
When you trade currencies, you have the chance to make a lot of money, which is something that every investor should try to find out. When you think about how big forex trading is, it’s important to know not only what the best traders make, but also how they make it and what makes them different from the rest.
Most forex traders use their free margin to increase their trading power and, by extension, their potential earnings. However, margin trading is just one part of their success. In forex, what is free margin? It’s basically the amount of money you have in your account that you can use to open a position by borrowing margin from your online broker.
Again, this is just one trait of forex traders who make a lot of money. Here are some of the other things that the best forex traders in the world all have in common.
When you look at the numbers
Everyone’s experience with forex trading is different, but if you look at the very best forex traders, you’ll see that the percentages they turn over each year and each month are truly amazing. Most traders check their margins once a month, and it wouldn’t be surprising to see a professional trader make between 5% and 15% per month over the course of a year, with a few bad months in the middle.
Keeping this in mind, a top trader would make 120% if he or she made an average of 10% each month over the course of a year. This would mean that a total of $100,000 could be turned into $220,000, making a profit of $120,000. This is just an example, but the best forex traders usually make six figures (or more) a year, and the things above show how that can happen.
Trying to figure out what things affect trade performance
How much money you have will directly affect how much money you can make from forex trading. As you can see from the above example, the people who make the most money can play the odds and get big returns because they have a lot of money to invest. You can build things up slowly, but there’s a reason why the best traders always have a lot of money.
If you want to be a top-earning trader, it’s also important to know how to use leverage well. When this phrase is used, it means that you can trade for more money than you have. How you use leverage in any way is tied to how you feel about risk. If you want to use leverage on a large scale to try to make more money, you’ll have to take bigger risks, which can have both positive and negative effects on your account.
Last, the currencies you trade will have a big effect on how much money you make or lose. Some currencies grow slowly, which is why beginners and traders with a lot of money like them. Other currencies have a real “snap,” which means they are volatile, risky, and could make you more money if you trade them.
Taking a look at how professional traders are different from everyone else
It’s been said before, but it makes sense: professional forex traders make up 1% of the market, while the other 99% are made up of people who trade for fun. This is because professional traders and casual traders have very different ways of dealing with the market. If you look at how professional traders are different from everyone else, you will see that it has a lot to do with their mindset and how they work.
Casual traders are known for not being picky about the trades they enter, which shows how impatient they are. They also have a history of letting fear, greed, and emotions get in the way of what could otherwise be a good trading strategy. Casual traders can make money, and many do. However, letting emotions take over and always looking for the next “quick fix” position in the market usually hurts performance.
When trading forex as a business, patience and discipline are without a doubt the most important things. Top traders know how damaging emotions like fear and greed can be, so they don’t rush to buy or sell when prices are moving quickly. Even if you could say they are sometimes stubborn, they stick to a system and see a trading plan through to the end. Instead of buying and selling at the first sign of a common trend and judging their success or failure based on a single trade, they look at a series of trades rather than a single trade to see how well they did.
This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what professional traders do differently from everyone else. But as you can see, the way top traders think is what makes them successful and may give them an edge in the forex market.
Taking care of your feelings and getting over your fears
Aside from not knowing enough about the market, one of the biggest risks for new traders is making trades based on their feelings instead of what makes the most sense.
Forex traders put a lot of time and effort into making a trading strategy that looks at trade opportunities in an objective, data-driven way. But if you let your emotions take over—for example, by ignoring signs that you should get out of a position to try to make more money or by making a bad trade to try to make up for a loss from a previous trade—you can end up in a much deeper financial hole.
Top forex traders have learned how to avoid making hasty decisions that are based on emotions or fear. They did this by coming up with a foolproof way to evaluate trades without letting their feelings get in the way. And they have trained themselves to stick to that plan, even when their emotions tell them to follow a gut feeling and try to make money. Every professional trader should try to trade forex without letting their feelings get in the way.
Stepping up to become one of the best traders
If you’ve put time into forex trading but haven’t seen your account fill up with money, or if you’ve just found yourself asking, “What’s next?”, it’s time to become a professional trader. Anyone who wants to trade for a living needs to know that it’s pretty much a full-time job. You can’t say enough about how important it is to keep an eye on the markets.
In addition to changing your mind, which will take time, you also need to be willing to change how you trade. Any professional trader can do the basics better than most, but this is just a starting point, not the end goal. Most people think that a casual trader won’t be able to use trading systems and strategies that are more complicated, but professionals will know how to use them at will. Research, education, and practice can help you get used to advanced trading systems that can make a big difference in how well you do in forex trading.
Any part-time trader who wants to trade professionally also needs to think about how to reinvest profits, how much money to invest, and how to handle risks. Stepping up to become a top trader is possible, but it’s not something anyone should take lightly, since it can be a very difficult process.
The best traders may make $60,000 or more a year, but this doesn’t just happen. This group of traders is able to do so well because they look at the market in a different way. So, if you want to start making as much as the best traders, you need to be ready to build, change, and rework your forex trading.