For centuries people involved in skill-professions such as athletes, dancers, musicians or painters practice before they actually do any work. It is obvious that a series of practice can bring a better performance. This made me wonder whether it is advisable to have a “warm-up” trading session before diving into real forex trading? Are few daily sessions of “warm-up” demo trading important for your success?
For some forex traders “warm up” is in the form of demo trading. Trying out the trades at the demo account and see how things play out encourages to switch to live account and place trades that worked fine in demo.
Other traders go for micro lots as a warm up. This is definitely has a desired effect of practice since, no matter now little, you use the real money. It causes traders to be more careful than when practicing with demo account.
Perhaps a “warm up” can also be psychological – you can review your forex strategy, trading plan, money management, psychologically prepare yourself for another day of trading. The “warm up” can also involve observing. If you watch the market from the start till the close without trading it can give you interesting insights and new trading ideas which can later on be adopted to your strategy planning. Practice forex trading can lead to learning a new skill, something you have never noticed before. Watching without trading is not as dumb as it sounds. Sometimes a calm state of mind can open doors to new understanding and awareness.
Let’s also consider the visualization practice. Rehearsing trading mentally can be very helpful. Visualization practice involves imagining your trades. This is not only the “practice without failure” but also a confidence booster. Experiencing even the imaginary success increases confidence and therefore leads to better success in real trading.
Metal model of your trading day is an overall picture of how things fit together and influence your trading objectives. The time spent imagining profitable trades will improve your performance. For most people trading is hard enough without pushing further. The extra steps I am talking about here are tricky and most people never get to make them. Success is not easy to achieve. If it was, it wouldn’t be outstanding and rare… We wouldn’t even call it success!
It is nice to believe that everyone is naturally gifted in a certain field and all you have to do is to find the field and be great in it from day one. Unfortunately in most cases it doesn’t work this way. In most cases without experience or practice success is not evident.
Let’s accept it – success in forex trading is not given to anyone and most likely you were not born with the trading skills. Forex trading requires a lot of practice and hard work. Look at all the successful traders. They devote most hours to practice and learning. Not only the improvement of the performance is involved – successful trader pushes the quest for knowledge beyond the current level of competence. The trick is not to stop learning once you start profiting. It is important to seek the unknown, get feedback on the results and repeat what you have learned so far.
The crucial part of practice is consistency. It is important to practice on average the same amount of time on a daily basis, even on weekends! So when markets are closed, you can still work on your skills with demo accounts.
Seeking a constant improvement allows forex traders to process new information deeper and use it better. New perspectives give the ultimate push towards trying to get better at trading.
Achieving greatness is demanding and many of us quit before even trying. However, in my point of view, the success is not held in reserve for the “chosen ones”. It is right in front of you, me and everyone else in this world.
