Forex Trading and Patience

by Trader Rich

Do you despise waiting in line? Are you constantly
in a race against time? Patience is defined as calmness, self-control,
and willingness or ability to tolerate delay.

I took an online patience test yesterday because I was curious of how I compared to the norm. My score was 48/100 which put me surprisingly in the middle. I'm mentioning this because over the past couple of months, I have made a conscious effort to improve my patience as it relates to trading. I remember the days when I was trading too much. I would trade at all hours of the day and many times just to be in the market. I didn't have the patience to wait for a setup and would jump to conclusions or assumptions before the setup materialized. Sometimes I would actually win but many times I would also lose. The biggest issue with my impatience was that it formed some really bad habits. I am now just starting to fix them.

Part of my "therapy" was to set a realistic monthly goal of 260 pips. 260 pips don't sound like a lot over a month's time and there is the possibility of making this on 1 trade. I felt that setting a daily or weekly goal only contributed to overtrading. For example, it is Wednesday, July 5th and I have yet to make a trade in the month of July. If I had a 60 pip weekly goal, I might have felt forced to enter the market this week just to reach that goal. Instead, I don't care if I trade this week or not. I still have 18 trading days left to reach my monthly goal.

Want to test your patience? http://www.queendom.com/tests/minitests/patience_access.html

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