Although forex is often presented as gambling in its purest form, this is a misconception.

The game is one of skill as much as luck, which means one very important thing: it is entirely possible to stack the odds in your favor.

With the right cocktail of natural talent, strategy, and research, you can increase your chances of turning a profit tenfold, giving yourself every opportunity to grasp the good fortune that comes your way.

To help you out, here are nine top tips for successfully trading forex.

1. Choose a Suitable Broker

For all who trade the foreign exchange, one golden rule exists: finding the right brokerage firm is everything. The currency markets have no central trading area, and this means that your broker will be conduit, advisor, mentor and informant to you.

Finding the perfect fit is essential. For the novice, inexperienced or time-short investor, this makes the more hands off firms entirely unsuited.

Advisory services, however, will offer exactly what you’re looking for: the chance to learn on the go, with a guiding hand to steer you away from any obvious dangers.

2. Lose Wisely

 Many novice investors make one fundamental mistake in their trading strategy: they fear losses to an unnecessary degree.

The golden rule, however, is that losses will only ever become a problem if your account ends up in the red. Individual losses mean little, and their only real danger lies in the emotional impact they can have on the inexperienced.

Rather than trading reactively, by closing your position and making ill thought out attempts to salvage your capital, take a deep breath and step back.

Ask yourself a few simple questions: could your position recover given time? Would you make the same trades if you hadn’t lost money on another?

If the answers to these questions are ‘yes’, then go ahead; if not, stop what you’re doing and reassess your next moves.

3. Perform Weekend Analysis

 Our third and final tip is this: always do your homework. Like any academic pursuit, the foreign exchange’s brightest stars are often those who work the hardest, and putting in the hours will make a real difference to the success of your forex strategy.

This is where weekend analysis comes into play. Although the markets are closed on Saturday and Sunday, this two-day window offers a brilliant opportunity to sit down, look over your charts and data, and identify any patterns that might be emerging, so that when Monday arrives, you’re ready and eager to trade, and one step ahead of the competition.

4. Practice Risk Tolerance

The best traders on the market know how important personal predisposition towards risk matters.

This is because forex trading is never for the faint-hearted. Instead, it’s a market well-suited for those ‘superhuman’ people who are ready to take high risks.

On the other hand, if you are not prepared to accept loses whenever they occur, then this is not your thing. This is because losing trades in forex trading account is part and parcel of the game.

5. Monitor Risk Management Actions

Irrespective of the fact that you are willing to undertake risks, you also need to be strict with every cent that comes across your path.

It essentially means that you operate within risk management rules and avoid making mistakes.

It also requires that you to assess and monitor your trading system and make necessary adjustments.

By having a firm grip on all money management practices, you can cut losses, while also accepting the fact that you were wrong in some of your market analysis.

Some of the risk management tactics include being able to control your position sizes or the number of contracts that you can trade.

6. Have Self-discipline and Patience

Patience is a critical personal trait that sets apart the winning team in financial trading. Some of the aspects that require lots of persistence are as follows:

• Right entry position
• Right trading setup
• Trade completion

All these require you to learn and understand how the trading system operates. Then, you need to have great patience to wait as the system factors in price levels.

The art of patience comes in handy in circumstances when the system is reading an entry that is simply unattainable in the market. This requires you to wait for the next opportunity for you to make a move.

7. Ability to Adjust

The forex trading market takes different turns every waking moment. These changes need extra stamina, and the skill to adapt based on the market direction.

Hence, you need to adjust if a price action is taking a different angle that is different from your market analysis at any point in time.  

8. Emotional Detachment

If you want to succeed in this game, you have to learn to see and weigh every action with great objectivity. But this is also highly dependent on the trading system you are using.

For example, if you have a system that’s often safe and reliable in terms of entry and exit positions, then you need not be guided by emotions, at all.

You also need to set yourself above par from the usual pundit opinions, while merely relying on what the system dictates.

9. Have Realistic Expectations

It includes realistically assessing how much you are investing as compared to your expected earnings.

Obviously, the smaller the amount of money you commit, the less the expected earnings are, and vice versa.

Also, other than the fact that forex trading comes with its pitfalls and volatility, you can go for short term trading, which is characterized by smaller risks.

All you need is dedication and lots of discipline as you select the suitable trades.

Conclusion

Attitude and mindset are a significant determinant when it comes to winning in the forex market.

Although people are so hang-up on strategies, they are  never 100% water-tight.

Importantly, behavior, and how you apply it to approach the market can make or break your trading efforts.