Tips and Advice Forex Trading Plan VS Goals
With tones of forex strategies listed and professional advice available for free and via trading courses, one particular piece of advice that is definitely worth following is following your forex trading plan.
If your daily forex routine lacks a systematic, well-defined plan, you should not trade at all until you have one! Trading without a plan is a suicide! Ignore the advice and you will see how fast your account becomes empty.
Plan VS Goals
There is a significant difference between a trading plan and a set of goals a trader defines for himself. A goal after all is an expectation of a certain result. The following goals I consider harmless:
- I won’t do the same mistake again.
- This overtrading has to stop right now!
- After two hours of trading, I shall have a break
However, some goals can be extremely harmful, especially when they involve a specified amount of money. For example:
- I HAVE to make another couple of hundreds by the end of the day. Christmas is right around the corner and I have a huge family to please!
- I own money to my best friend. Today is the day to pay him back. Just need to find another trend somewhere here!
- Damn… I shouldn’t have deposited my last available thousand. Think. Think. Think.
Forex trading plan needs to keep you out of trouble. Not the other way around. There shouldn’t be any holiday planning involved. If your plan has anything to do with the amount of money you need to make today – it is a true recipe for disaster.
Daily plan by no means should have anything to do with amount of pips or amount of money per day. There are so many unexpected factors in forex, so many things that can go wrong, and so many indicators which can give false trend… Trading is already stressful enough. You don’t want to make it even worse.
Solution
So what is the solution? How to be successful in forex? Use your trading plan wisely. Stick to it. Be ready that each day brings different results. You might be on a winning side today; tomorrow end the end of the day you might find yourself at loss. It is all part of the game. Even during a successful trading day you will experience a fall at least several times. That is normal. That HAS to happen. What really matters are your profits at the end of the week/month.
Think about it! Let’s say I made $500, then lost $350 and then made another come back with $175. Overall, my profit is $325! Yes, I did lose $350, but that’s not the point. There is no reason to beat myself up over this loss, because at the end of the day, I did profit. And that’s the whole idea.
Your daily goal should be very simple – “Stick to the Plan”! Don’t beat yourself up, even if today ends up in losses. Tomorrow is another day full of opportunities. And that’s your goal!
If another Forex trader should ask you what your daily goal is in trading Forex, your answer should simply and respectfully be, “...to be able to trade tomorrow.” Never put a number on that goal because without fail, that number will turn around and bite you. There are some great opportunities in trading Forex right now and there's no need to limit yourself. Stick to your plan. That's your goal.
