I often wonder what chance aspiring traders have of finding effective systems to teach them how to trade, when the forex industry is so full of marketers who can’t and don’t trade. Not only can many of these marketers not trade, but a great number are promoting results which are based on blind hopes and lies.
Most beginners are going to naturally gravitate towards results which appear the most promising, which - due to all the unrealistic claims floating about, will mean they are naturally more attracted to the information which is the least legitimate.
Unfortunately in this context, the chances that you - a developing trader - don’t get crushed by the shiny objects and snake oil salesmen floating around the top of the forex ecosystem is statistically pretty slim.
Said another way, the sad reality is that you are largely alone on your journey to profitability and success, and most of the shiny objects that you find in forex land will only assist you to haemorrhage money quicker than you otherwise would, and ultimately cause you to fail in your attempt to become a profitable trader.
If only you could sit next to someone like you did when you were learning to drive, who had their own brake pedal that they were prepared to use to help you (and them) to stay safe, your results may be different.
I like comparing learning to trade to learning to drive a car, because firstly - most people reading this material will have successfully learnt to drive a car, and secondly - comparisons between them can provide a context which we can use to develop our understanding of the learning process and requirements as they relate to our development as a trader.
In terms of the dangers of trading for example, for most people driving a car is the single most dangerous thing they do on a regular basis, yet after a period of time, the danger involved usually recedes to our unconscious and we rarely think about it any longer. Trading on the other hand while dangerous, is only dangerous to our bottom line, not our actual bottom.
In addition to the danger, the technical requirements of driving are quite complex and challenging. It is not a skill that we learn within a small amount of time, and to maintain our level of ability, it requires we continue to practice our skills on the road.
We can see by these two examples that trading is not as dangerous as driving a car, and learning to trade is not as technically difficult and physically challenging as learning to drive a car.
These are important points to grasp. I want you to clearly see that if you can drive a car, you’ve pretty much proven you have the ability to learn the skill of trading simply due to the other skills you have successfully learnt in your life.
You have the ability, but what is required amongst other things, is the perfection of the trading process. Research from the University of Sydney and the Westmead Hospital Brain Research Unit has said that to fully learn a new skill, you will have to repeat the action up to 1000 times. Ouch.
What action is that I hear you ask? That action is your trading process. I have a free template of my trading process available for download on my website that you can use to either copy my trade process and/or develop your own.
One of the biggest problems in my view for aspiring traders is that they don’t have clarity over their trading process, and if they do, they don’t stick to one process long enough before tinkering at the edges. I admit that I was very guilty in that regard over much of my early trading period.
Developing traders will usually end up following some new idea they have come across, and are trying to integrate it with insufficient understanding and/or testing as to see if it is a profitable or complimentary addition to their existing system.
This less-than-merry-go-round of insufficient practice followed by insufficient testing inevitably ends when a trader runs out of money or patience, it invariably does not end well.
