One of the biggest misconceptions that you can have about forex trading is that you can quickly start making a living from it in a relatively short period of time. Patience in forex trading eventually pays off as it allows you to sit back a bit and wait for the right trading setup. If there is one thing that ensures a high probability of winning, it is having the patience to grasp all the necessary information before you trade. Understanding how important patience is while you start learning to trade will completely change the trajectory of your performance in the long run and help you achieve your goals faster.

Once you know the reasons why you want to learn how to trade and you have set some goals, you need to understand that there is no quick way to make money while trading. Learning how to trade requires hard work, knowledge, discipline, commitment, dedication and above all patience. The problem is that most traders are trading with little or no patience because they want to make money now and have a skewed concept of what ‘making money fast’ actually means. In the forex market you may spend 3 months going sideways due to lack of opportunities, then suddenly make a quarter of your annual return within a fortnight. It is the ability to wait for these low-risk/high-probability opportunity flows to come along that separates the successful from the struggling.

Successful traders know through bitter experience over many years that without patience and strong discipline, their trading capital will not be preserved and their chances of trading profitability are much diminished. They know the virtue of patience and the importance of being selective about which trades they execute and to let profitable trades run their course. Unsuccessful traders on the other hand are typically less disciplined and more impatient in their trading. They succumb to human emotions, second-guessing their analysis and/or professional advice and are less stringent in their trading/risk management.

Another thing that urges a trader to lose patience is when a trading signal had failed in the past. This pushes traders to be emotional and overtrade in an effort to regain a loss. If there is one thing failure teaches us, it is to be more careful the next time. Act suddenly and the losses will not only double, but triple or quadruple… Avoid impatience at all times. It would help to let things slide for a while, take your time, and always bear in mind that good returns in trading as in life will take time. It would be fatal to invest and expect positive results right away.

You can learn to trade successfully if you are patient enough to educate yourself. However, becoming a successful trader, even if you have the best mentor, doesn’t happen overnight. You can’t expect yourself to know everything right away. It takes a lot of time and practice. Committing yourself to an effective trading strategy requires patience and discipline to follow the rules. You have to really learn and master it, rather than jumping from one strategy to the next. You have to sharpen your trading skills through practice and experience.