The game is the best teacher.

Before getting involed with trading at all i had someone whos been trading for 40 years tutor me on his meta trader setup and explain the very basics of the actual software i would be using to trade live. After that, i spent some time in the demo account to learn some basics first hand. It also plays to you're advantage to treat the demo account as you would live trading.

Discipline.

I think this is what 95% of all traders lack and is the reason why the vast majority of traders never become profitable.

Intensive backtesting + higher TF trading (4H+) + patience.

Testing in real live account after 2-3 months in demo, why? because real account gives real emotions, starting buying/selling small lots to learn

Fundamental analysis and technical analysis every day

Risking max 5% account

Stick to your plan, no matter what, open the order and go out of your house if you are not patient enough

Stop loss

5 things that changed my Attitude and positively affected my Trading Results:

1. I found that trading Live forced me to focus more,
Before going live I would "try" and focus when trading/researching, but in my subconscious I always knew it was fake money... so win or lose who cares?!
Trading with real money gives us the incentive to do our best and put aside any excuses as to why we shouldn't study/learn more.
I suggest that everyone try a small Live Account even when developing ideas (after the initial testing phase) this will increase your focus significantly, and if you burn the account... well now you will be forced to work harder! Of course the only down side is increased stress, but that's were your motivation comes in handy. As soon as I begin feeling comfortable trading a small account I increase the account size to increase the pressure/motivation!

With Live Trading there are two outcomes when a loss happens:
A. Quit Trading and Never do it again (Or come back get beat and leave again... repeatedly)
B. Make a greater commitment towards Trading and prevent future losses, do not quit, and keep work consistent... progress will follow shortly behind

A trader trades to make money, so trade with real money or don't call yourself a trader. There are many many many people that will just continue to trade demo due to lack of confidence in their methods for years! (Not all people mind you, some people just demo-hobby trade etc.)

Losing in trading is painful, to make money as an average man requires exchanging "time" of your life.. be it days or years working for someone else. How painful it is when the work a man does is in vain... the money in exchange for "time" is squandered? There are few things that can be more motivating than this type of a loss.

2. My old Boxing Coach used to tell me the following, Lack of confidence is due to lack of training. You don't believe you have the skills to achieve the task at hand, so you won't. So Train, train so much that you will be incapable of criticizing yourself.
^ I apply a similar type of mantra towards trading and other areas of my life, have faith in yourself you can do amazing things. Humans can adapt to just about anything, you are alive once according to your knowledge so don't limit your potential with laziness or negativity!


3. I sat down and asked myself some serious questions to set future goals, and to confirm with myself what I'm willing to do to succeed:
Every action has a purpose, what is my purpose? Why do I want to trade? How many years am I willing to commit to attempt to learn how to trade? How many relationships both current and potential am I willing to give up to make time for working towards my goals?

4. An observation that influences all my Trading decisions:
The majority of Traders fail, if I want to be one of the few that is consistently profitable I must be willing to work harder than the majority. I must develop unique ideas to set my trading apart from the crowd.

5. Self Reflecting, where are you in life where are you going and what are you doing?
I am a young man and all area's of my life are on hold with the exceptions being my career, and trading. These next few years will set the stage for the rest of my life and the people I love. I have made many sacrifices and I will gladly do more to achieve my dreams. Godbless.

I normally forego replying to old threads, but this particular post that Rparm made rings very true if you really want to make it in this business.

1. You have to be willing to put this first in your life.

2. You have to build a plan that works for you. Following someone elses plan may not be compatible with your psychology, and so when the bumpy road comes, you do not trust it, because it is not yours. You then quit, start following someone else, and get caught on the hamster wheel of losses.

3. You have to know for a fact that your plan will work, so when the DD or the sidewinder comes, you will simply trade through it. This means your plan has to make sense. There has to be some logic to your plan.

4. You have to learn to ignore opinions and follow price alone. All news is baked into the price. If you follow price 24/7 for two months you will see this for yourself. Even those massive spikes like CHF and those that happened in the Yen had some tells. This means that you will have to learn to be competent on little sleep for awhile. Follow H4 charts around the clock for two months. Do not miss a day.

5. Learn what a candle or bar is telling you. Understand what the struggle between buyers and sellers over a given time period or tick count or price range is telling you.

6. You need to be able to look at a chart and know exactly how you will enter, exit, take profits, and losses, on any given two bars. It needs to be automatic.

7. You need to know exactly how much you will risk relative to account size. It should not even require thought. It needs to be like driving a car, or riding a bike.

That is what worked for me.

I have said before, everything you need to win at this game is here at the Factory, and when you do find it, you will be amazed at how simple trading really is. It is so simple that it is counter intuitive.

Have a look at the book "Thinking Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman.

It is not a book about trading and yet it has a lot of the information you need to know to become a good trader.
It explains how the parts of the mind work, and allows you to see what is required to focus, rather than just blindly enter trades.
Like the above posters say, mental aspects are much more important than "systems" to being a sucessfull trader.

I think the biggest thing for me, was to stop following.

I usually use the mantra that a good trader can turn a bad strategy good, and a bad trader can turn a good strategy bad.

What I always used to do was buy systems others were profitable with.... Guess who was a bad trader!!!

I started to learn about Forex properly, and from that started to explore indicators in a way that they were not designed for... effectively making the indicators suit me, rather than going along with 95% of other people do.

That is something that i would reccomend to everyone who is not profitable, open up some charts, apply indicators that you know nothing about, and try to devise a way to make that indicator successful.

It may be that you used it in the 'designed' way, but as i have discovered, indicators can be used in loads of different ways that you would never be able to find out by reading. This is what has made me profitable.

Also chucking out conventional wisdom about when and when not to trade. To be profitable, YOU need to understand your system. YOUneed to understand what works for YOU. In short YOU are the ticket to creating your profitability. No one else, and no one elses system will work for YOU. putting in the effort reaps rewards!

Learning from my own mistakes and doing my best not to repeat them again and again.

Know when to cut a losing trade. Never go for a revenge trade. Be consistent in the lot according to the account size and risk management.

I must agree! Risk management is King