
Discovering Your Personal Trading Style
TarMarHan Posted 9 Apr. in #Article Contest #Scalping #Day Trading #Trading Style #Carry Trading #Behavioural Finance #Forex Trading Strategies14/31
Ranking

Introduction
The journey to success in Forex trading begins with self-introspection and discovering the trading style and strategies that suit your objectives, risk appetite, lifestyle and own unique circumstances. It is imperative to find a trading technique that is in sync with your personality than to try to conform to someone else's idea of a "proper trader". This article seeks to help traders discover their own trading styles.

The first port of call is assessing you level skill, competence and preparedness for the task of Forex trading by answering a series of questions. These questions if answered correctly will help in moulding a top notch trader. The best trading style for any individual depends on many factors including the reasons to trade, availability, work preferences, requirement for flexibility and level of patience
- Reasons to trade:
- What made you interested in trading in the first place?
- What are you aiming to get out of your trading?
- What will a successful trading business mean?
- How will trading fit in with the other areas of your life?
- Capacity and availability
- Can you devote a certain time to trading every day the markets are open? (yes / no)
- Can you focus exclusively on the markets during market hours without distraction? (yes / no)
- How much time can you devote each day to run your trading rules? (hours)
- How much time outside market hours are you able to devote to research and development of your trading system? (hours)
- Work preferences
- Studying macroeconomic trends (1-10)
- Searching for a bargain / value that no one else has identified (1-10)
- Searching for relationships between different things to find opportunity (1-10)
- Making quick / nimble decisions to take advantage of short term opportunities (1-10)
- Looking for profitable patterns that can predict future moves (1-10)
- Performing complex mathematical studies and programming (1-10)
- Developing and testing logical rules using simple mathematics (1-10)
- Identifying a trend and taking advantage of it for as long as possible (1-10)
In answering these questions one will be able to determine if they are more suited to fundamental trading or technical trading. If the answers to the first 4 questions score highly then the trader is more suited to fundamental trading whilst if answers to the last four questions are high scoring then technical trading may be best suited.
- Flexibility
- Follow a set of rules every day regardless of whether you ‘think’ that they are right or wrong on this particular occasion (1-10)
- Perform a set of tasks every day or week to ensure you don’t miss an opportunity (1-10)
- Apply flexible judgment to your decisions depending on what makes sense at the time (1-10)
- Patience
- I am comfortable waiting as long as it takes to maximize the profit from a particular trade. If a trade takes months to reach its maximum profit, so be it (1-10)
- I am comfortable doing nothing until I get a trading signal, I am happy not placing a single trade for weeks knowing that my system will get me in at the right time (1-10)
- I am willing to give a profitable trade some room to move rather than taking profits now knowing that this improves my profitability in the long term (1-10)
- I want to place trades regularly – every day is preferable (1-10)

Having answered these simple questions, review each of the common trading strategies to select the one which make the most sense for you based on your answers and the descriptions provided. These questions will start you on your way, but it is highly recommended to keep a trading journal in which you record your journey in detail on an ongoing basis. Some of the more common trading styles are discussed below.
- Daily or Weekly Trend Following
- Carry Trading
- [b]Day Trading
[/b] Although the most active Forex trading times are specific, the Forex market is always moving. Depending on your schedule, you can pick and choose your time frame to plan, carry out trades and watch the market develop. This strategy will usually involve closing out all the open positions at the end of the day or hedging them out significantly to reduce downside risk overnight.
- Scalping

Trading is a continuous journey of growth and self-awareness leading to greater and greater profitability. Theoretically there is no best trading strategy for any individual trader but it is possible design a near perfect system that will ensure long term profitability.