Forex Trading Mind

I didn’t post yesterday as it was a very quiet Monday with not much going on in the market, and I knew anyway that after last night’s debate of the two major U.S. presidential candidates I probably would have something to say, so here it goes.

The big day is finally here: within a few hours, we will all know whether the Federal Reserve is raising interest rates this month of September. It has been the major topic of fundamental debate in the Forex market for quite some time now.

Over the past few days I have been writing about strategies that buy the currencies that are going up the most strongly and sell the currencies that are going down the most strongly.

These days I am fortunate enough to struggle with the issue of whether I make as much profit as I “should”. When I was starting out as a trader, and this might be familiar to some of you, I struggled with trying to break even, let alone actually pocketing any profit. I tried a whole lot of stuff and would arrive at a “tearing my hair out” moment where I wanted to yell “Can somebody just tell me what the hell works???”

A few days ago I wrote about how financial markets often get really quiet over the summer, especially during August when many market participants are away on holiday. Then as September gets underway, there are often some big moves which start a major multi-month direction.

Last night I was reading a thread on a well-known Forex forum that was written by a guy who had developed his own Forex trend trading strategy. I got the feeling that he was a young and relatively inexperienced trader, but as rigid systems go, he had come up with a pretty good system and a good attitude. I wish him every success.

I was thinking this morning that it is easy enough to trade with the trend, but what about the times when there are no trends, or when everything is moving against the prevailing trend? Easy enough in the sense, by the way, that you can have some measurement to define a trend that is fairly simple to define and follow and that works over time.

The best way to learn how to trade Forex is by looking at real-life examples from the market, so while last Friday is still fresh in our minds, it is worth taking a look at what happened and to relate that to what I wrote in my last posting.