One of the biggest differences between the professional and the amateur traders is the general approach to their daily trading. Whether you are new to currency trading or a seasoned trader, you can always improve your trading skills. Trading is a business and like any good business, it requires trading discipline and positive habits to have the best chance at success. While the professionals follow a well laid out routine that allows them to find the best trades every week, the amateurs just stumble from one bad trade to the next bad trade and making is pure luck.

When we boil it down, traders keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again. Very often, there are just 2-3 things that a trader needs to change in order to achieve much better trading results. However, most are not aware of those problems and how close they are too profitable trading. Just by showing traders how much money they are losing and by making them aware of the expensive mistakes, many traders will change their behavior much faster. A trader without a routine or a trading journal does not even know what is keeping him from success – we will show you how a trading routine will change that.

Routines are there to save you from constantly reconsidering what you should only have to consider once. The truth is that making decisions is hard work for your brain. Good results come from optimizing performance and conserving resources. This applies to life as much as it does to trading. So what is the first thing a professional forex trader should in the morning? Well, they should start the day well rested, get the body moving, have a healthy breakfast and get to work. Most professional forex traders start the day early. The years of human evolution have tied our biorhythms to the movement of the sun and sticking to them will reflect positively both on your health and your trading.

Before you even put on your first trade you need to take a step back and think about what you are doing. The process of trading entails accepting a certain amount of risk to receive a specific reward. And the greater the risk the larger the potential reward. Also, you need to understand that you are participating in a business where you are trying to make money based on probabilities around a perceived edge in the market. If you want to build a long-term successful track record, your approach cannot rely on luck or gambling. You must know what your edge is, and if you don’t then you most likely do not have one.

Trading shouldn’t be some random event with no structure or solid approach and routine behind it, and if you make it into that you will end up gambling all your money away in the market. You need to develop your own trading routine that fits with your schedule and personality and then stick to that trading routine with ice-cold discipline so that you can see it work in your favor over a sample size of trades so that you have an opportunity to make money.