Steps To Trading Live and be a successful trader (1)

Steps To Trading Live and be a successful trader (1)

Trading live is the goal of every trader. We start out wanting to make a bundle from the markets, but invariably something goes wrong along the way. There are several reasons why trading live didn’t work out.

Many new traders are uncertain as to the process to trading live. Many questions come to mind. What to do first? What happens next? How long should I demo trade for ? Am I ready to go live? How much should I fund an account with?

If these are the same questions you have, then this article will be just for you!

What I have found is there is a kind of formula that you can use to make your jump from demo trading to live trading a lot smoother and less uncertain.
Following this formula will help you become a profitable trader a lot faster. Those who want their fortune immediately will fail to follow the steps and never reach their trading goals.

The basic steps are:

1. Get some charts (demo account).
2. Learn your trading system.
3. Double your demo account.
4. Open the smallest possible live account.
5. Add additional funds.
6. Only use 1/3 of your fundable money

Step 1 – Get Some Charts (demo account) 

You need charts to trade. Plain and simple. Next you will need to get your hands dirty by messing with those charts. You will have to manipulate them and get used use them. Opening a demo account will provide you with these charts, and I know where to get some of the best charts for free!

The best free charts are called “MataTrader4” charts. They are free… did I mention they are free? They are free, most brokers offer them with a demo account, and they are very user-friendly.

They provide me with not only a wide array of FX currency pairs, but with a handful of the other things we like to watch: Gold, Silver, Oil and S&P500.

Fill out the form, be sure to choose MetaTrader4.
(MetaTrader5 is not widely used and probably won’t be for years to come)

Download indicators and trading systems from ForexWinners and install your charts, following the instructions step by step.
Read well about Price Action and Money Management.

Get familiar with how to use them. Open, modify and close some random trades.
Draw lines, scroll back and forth, press an assortment of buttons. Get to know how your trading platform works.

Step 2 – Learn Your Trading System

This is an important step. There is something called “System Hopping”. Every new trader is a hopper, and that’s fine. But at some point, you are going to have to make a commitment to a single trading system.

System hoppers are looking for:
1. A better system
2. A system that better suits their trading personality
3. The Holy Grail.

Along the way, there will be a realization that the Holy Grail doesn’t exist. The best you will be able to find or create will be a system that has great consistency.
Your system will have a decent win-loss ratio. This win-loss ratio can refer to the number of trades or the number of pips. Some good systems (most good systems) will have a higher number of wins than losses. A few systems will have many small losses and a few large wins that make up for the losses and then some. Either way, your good system, will enable you to come out ahead over a certain period of time. A 65% win and 35% loss ratio is great!

Once you have gone on your Forex trading system search, you will finally settle on a system that you like and feel comfortable with. This might be a system you created or bought, or a mixture of the two. Whatever the case, you have your system, now it’s time to get to know this system inside and out.

You want to learn how your system performs in every market condition. You want to learn what kind of win-loss ratio your system has. You want to know what kind of losing streaks your system has and what kind of winning streaks it has.

These kind of discoveries will be uncovered initially in back-testing your system.
You will do this by scrolling the charts backwards and then seeing all the trades  you could have taken, paying close attention to the losers as well as the winners.  You can do this by simply seeing the trades as they have happened. This will give you some confidence in your trading system. Next, you will want to not only scroll backwards in time, but move forward one candle at a time, not seeing what the next candles are.

This kind of back-testing gives you confidence in your trading system, you will need this confidence when you are trading live.

You want to be able to trust your trading system. This is critically important because your system will be giving you signals to take trades when the future is uncertain.

Stop the system hopping and devote some good time to learning one system.  One decent system when traded consistently will make you money, system hopping will never ever make you money in any kind of long term way.

In the next article we will talk about the last 4 steps :
3. Double your demo account.
4. Open the smallest possible live account. 
5. Add additional funds.
6. Only use 1/3 of your fundable money