Cut your losers ; let your winners ride
One important thing that every new trader must know before entering this highly profitable business is that life is not perfect, even in FOREX land, and you should always know one fact: YOU WILL HAVE LOSING TRADES.
Every FOREX trader does. The key to being a consistent, predictable, reliable trader is to, at the end of the day, add up more wins than losses. And, when you KNOW(based off your trading rules), without a doubt, that YES, indeed you are, in a losing trade, don’t keep losing money (lowering your stop loss) just to *prove you are right* or your rules are wrong (however you want to look at it).
Let’s face it - you can’t turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse. You can’t change the spots of a leopard and you can’t turn chicken poop into chicken salad. The best trades are usually “right” immediately (the techniques, rules, methods and strategies you can learn in our resources list will be your best indicator for just what a “right” trade really is).
Example of a Profitable Transaction in FOREX
To make a profit, in the FOREX, a trader can enter the market as a *buy position* (known as going “long”) or a *sell position*(known as going “short”). For discussion, let’s assume you’ve been studying the EURO. Your trading methods, rules, strategies, etc., tell you that prices will rise during a particular timeframe. So you buy the EUR/USD pair (or, technically, you will simultaneously buy euros, the base currency, and sell dollars).
You open up your handy trading station software (provided to you for free by the online broker), which resides on your desktop, and you see that the EUR/USD pair is trading at : REMEMBER: the quote to the left of the / (1.3242) refers to the bid or “sell” price (what you obtain in USD when you sell EUR). The quote to the right of the / (1.3245) is used to obtain the ask or “buy” price (what you have to pay in USD if you buy EUR).
So, since you believe that the market price for the EUR/USD pair will go higher, you will enter a *buy position* in the market. For simplicities sake, let’s say you bought one lot at 1.3245. As long as you sell back the pair at a higher price, then you make money.