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Friday, September 26, 2008

Currency Trading - How to Develop Discipline

By Albert Schmidt

Many traders familiar with the situation when they exit a trade just to find out it would be a winner. Or they exit a losing trade to open a trade in an opposite direction just to lose twice. Some traders exit before getting the full amount of profit. Others wait too long for the losing trade to reverse and they lose quite a lot of money. I am the first one to admit that I made many such mistakes and many others in the past. What can help to avoid such mistakes is discipline. It is true that disciplined trader will succeed sooner or later while undisciplined will fail rather sooner than later. I would like to discuss the ways in which anyone could acquire greater discipline.

In my opinion once you acquire discipline there a lot of trading strategies you can use to your profit. Without the discipline no strategy will help you to succeed. You see the problem with the most trading strategies they assume that a trader has required discipline. I read books and went to the seminars on Forex. But I struggled to implement what I have learnt due to the lack of discipline. I was almost successful at what I was doing without being able to catch it. Are you familiar with such situation? When something goes very well I fail to keep applying consistent effort and things turn around. After talking to successful people I found out that discipline is not something they were born with. Actually lack of discipline is quite common problem. If you overcome it there is nothing will stand between you and realization of your dreams. So the key to a successful trading is not the perfect system it's a perfect discipline.

My definition of discipline is when a person is willing to dedicate all his effort to succeed in whatever he is doing. He is determined to do whatever it takes to implement what he has planned.

So how do you develop discipline? I have a few steps that can help you. First think of you successful accomplishments in the past. Every single one of us has had any kind of success. You need to recall how you felt back then, what did you do to accomplish that successful achievement. Now write down on paper whatever you wish to accomplish in what you do right now. Make a list on paper. Now right down everything you need to accomplish those goals. It may be something like getting up earlier every day, doing the testing of your strategy every day etc. Consistent effort applied with discipline will lead you to success.

Now many people can get discouraged saying something like "I am not a disciplined person at all". But none of us was born with a discipline. One thing I know for sure every single one of us was born with the potential to become a disciplined person. Nobody is asking you to become as disciplined as an army sergeant.

What you've been asked is to develop your discipline to your level of potential not to reach level of discipline of someone else. So discipline is a choice. If you want to become successful trader you need to make that choice.


Albert Schmidt is a part-time currency trader. After quite a few months of struggle he learned to make consistent profit trading in Forex. Review a trading strategy he successfully uses in his trades.

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