In this 30 minute video, I show you how to make a top-down supply and demand analysis and mark your horizontal and diagonal support and resistance lines on a EURUSD price chart. I appologize for my poor English!

Trading is mostly a game of patience. You need to learn to be a good hunter. A hunter that stays behind the bush and shoots at the perfect time is a good hunter. If you just sit there in plain sight and run after your prey, you are a lousy hunter… Don’t chase the market, plan your trades, be patient and let it come to you. When the market enters your territory, shoot! No remorse, just execute according to the plan and manage your risk.

EURUSD short at 1.2928

See this trade I made today? While price was going up, I had the nerve to sell when the moment was right. I’ve been stalking this trade since London open today. When price hit my red thick level, when it entered my territory, I shot it. This might be hard from a psychological point of view, since you have to go against the market. While everybody is buying, you have to be tough enough to sell to the novice buyers. When you have obvious levels of support/resistance, like you see in that chart, you have a high probability setup in front of you. Of course, you need to pay attention to momentum. In this case, although momentum was very bullish and price was moving rapidly into my level, I still shorted the market, since today’s movement was overextended, as EUR/USD has an average daily range of about 160 pips. Since we moved 200 pips up, chances were getting very low that price would continue further. These are the clues you need to look for. Usually, you want more than one reason for entering a trade. Support and resistance should ALWAYS be one of the reasons.

If you’ve been trading for some years without success, I dare to say that the problem is not the way you analyse the market, but YOU. You are focusing on the wrong things. Let me explain.

Trading is not a get rich quick scheme. It takes a lot of hard work and dedication (like in any other business) in order to succeed. How many years did a lawyer learn before getting a job? And yet people expect to succeed in trading in a matter of weeks or months. You need to understand the concept of delayed gratification and stop focusing on your external wishes. Internalize instead of externalizing. In other words, instead of thinking about making money and spending your vacations in Hawaii, you should focus on being consistent and executing your trades the best you can. Stop setting daily/weekly/monthly targets and dreaming about 100% profits in x days. Instead, take a note of every trade you take, write down the reasons for entering them, your feelings before opening trades and after closing them, plan everything and never trade chaotically. Basically, you need to treat Forex like a business, instead of a casino. If you want to be in the game on the long run, you need to take your trades based on your brains instead of your “guts”.

So, to summarize:

• shift your focus from the external desires to the internal: focus on consistency, on becoming a good trader, NOT on making money. your aim is to be consistent and gain an edge in the market, not to make millions in a few months. PATIENCE PAYS!
• take note of every move you make (pen and paper are holy), so that you keep yourself accountable and disciplined. LEARN FROM YOUR MISTAKES!
• use strict money management rules and NEVER ENTER A TRADE UNLESS THE PROFIT MARGIN IS AT LEAST EQUAL TO YOUR RISK!
• do not risk more than 1% of your account balance on open trades. So, the total risk of all your open trades at one moment in time should not be more than 1%. That will allow you to stay in the game long enough and learn from your mistakes. Overleveraging = Gambling.

These are simple and boring rules, I know. But trust me, if you don’t stand by them, you will not succeed. You are not in this for the thrill. If you are in it for the adrenaline, I’d suggest you go to your local casino. Trading is a business and you need to treat it as a business. It doesn’t have to be exciting, it just has to be profitable.