Most retail Forex traders who make it to the level of full-time or professional trading have a daily routine that is probably a lot different than what most amateur traders imagine. In reality, most professional traders interact with the market far less frequently than what most people might suspect, and this is especially true for pro traders who trade price action on the daily and four hour charts like I do.
I would like to take you on a trip through an average daily routine of a professional Forex price action trader. You might be surprised by some of what you read in today’s article. The point is to provide you with some insight into what full-time trading is all about. This insight will give you a clearer picture of the things you need to change or do in your current trading routine to help you become a professional trader.
– Get a good start to the trading day.
A professional trader knows that being in top mental condition is very important for sticking to a Forex trading plan and for analyzing the charts with the correct mindset. Since the mind and the body are intimately connected and have a great influence on one another, it’s necessary to make sure that your body is in peak condition if you want your mind to also be in peak condition.
Thus, the professional trader starts off each trading day with a healthy breakfast, waking up at a nice early hour so that the day does not slip away, and so that their trading routine gets started consistently each day. Professional traders treat trading as a business, since that’s what it is; they don’t trade haphazardly or leave anything to chance.
Another important part of any pro trader’s daily routine is exercise. We will touch on this later in the article, but for now it’s important to note that some pro traders exercise first thing in the morning. Exercising before you do anything else with your day is a great way to get the oxygen flowing
into your brain and get your body feeling good for the day’s activities. If you want to have a healthy brain you need to exercise your body, studies show that people who exercise regularly have more efficient and effective brain activity than people who do not exercise. Remember, the mind and body are connected, so what you do with and to your body will directly influence your mind and the way that you think.
– Check the markets.
After getting the trading day started on the right foot by exercising (if they exercise in the morning) and eating a healthy breakfast, professional traders then turn their attention to the markets for the first time that day.
The first thing any pro trader does when interacting with the markets each day is to check any open trades from the previous day. Depending on what happened over-night a professional trader will have to adjust the stop losses on any open positions, update their trading journal, or perhaps do nothing. If the pre-determined plan was to trail stops on an open position, a pro trader will take the time to find the most logical place to trail their stops up to, assuming the position has moved in their favor. If any trades have closed out over night, hitting either the target or stop loss level, a professional Forex trader will update their trading journal / spreadsheet to reflect these changes. This act of creating and updating a trading journal is very important, it’s what helps to keep you accountable and it is definitely one thing that separates professional traders from amateurs.
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