Successful forex trading is all about developing disciplined trading habits and having a trader mentality rather than a gambler mentality.

Most people who engage in currency trading expect instant rewards and have dreams of becoming overnight millionaires.

The truth of the matter is, most successful traders had to work very hard over a long period of time to achieve their goals.

They suffered losses along the way and learnt from them. There are some essential steps one has to take to become a disciplined forex trader.

Have a Plan

To achieve success in forex trading, the first logical step would be to develop a good trading strategy and to follow it.

Having the discipline to follow up on a working trading plan is the surest way to build your trading career and make consistent profits over the long term.

Trading plans in online forex trading typically involve meticulously conducting fundamental analysis and technical analysis.

This means the trader has to be able to read and interpret price movements on trading charts. The trader also has to be adept at translating technical indicators and identifying ideal trading positions.

A good trading plan should be one that resonates well with your personal trading style and habits. Every trader should try and develop a trading plan that uses simple methodology.

Some features of a great trading plan include clear trade exit points for taking profits and controlling incurred losses, auto adjustments to fundamental trends, logical points for trade entry, and controllable money management.

Control Your Emotions

Emotions are the worst enemy for online forex trading as they make the trader lose focus and make decisions based on other factors rather than clear-cut logical facts.

Forex discipline can only be attained by traders who have learnt to rein in their emotions and keep them in check.

The negative emotions that affect most traders include fear, anxiety, confusion, and panic.

These emotions are usually most evident when the trader is in the middle of a losing trade. Such losing positions make traders lose confidence in their decisions and ultimately end up veering off their plan when they let emotions overwhelm them.

Another emotion that negatively impacts on forex traders is greed. Greed usually rears its ugly head when the trader is in the middle of a winning trade. The forex trader feels compelled to maximize on profits and thus ends up holding on too long to the trade.

Aside from holding on to the trade, a trader may initially stick to the plan and close a trade profitably according to plan.

Then greed takes over when the trader sees the trade continuing to gain and the trader re-enters the trade hoping to make even bigger profits. This might end up resulting in a loss of profits previously gained.

Acquire Good Trading Habits

Good trading habits lead to overall trading discipline and long term profits. Such good trading habits include setting realistic targets, developing and sticking to working trading strategies, avoiding over trading, and proper timing of trade entry and exit points.

Be Realistic

Most novice traders enter the fx exchange field with dreams of making it big in a short period. They dream of leaving their tiresome day jobs and working comfortably from their computers for a few hours daily or weekly and making a killing.

This is an over-simplistic and unrealistic ambition that is unfortunately never realized. One thing a trader should know from the very beginning is that trading successfully involves hard work, determination, discipline, and a lot of learning.

The reality is that you will invest your money and most likely, your first few months of learning how to trade profitably will involve suffering a few losses.

A good trader will keep this is mind and accept the losses while learning from them. Profitable trades will make the disciplined trader record the trade and try to emulate that in future trades.

Being realistic means you will set practicable and achievable goals which will grow with time. For instance, if you start out with a $1,000 investment and open an account with a forex broker in Australia, you should realize that it will not turn into $10,000 within a week.

You may make modest profits of about $200 per week and as you re-invest your gains you enjoy bigger profits over time.

Keep a Trading Ledger

The best way to maintain discipline as a forex trader is to monitor all your trading moves. A well disciplined trader will keep a journal and make regular entries on all trades entered and exited.

It is not enough to just record your trades in a journal; you should constantly review them and use the mistakes and successes to learn how to trade more profitably. A well kept trading journal is also the number one tool you will use to develop a great working strategy that will work for you.

Keeping a journal lets you see the big picture and makes you less prone to impulse trades, which are based on emotions rather than facts.

Keep To a Trading Timetable

Once a trader makes $500 on a 30-minute trade, they may end up thinking of trading 24 hours a day to chase the potential of making much more money per day.

This is a wrong approach that may lead to burnout and bad decisions. A wise trader will choose regular trading times which are optimal for their individual trading styles.

A good timetable may involve choosing times when forex trade is at its peak. These are periods of high trade activities and high liquidity in the forex market.

Practice

One of the best ways to learn and gain experience in currency trading online is to extensively use a demo account. This will help you gain perspective when you eventually start trading on a live account.

It will also help you learn how to handle your emotions. A good way to avoid having emotional trades is to learn to walk away and resume trading when you are more focused.

Summary

If you want to become a forex trader, the number one skill you need to acquire is forex trading discipline. Always remember to avoid letting emotions dictate your trading habits and decisions.

For the best long term results, make a comprehensive trading strategy and strictly follow it.

Keeping a trading ledger shows you the history of your trades and you can use the entries for back testing and improving on your strategy.