You can make big money, specifically you can make money trading currency IF you follow some simple rules. Break these rules and you are a loser with a capital L, but follow them and you don’t need a degree or rocket science to be a winner and full time 4x trader like me.
The first rule will sound silly, but the first rule to make money trading currency is DON’T LOSE ANY. Yes it sounds silly, but far too many 4x traders forget this fundamental rule.
There are many life coaches and training in success has been popular since the 1930’s with Napolean Hills “Think and Grow Rich”. ALL success training first deals with the issue of failure. That is, study failure and then don’t do those things.
Candlesticks make a useful tool. They break down into time sized parts what has been happening. You wake in the morning and see a 170 pip drop in the Euro versus the USD. Time for a rebound, or a further collapse - to me nothing is more boring that a market moving sideways.
There are trends and there are dips in the fx markets. After a huge drop in a currency it is normal and typical that there be a large rebound in the price. Also true is that just before that rebound there is almost always a dip first, then the powerful rebound. On the other end of every trade we all make there is another forex market maker. Even though we don’t know or even care who he is, we are here in the market to take his money from him. Silly him to play against us. We buy on a further dip and then we take him for all he can handle losing.
But on the principle of rule 1: don’t lose money, when I place my pending order, I also place an opposing order of the same size. That is, if I place a “buy limit” order, I will also place “sell stop” order too. So then it doesn’t matter what happens. The currency pair may completely collapse again, in which case I have 2 active trades cancelling each other out. The currency pair may just dip into executing the pending orders and then bounce back up as I expect it will. But with the opposing order also executed I am not at risk, and nor am I making money. The orders/trades cancel each other out.
With proper use of stop losses (I won’t go into detail about this here), what ever happens will happen, and shortly thereafter one of the trades will close out at a (small) loss but in fact I have lost no money because the opposite trade is in profit to that level.
This trade set up and entry is very safe. It gives a great opportunity to make money trading currency with no likely downside. It allows you to do 2 minutes work, then leave the computer for several hours to come back and find out what happened.
Not losing money is only the first rule on how to make money trading currency. The second and third rules are to do with proper money management. That is, rule 2: never risk more than 2% on a trade, and rule 3: quit trading if you lose 10% of your account in one day.
On a $10,000 account trading single lots, then 2% is $200 or a stop loss of 20 pips. If I get stopped out, then I have $9,800 left, and 2% of that is $196 - or 19 pips. That is, the dollar amount of your next maximum risk gets smaller and smaller with each loss.
The 2% rule is not just a suggestion. It is a hard and fast rule. If you think your trade needs more than 2% to breath before it finds profit, then that trade is too risky and not worth doing. Go back and look at the beginning of this article where I talk about buying on a dip.
My final point is rule 3: walk away for the day if you lose 10% of your account. Remember, to do that you would have to lose 5-6 trades in a row, one after the other each losing 2%. If your day is going so badly, quit, and come back the next day with a fresh and clear mind.
Summary on how to make money trading currency: Rule 1, don’t lose money. Rule 2, don’t risk more than 2% on a trade. Rule 3, quit the day if you lose 10% of your account.