2Bull Forex Blog

If you want to succeed at forex trading then you need to be able to answer the question in this article. If you can’t answer it then you are going get wiped out by the markets so here it is…

What’s your Trading edge (defined)

Now before you answer this question let me tell you what a trading edge is NOT:

- You have a day trading or forex scalping system

- You think you can predict forex prices

- You think forex moves to a scientific formula

- You have a simulated track record from a vendor you have bought

- You like to buy low and sell high

- You think you can trade expert opinion and news

- You think you are clever

- You think you have a complicated system that can beat the market

Most forex traders think the above will give them a trading edge - but believe any of the above and the market will take all your money and do it quickly.

Think about this simple fact:

95% of traders lose money in the market and you need to think what your edge is i.e why you should succeed while others fail.

Now let’s be clear - anyone has the potential to be a successful forex trader yet few succeed. The reason most fail is they believe common myths like the ones on the above list, or they don’t have the right mindset.

Successful forex trading is built on three pillars:

- Knowledge and understanding and getting the right forex education

- Confidence in your method to make money longer term

- The discipline to follow your forex trading system through periods of drawdown to ultimate success

Your trading edge is not just about a method, it’s about having confidence in it, so you can have the discipline to apply it through drawdown and emerge a long term winner.

Forex trading is simple and your method needs to be too.

A simple method works best because it is more robust in the face of brutal market conditions and has fewer elements to break than a complicated one. Furthermore, it will be easier to understand and have confidence in.

If you think that you need to be clever or put a lot of effort into your trading think again - you get rewarded for being right with your trading signal and market timing, nothing else. Sure in many jobs you get paid for effort but in forex trading it’s all about being right.

So do you know what your trading edge is? If you don’t and you can’t define it, then its back to learning forex and your forex education until you do.

I bought a currency trading system and the track record was outstanding, it only traded Japanese Yen V US Dollar and it cost me just a few hundred dollars. Here I am going to give you my experience with this system called “Mega Yen”.

This story is from 1990 and you probably won’t be surprised to learn that I lost all my money however here is a lesson for anyone buying a system, as the disclaimer on this system is still used today and if you fall for it you will lose to. The disclaimer is printed below. At the time I never paid any attention to it and over a decade later, people are still selling systems using this disclaimer read it carefully:

“CFTC RULE 4.41 - Hypothetical or simulated performance results have certain limitations. Unlike an actual performance record, simulated results do not represent actual trading. Also, since the trades have not been executed, the results may have under-or-over compensated for the impact, if any, of certain market factors, such as lack of liquidity. Simulated trading programs in general are also subject to the fact that they are designed with the benefit of hindsight. No representation is being made that any account will or is likely to achieve profit or losses similar to those shown“.

Of course at the time I was naïve and simply accepted the track record and didn’t bother reading the disclaimer which meant the vendor simply made it up!

Does this continue today?

Yes it does and 99% of Currency trading systems sold on the net use it. Just like me forex traders who are naïve greedy or both simply accept the track record and trade the system and the market takes their money.

The vendor of course has a guaranteed profit and the reason he simulates a track record in hindsight, he doesn’t have a real one - is he knows it won’t work so doesn’t bother trading it! There is a better way to make money…

He knows he can get a guaranteed profit from a sale and can let the naïve forex trader take the loss.

So what’s the lesson?

Pretty obvious really - if it looks to good to be true, it probably is and never trust a simulated track record from a vendor. Think about it - if he hasn’t had the confidence in his own currency trading system to trade it, why should you trust it?

There is a lot of money to be made in forex trading but its not easy and there is no “free lunch” In fact, you can devise your own forex trading system in around a week and this is a far better way to trade.

In part 2 of this article we will look at making your own simple profitable currency trading system and devising a forex trading strategy for long term currency trading success.

When you have been trading the online currency market for as long as I have, you begin to gain an intuitive sense of when something seems out of place or sounds too good to be true. The forex market is still largely unregulated, so brokers and companies offering training can make off-the-wall hyped up claims and there will be nobody like the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to step in and put them in their place (especially if the broker is not based in the United States).

When I first heard about the protected forex account, it was promoted as being a “risk free” investment, and when I heard those two words there were alarms going off in my head because as a seasoned trader I know that there is always risk associated with forex trading. So being the curious guy that I am, I decided to research a bit about what this type of account is all about, and from what I have seen it turns out that this type of forex trading setup actually is legit because it turns out to be a win-win situation for the broker and the trader in kind of a clever way.

Let’s start by defining exactly what a protected forex account entails (and this is information that I could only find from one broker, so it may not be accurate for all brokers offering this type of account). The terms of the protected forex account are as follows:

The protected forex account is much like an introductory APR rate on a new loan, as it is only a nice hook to pull in new traders. The broker will allow you to fund a mini account with up to $500, and you can trade with the typical level of 100:1 leverage. For the period of two weeks, you will be given a kind of “test run” for your trading account, and the broker will cover any of the losses that you sustain over the two week period. If your trading turns out to be profitable over the two weeks, you get to keep all of the profit in your account and continue to trade normally, at which point the regular trading rules apply again.

This is a good option for beginning traders because it functions like a funded demo account: it is impossible to lose money during this period because the broker will cover your losses if your account balance turns out to be negative. Many traders are still skeptical though, and one of the main questions that I have heard some forex traders ask about this type of account is “How is a broker able to offer this kind of setup and not lose a lot of money doing it?”

Remember that this type of account is available only for a two week period, and it is only available to a trader one time as an introductory offer, so they cannot keep going back again and again to take advantage of risk free trading. The reason the protected forex account is structured in this manner is to allow demo traders to ease into trading with real money without the fear of loss, and the maximum amount of money that can be put into a trading account is $500, but since most of these traders are filled with trepidation (or they would not be demo traders in the first place!) they will probably only put around $200 into the account. The most money that the broker can possibly lose with this kind of setup is the amount of money that the trader puts into the account, and that would only be when the trader is so bad that they run their account down to a margin call in two weeks.

On the flip side, if the account turns out to be profitable, what the broker has done is turned a demo trader into a confident live trader that is not afraid to trade with real money anymore. And because the broker makes a small amount of money on the spread for every trade that is placed, the amount of money that can potentially be earned from a single trader over a lifetime just from the spread alone is tens of thousands of dollars. So in the eyes of the broker this is a good investment because they can potentially gain thousands of dollars over the course of a few years (along with developing a trusting relationship with a new trader) by risking only a few hundred dollars, and it is good for the forex trader because they can progress from a demo account to a live account without the fear of losing money.