Deciding On A Forex Trading Plan

By Charles Thomas

Success in Forex trading requires knowing yourself and the market, because different trading styles rely on different trading plans. You need to know what kind of trader you are in order to create a trading plan.

Trading strategies depend on the type of person you are. Are you keen to monitor the market spending much time and energy or are you the kind of person who would prefer to have all this done for you? There are essentially three kinds of traders. You must decide on what type of trader you want to be.

Short Term trading, also known as being an active or day trader, requires you to actively trade in and out of the market. Forex market trading may last between only a few seconds to minutes. Profit is acquired through price fluctuations. In the Forex market, the pip fluctuation can be very narrow, so profits are made from either 1 to 2 pips. Unless a Forex robot is assisting you, careful viewing of the market is required.

Mid Term traders: Time frames for mid term traders is almost as short as it is for short term traders. Mid term traders trade for just a few minutes or hours and generally do not hold trades for longer than a day. Though mid term traders make trades on price fluctuations, they prefer to stay on the momentum of the market for a little longer. They prefer to make profitable trades often and then stop to make assessment on the market before resuming their trading activity.

Long Term traders: These are usually not individual traders but large institutions or hedge funds. Trading positions can be held for long periods over weeks, months or more than a year. Since individual traders want to make profits quickly they do not prefer long time trading.

No matter the decision, a specific trading discipline must be developed and practiced. It is important to focus on one trading style and master it.

When beginning, if you do not like the style you originally opted with it is fine to change it. You will run into problems if you mix short and long term trades unless you have expertise in the field. New traders should stick to one style and never change a trade from what you originally had planned it to be. Should your plan not follow through as you had wanted then take your exit plan. It is very important to not base future trading styles on a trade itself as that can only bring bad news in the future.

Any type of trading, whether forex or others requires discipline. You should practice this by choosing and developing your trading strategy which should be based on your trading style, and never moving away from it. - 31876

About the Author:

Sign Up for our Free Newsletter

Enter email address here