FOREX TRADING SKILLS TO BE ACQUIRED

To excel in any activity—whether it is mental, such as trading, or physical, such as swimming — we need to learn specialized skills. These skills give us the necessary requirements to look at, think about, and behave toward events in a manner different from what we may be used to or what we may have been taught.

However, beyond the sheer mechanics of the activity, which just about anyone can master, lies a particular thinking methodology or strategy that leads to excellence. Although few people have it, such a thinking methodology can nevertheless be learned.

Any thinking methodology requires a series of approaches to goals and problems. These approaches might be better described as mental techniques, even skills of thought application. For example, one such skill might be the ability to identify those conditions that are conducive to making a common trading error before it actually happens. Other techniques or skills include:

1. Learning the dynamics of goal achievement so you can stay positively focused on what you want, not what you fear.

2. Learning how to recognize the skills you need to progress as a forex trader and then stay focused on the development of those skills, instead of the money, which is merely a by product of your skills.

3. Learning how to adapt yourself to respond to fundamental changes in forex market conditions more readily.

4. Identifying the amount of risk you are comfortable with; your "risk comfort level" and then learn how to expand it in a way that is consistent with your ability to maintain an objective perspective of forex market activity.

5. Learning how to execute your forex trades immediately upon your perception of an opportunity.

6. Learning how to let the market tell you how much is enough, instead of assessing the potential from your personal value system of how much is enough.

7. Learning how to structure your beliefs to control your perception of forex market movement.

8. Learning how to achieve and maintain a state of objectivity.

9. Learning how to recognize "true" intuitive information and then learning how to act on it consistently throughout your forex trading behaviour.

Source: The Disciplined Trader