The importance of being organized

Beginner Questions Trading Psychology
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When talking about trading, especially forex trading where the tempting overuse of leverage and get rich quick mentality gets the most out of traders there are some key factors one needs to considerate.

One of them, as I can tell from my experience is being organized. The importance of this element goes far beyond trading. Think about taking the bus, you rely on other people to be organized in order for you to get to your destination on time. The bus driver must be on schedule, stop lights must be synced, the route must be prepared and so on.

In almost every aspect of your life you experience this trait and almost, inevitably, you’ll have to embrace it regardless the career you’ll follow.

Below, I will briefly describe my typical trading day:

I get up around 6:00 am and after my morning routine, a little bit of exercise, shower, breakfast, I open my laptop and I look at the current trading prices for the currencies I’ve traded/monitored and then I look at my previous trading day.

I want to see if I entered the trade to soon or too late, if I could have stayed longer or maybe exited sooner, I want to get a correlation or enforce one based on the price action (news I might have overlooked, trading patterns/setups I might have missed).

In order to accurately do this I keep a trading journal, I take a print screen of the chart for two time frames when I place an order and also when I’m existing the trade. I have a numbered system on which I note this print screens correlated with a notebook I keep in which I also note down the entry price, SL, TP and the exit price plus my profit or loss on that particular position. This way I can match my writings in my notebook with the print screen of that trade.

Towards the end of my morning I try to envision the rest of the trading day. Am I waiting for a signal here? Do I believe the selloff will continue there ? Do I wait for today’s FOMC Meeting to see the market reaction? and so on.

At 9:00 am I leave for work where I constantly monitor the market and my orders or my ongoing trades. I don’t, under any circumstances tamper with the SL of my trades, I do, sometimes move the TP.

I have a few rules of my own that helped me maintain a stable balance of my account and gain some pips at the end of the year.

I don’t over trade. Maybe it’s silly or doesn’t work for other traders but I have a maximum of two trades per day and a maximum exposure of 6% of my account.

As stated before, I never move the stop loss of my position and never trade without it (TP as well). I don’t care what I think is going to happen in the market or how deadly serious I believe that moving the SL will turn a bad trade into a good one I don’t do it.

I don’t know where the market is going, I can only make an assumption based on my past trades, what I’ve learned and what my instinct dictates. I always open a position with this in mind.

I try to keep my relationship with this environment as humble as possible and remind myself that each day is a new trading day and if yesterday’s trades were easy today’s might be choppy.

I don’t believe in missing out on an opportunity. I better wait for the confirmation signals rather than jumping on a trade to gain those “early pips” just to enforce my beliefs upon the market.

I have a goal. I’ve underestimated this aspect for a very long period of my trading life, never really thought it to be important - I was dead wrong. Without having a destination you can’t really figure out all the stops in between and this can be problematic and negatively impact your trading activity.

In closing, I feel the need to address one more aspect of my trading venture: I don’t trade for money. What I mean by this is that I don’t rely on profits from trading to pay my bills, I am just simply trying to enhance my savings. I believe this to be a very important aspect because it’s not stressful, I’m not constantly looking for trades or pips or enforce beliefs on the market based on a hunch just because the rent is due.

I hope all of you out there find the right trading setup suitable for you and constantly make pips out of it.

All will be well,

  • P.
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Excellent post mate. The beauty of trading out of comfort & not necessity definitely eases the tension on things. Very detailed & I think what separates the good traders from the bad traders is discipline. You have to learn to just monitor the trades and don’t be in a hurry to jump in on the profits, as well as setting up adequate stop losses because trades do go against us every here and there. But I love this post very detailed & really hitting honestly here!!!

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Nice post, how long have you been trading, it seems like you have a lot of experience,

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Thank you for this post @Pdrano! :smiley: Very well said, and in my case, very timely! :smiley: Haha. I’m still trying to develop a trading routine that works for me even if I have a job and errands to do around the house. This might help me become more organized (and hopefully, profitable. :sweat_smile:) You mentioned that you have a maximum of 2 trades per day. So, what do you do if you’ve already placed 2 trades, but you spot another good one? :open_mouth: Anyway, thanks again for this post! :smiley: It was very helpful. :blush:

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Hey @jorgemontero, I’ve been learning and trading since 2008 and on a live account since 2016

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Hey ria_rose, thank you for your comment! I hope you’ll find your groove and start making those pips on a regular. About your question, I have to say that I don’t open a new position or if this new setup is so good I close one of the open positions and shift to this other great one. This rules that I’ve mentioned serve merely as a guideline and helped me achieve what I want but, by now to be honest with you they became more like habits of mine. I don’t open lots of positions because I don’t want to expose my account and, again, judging from my experience you’ll have to maintain that cautious state of mind every day you trade because, otherwise a few “bending the rules here” and misjudging some signals there can spell disaster for your account.

Once again, I hope you’ll keep trading and develop that winning strategy that works for you.

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Yeah. I agree with this! :smiley: Thanks for answering my question @Pdrano! And I wish you all the best in your trading too! Go catch them pips! Haha. :smiley:

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This makes sense. I don’t think you can trade objectively knowing you won’t be able to put food on the table or pay the bills if you lose.

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Thanks for sharing, very detailed explanation. Interesting to know also that you were studying a long time before going live, Studying andprectice are key!

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Hi P! Thanks for sharing this! It is indeed very helpful for a newbie like me to take note. :slight_smile:

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Thank you for giving us your experience. I want to ask, by following the rules and routines how much is your average of monthly growth?

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Thanks a million pips😅

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Hey @forexhead! My monthly growth is about 1% on average.

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Being organized is a process that takes some time. Any trader can develop this quality with his practice and concerns with trading. It is up to his routine how much trades he can easily organize. One thing that is important how to be a disciplined trader. May be he is not good in start but some experience and meaningful trading will bring a big change in his trading behavior as well as to manage trading psychology.

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Organized trading approach can help a foreign currency exchange trader to obtain his trading goals. Even a forex trader must try to realize what he will require to achieve from his trading journey and this systematic trading journey can help him towards the achievement of his goals.

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Love this post, yessss discipline and organisation are very important in this game

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Being organized is very important especially in forex trading, firstly it saves time because you plan your work in a manner that you can easily access at any time you want. The time you could have wasted is used to do other important task hence increasing your scaleproductiion.

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I think being organized really helps in boosting efficiency and productivity. For me organization is a big part of becoming a successful trader.

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Totally agree, thanks for sharing your daily schedule. It’s definitely important to be organised, especially in these market conditions.

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Well said… being organised helps you to remain clear with your thoughts and goals. Basically gives you clear vision.