2Bull Forex Blog

The majority of people who trade forex use technical analysis to make their trading decisions. They generally use a wide variety of the hundreds of technical indicators available at their disposal, but how many should you use if you want to be a profitable forex trader, and can you use too many?

There’s no question that the internet, and the subsequent ease of access to technical charts and indicators, has led to more and more traders being able to learn and become accomplished at using technical analysis to help them make trading decisions.

Indeed, people will spend hours on end experimenting with numerous different technical indicators in order to find that holy grail combination that will help them to become rich from trading the forex markets.

However no combination will prove to be 100% successful. The key is to find a combination that suits your trading style, and enables you to make high probability trades that will give you a positive equity curve (ie profits) in the long run.

If you have a sound stop loss policy and a rigid and disciplined trading system based on certain indicators, then you can make a good income from forex trading.

You don’t need to use several indicators at once. Indeed many top traders argue that you should minimize the number that you use, simply because the more you use, the more you will get conflicting information, and confusion and uncertainty does not equate to profits.

For instance you may use six different indicators to help you make your entry and exit positions, but you may, for example, have four of them indicating an oversold position and telling you to enter a long position, but the other two are crossing downwards and indicating a forthcoming downwards movement, so in this case you would probably abandon the initial long trade you were going to make.

This is further complicated when you use multiple time frames because this becomes even more of an issue. Multiple indicators over different time frames will invariably give you conflicting information and the net result will be that you end up not trading at all, and essentially always being afraid to take a position.

This is why so many top traders recommend using just a few tried and tested indicators. You don’t need to have a really complex set-up to be successful. You can make a decent living from forex by just sticking to a few basic indicators like RSI, stochastics and MACD, or just using support and resistance levels to make trading decisions.

Furthermore, some traders, like Avi Frister for example, only use one indicator, and argue that it’s the only one you really need - price.

So if you’re striving to become a profitable trader, don’t overcomplicated things. You can be just as successful using just a few simple indicators than constantly trying out the latest and greatest new indicators in order to find that elusive winning combination.

If you want to make money in forex trading you need to have a soundly based forex trading strategy. This is far easier to achieve than many traders think it is and here we will show you how to build one in 4 simple steps.

1. Success Comes From Inner Understanding

To succeed at forex trading you need to do it on your own and understand EXACTLY how and why your system works.

Even if you follow a vendor or someone else’s currency trading system, you can’t simply follow it you must learn it and have confidence in it.

If you don’t understand how your trading system will help you succeed, you won’t have confidence in it which will lead to a break down of discipline if you hit a losing period.

Keep in mind if you don’t have the discipline to follow your trading method, you don’t have a method!

2. Keep It Simple & Work Smart

Many traders believe the more effort they put into their forex trading strategy the more they will make - this is not true. You get rewarded for being right with your trading signal and that’s it.

Other traders think the more complicated their system is the more chance it has of succeeding but again - this is not true.

All the best forex trading systems are simple and this means they have fewer elements to break and are more robust in the face of brutal market conditions.

This is actually good news, as you need to work smart and not hard to succeed.

Simply focus on the right areas and learn them. If you do this, it will lead you to currency trading success.

3. A Successful Trading System

Here we can’t give you all that goes into a successful trading system - but we will give you some important basic elements you need to keep in mind when building one.

- Do not day trade, as you are guaranteed to lose. All short term volatility is random and you cannot get the odds on your side, either swing trade or follow long term trends.

- Base your system on the concept of support and resistance and breakout methodology.

- Do not predict with your system. Use momentum oscillators to confirm each and every trading signal.

If you predict that’s simply hoping or guessing and you won’t win.

Trade the truth of price action and confirm.

- Always place stops and assume the worst eventuality - you need to protect what you have above all else. As one trader I once knew said:

“If you take care of the losses the profits will look after themselves”.

4. The crucial Point You Need to Understand!

In forex trading 95% of traders lose.

This is simply in most instances down to the fact they don’t work smart and learn the right information.

They therefore don’t have confidence to apply their system with discipline.

You need to understand as part of your forex education that your method is important - but you need the right mindset to apply it.

If you want to learn currency trading you can, in fact anyone can - but you must learn how to trade currencies the right way and build a logical, simple forex trading strategy which, takes into account all the points we have made above.

If you do, you can build a forex trading strategy for success.

Here we are going to look at the story of “the turtles”. If you don’t know who they were, then you should study this group of traders, as learned to trade in just 14 days and made $100 million, in just 4 years! There is much to learn and it’s an inspiring story, so let’s look at it.

The story begins in 1983, when trading legend Richard Dennis decided to prove that anyone could be a trader, if they had the right mindset, the right education and the right trading system.

He picked a group of people who had never traded before.

This group consisted of both sexes, various ages and various levels of academic achievement and variety of occupations from a security guard to a boy fresh from school.

He then set about teaching them to trade in 14 days.

He set them up with trading accounts and the results were astounding:

This group of traders went on to make $100 million in four years and many went on to become trading legends.

So what can you learn from the experiment?

The first lesson is, anyone has the potential to be a successful trader and every thing about currency trading can be learned.

Secondly, if you have the right forex education you can do it quickly, 14 days is not a long time to learn any trade!

Hang on! - You maybe saying:

If everyone can learn to trade, why do 95% of forex traders wipe out their accounts?

When Dennis taught the turtles, he used a simple method - but he rammed home two:

1. You need to have mental discipline to follow any system because if you don’t, you have no method at all. He made sure that the traders knew exactly how and why the system worked, to give them the confidence and discipline to follow it.

Most traders simply never get confidence in what their doing, as they follow others or simply have no well thought out forex trading strategy and trade with their emotions.

2. Dennis also taught the traders to play great defence first. This meant strict money management to protect their equity above all else.

Just like any great football team you build from the back.

There is no point in having a great offensive line, if your backs can’t protect you and it’s the same in trading.

The Key Combination

Dennis essentially knew that you can teach anyone a trading system - but that’s not enough, you need to combine this with mental discipline.

A lot is written about discipline in trading yet, few new traders really understand how hard it is to maintain it.

To keep executing a trading system when it’s losing is tough!

Of course all systems will lose and you have to have the confidence, discipline and money management in place to ride the period out.

Could You Be Successful?

The story of the turtles actually inspired me to trade back in the eighties.

The reason it’s so inspiring is because it shows anyone can make money with the right mindset and the right education.

Sure not everyone is going to become as rich as “the turtles” - but the opportunity exists and everyone can earn an income that more than compensates for the effort.

So the moral of the story is work smart, get a simple system, have confidence in it and apply it with discipline - if you can do that your on the road to currency trading success and a life changing income.