Successful Forex Trader Characteristic

What I meant by successful trader here is he or she is able to make enough money from trading the currency to sustain his expense and lifestyle. I am not referring to those that make millions from trading.

Personally I did not make a million from trading but I am able to trade currency full time for a living allowing me to quit my day job as an engineer. After trading for several years and have undergo several highs and lows in my trading career, I finally understand what makes a successful trader and this alone allows me to make enough income from trading to replace my salary as an engineer.

Here are the characteristics:

1) Do Not Rush Into Things: This is the character that most new traders lack of. Most new traders wanted to make money fast and do not want to spend months to learn the rope in trading. To be frank, you need at least 6 months to a year of learning and practicing in order to be able to make money from trading. If you are not committed to this time line, please do not waste your time and money trading currency and I strongly suggest that you spend your time and money on something else.

2) Highly Discipline: All successful traders are very discipline in their trading and they do not trade for the sake of trading. They enter their trades with proper analysis and planning and they will never trade when their setup did not appear. The common problem with new traders is that they love to take position and they always make sure that they place one or two trades per day. What is the point of placing trades that makes you lost money?

3) Good Risk Management: There is no way you can stay profitable if you are always getting out of your profit position when you hit 10 pips but you place your stop loss at 20 pips. This is because it will give you a risk reward ratio of 1: 2 which means that you need 2 wins to balance out your 1 loss.

All successful traders have a risk reward ratio of at least 2: 1. With this ratio, you can still be profitable even if you win 5 out of every 10 trades. Therefore you definitely need to work on your risk management if you want to become a full time trader one day.