If you trade the forex or online currency market, I am sure that at some point in your trading career you have had the unfortunate experience of a string of losing trades. Maybe it even got so bad that you actually wiped out an entire trading account (sadly, I know what that feels like).
Conversely, you probably also know what it feels like to have a string of massively winning trades, and few feelings in the world of forex can match the ecstacy of this experience. And I am sure that you have at least heard of some of those traders that seem to always experience this, those who have seemingly god-like abiities to create truly staggering amounts of money in a short period of time.
But what is it exactly that separates the highly profitable traders from the mediocre or novice traders? Do they maybe have some secret newsletter that they share amongst themselves that gives exchange rates a day in advance? Not quite. Actually the answer is surprisingly simple, but this does not mean it is exactly easy to implement in your own life.
The ability to consistently place highly profitable trades in the forex market comes from being able to completely separate your emotions from your trading, and to be almost completely detached from the outcomes of your trades.
I can pretty much guarantee that you will not find a single professional, profitable forex trader that obsessively checks his trades every two minutes, and then freaks out if they start to go down. If you find yourself doing this, then you have a high level of emotional attachment to your forex trading, and this is most likely the reason why you are not yet fabulously successful.
Now I am sure that if you are reading this article then you have at least some basic knowledge of the foreign currency market, and you will also know what a pip is. Forex traders have heard this funny little word before and are familiar with it, but I bet that if you went up to some random person in the street and said 'Excuse me, can you tell me what a pip is?' they would be tempted to laugh in your face.
The word 'pip' is actually an acronym for 'price interest point,' and it is the smallest unit that a currency exchange rate can fluctuate. For example, if the current exchange rate for GBP/USD (that's the British Pound/Dollar cross, but you already know that) is 1.1800 and it goes up to 1.1850, then we would say that the price has increased by 50 pips.
So we have established that profitable forex traders possess a high degree of emotional control, and the key to getting to this level of emotional detachment when trading is to only focus on the PIPS rather than the MONEY. This is easy in theory, but when you are really at your computer placing those trades it can be alot harder. You need to change your perception of forex trading altogether, and instead of viewing it as a way to make money, try to see it as only a game where you try to accumulate pips, and the more pips you gather the better you do.
A really good way to begin to change your perception of forex trading to the point where you see it as only a 'pip-gathering game' and you are no longer blinded by emotions is to make extensive use of demo accounts. Do not overlook the importance of using a demo account to gain trading experience, because this is literally your roaming ground for learning how to place profitable trades without fear. After all, there is virtually no difference at all between the way your trading platform looks when you are trading a demo account, and how it looks with a real account.
It stands to reason that because a demo account and a live account are so similar, if you spend time getting to the point where you can trade a demo account profitably, doing the same thing with a real account will look and feel identical.
Mainly, it is this change in perception where you only see forex trading as a game that separates the men from the boys and the winners from the losers in forex. And the great irony is... the less you care about actually making money, the more money you make!!
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Becoming a professional forex trader can be a very rewarding choice in life. You will be completely self-employed, you have the option of only working a few hours per day, and you can make money anywhere in the world with only a broadband-enabled laptop.
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