What Do You Need to Learn to Trade Currencies Successfully?

By Albert Schmidt

Some people ask me if trading currencies is something you can learn or it's something that must suit your personality. I strongly believe that any skill is learnable as long as a person has a strong desire to persist in learning. Another thing is that Forex allows you to trade with any personality. If you have a better emotional control and you can watch continuously how price is fluctuating then short term trading may suit you better. If you have patience and can wait for a long time for trade to mature then long-term trading is for you.

So the question is what do you need to learn successfully trade currencies? I found one thing that made all the difference in my learning experiences. But first let's look at the reason why people get attracted to trading in Forex or why they start any business at all. I believe they attracted to it by the promise of freedom. How many times you heard "be your own boss", "fire your boss". But what I didn't realize was that trading as well starting any new business required much more effort and hard work than any boss would require.

So the most important thing I found to make my learning experience much more successful is to find an accountability partner. When we study in school we are accountable to our teacher to do our homework. When we work we are accountable to our boss or company. So to make your learning to trade successfully you need to find someone to hold you accountable on finishing your tasks and on following through your plans.

I have my wife to hold me accountable. She has no understanding of any technical or fundamental analysis but she does have understanding of my finishing daily tasks that I have planned. If you can find a mentor who trades Forex it's the best option. But if you don't have such a mentor it can be any of your friends or relative. The most important thing is they need to be supportive of your plans.

The following are few tips on learning Forex trading with and accountability partner. First select a trading system that suits your personality. Now set a daily routine of testing and trading your system. Put on paper how many trades on historical data you are going to test on a daily basis. Make a list of parameters you want to fix in a real-time trade. For example if you get impatient and get out the trade too early you can put it as "Always wait until price hits the take profit or stop-loss levels."

At the end of the day or at least at the end of the week report to your partner how well you followed the plan. Don't pay attention to a result of any single trade. If you lost but managed to stick to your rules then it was a successful trade. If you had a profit by violating your trading rules then you failed. This is what needs to be reported.

You may be thinking that having an accountability partner is not very important thing. Trust me if you do it on a consistent basis very soon you will develop a habit of accomplishing whatever you set to accomplish in your trading plan. Once you have that habit in place the success in trading becomes surprisingly easy.

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