If you ask a group of profitable Forex traders what is the secret to their success, you will probably hear the word “consistency” more than once.
Unfortunately, achieving consistency is easier said than done.
But by creating a process and setting trading rules for yourself, you can make it happen Consistency in your executionwhich is the first step to becoming a consistently profitable trader.
Contrary to what rebels may think, rules aren’t always meant to be broken. Instead, they are there to help turn positive trading behavior, or what works for you, into learned habits.
Setting rules — and more importantly, following those rules — is crucial. It breeds consistency.
By having rules, you can train yourself over time to recognize certain situations and have automatic responses to them.
By training yourself to react spontaneously, you will find more consistency in your trading because you no longer need to spend so much time thinking.
You just react.
It may take some time and experience to develop rules that fit your business personality.
But do you want to know a little secret?
The trick to making these rules work successfully is “Simply believe in them“.
No need for magic spells or pixie dust.
What good is a set of rules if you don’t feel compelled to follow them? You did your homework and you know it resulted in more losers winning, right?
In order to stick to your rules, you need to remind yourself of the potential consequences of violating them. These can be based on your previous experience or observations.
For example, you can remember the time you set your stop loss at a very tight level in a range-based trade, and you ended up getting stopped out before the price moved in your favor.
Next time you make a similar setup, you will feel the need to follow your stop loss rule in hopes of avoiding another loss scenario.
Since awareness of the possible consequences of violating these rules comes from your own experience, it will be more effective to come up with your own rules.
What works for other traders will not necessarily work for you.
Moreover, it makes a lot of sense to come up with rules that suit your trading style and personality.
Now don’t think that you will eventually come up with a set of rules that will give you a 100% win rate.
You can come up with a lot of rules for every imaginable aspect of your trading (such as entry triggers, position size, expansion and exit, etc.), but we can guarantee that there will be days when the markets throw up something that no one was prepared for. to.
Remember that human emotions are unpredictable and that the future is unpredictable; There is no certainty in market behavior and that’s what makes… Trading odds game.
Having a set of rules, versus none at all, helps you frame the market to build your system and make good trading decisions in the face of this uncertainty.
With time, deliberate practice, and experience, these rules will lead to a natural sense of the market, great trading habits, and consistent profitability.