I was always pretty decent at picking directions but my biggest problem was not taking a loss when the trade became invalid and hoping it would turn around and also tried to hedge. The day I started to take early losses on invalid trades, I became profitable.
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The idea of profitability is different for each trader. Some feel profitable when they get a string of 8 wins in a row yet lose $5 for the week. Some traders feel profitable just by not losing money today.
But I kinda know what you’re getting at. The problem is, even though I may be profitable this week, next week I may lose some money. As long as I can pay my bills on time, I feel profitable. Trading can be a tough way to make a living.
My favorite mentor, Al Brooks, puts it so eloquently. He says to do three thing as a trader, in this order:
- Don’t lose money
- Make money
- Make a lot of money
I still float between all three. But as long as I’m mostly on the side of #2 and #3, I’m doing okay.
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There are many answers to this question with good and bad advice. But I am going to deviate from the masses here - because I know you (and whoever else is reading) are like me: an idiot. You don’t want to hear about the emotional and psychological trauma that trading will bring to you, you already think you are mentally prepared for this mental torture you are about to embark on. So if you are dead set on destroying your life (and God help you if you have a family and are dependent on your income to survive), then don’t do this.
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Figure out how to gain confidence in your analysis of the market and lose your fear of losing.
For me, I honed in on learning price action and I practiced it until i could do it well without much effort (like driving a car). I got my win rate up very high and also got my R:R high. By doing that I eliminated my fear of losing trades. When I lose a trade now I view it as an interesting event worthy of inspection and a learning opportunity but nothing more than that. Then back into the breach I go. 
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Sorry, I’m not trying to hog this post, but I don’t feel like I answered your question. I want you to try these few suggestions for a week (please keep an open mind). Let me know how it goes. If you want to at least increase your hit rate and have a chance to become more profitable, try this:
- Decrease your normal position size by 50%
- Increase your normal stop loss by 50%
- Switch to continuation trades only, no more reversals for a week.
- Absolutely no more fading the trends. With-trend only
- Use Buy Stop or Sell Stop orders only. No more limit orders for a while
- Cut the number of trades you normally take by at least 50%
- Swing trades only. No scalps. Otherwise the market will scalp you!
- Trade the Don’t-Give-A-Darn size. This means if your stop is hit, you hardly notice it. This way, you aren’t trading from a position of fear.
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For me, it was my stumble upon gold.
- Pip Diddy’s weekly review and scorecards
- Trading the Trend with Strong Weak Analysis
Thereafter, i combined the 2 and developed my own Currency Strong Weak Rankings, which allowed me to filter out lucrative pairs for trading on a daily basis.
I’m in the mist of developing my own currency SW rankings version 2, but it is simply too much work. I believe my current Currency SW rankings is suffice for my own personal use.
Last but not least was
3) Manxx’s secret RSI 
(a simple idea, yet so powerful)
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Like most traders, I started off with some basic strategies in demo, and lost money on all of them. Thinking that it was the strategies that were the problem, I hopped from trading plan to trading plan, trying to discover that magical combination of indicators that would make me money. I back-tested until I was sick of back-testing, and then back-tested some more. I came pretty close to burnout.
Mark Douglas and Dr Elder came to my rescue. They helped me to understand that I was the problem, so I went back to basics, trading with only a single indicator, and working on that strategy. My focus was on building a rule-set that managed me, and kept me out of my own way. I threw away most of the rules that people tell you are necessary for profitability (particular R:R ratios, don’t cap your upside, etc), and instead accepted that any profit would be an improvement.
After several months of profitable demo trading, I went live, and have been profitable in ever since. My profits have always been modest, but it is a foundation that I can build on. I still have a long way to go in my trading journey, and would never want to suggest otherwise.
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Improve yourself daily, manage risk like your life depends on it(it does), focus on set ups with high probability(you will know them by backtesting), have patience and commit to long term ROI even if your approach is scalping.
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I stopped all types of trading except for trend-following. I had realised that whatever strategy I used to get in, a positive result was always more probable and profits much greater if the position was or became a trend. So now that’s all I do, find trends and follow them.
After that its down to position sizing, stop-loss placement, cutting early losses and exit rules for profitable positions.
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Realised it’s not me, it’s my trading strategy that is unprofitable. Once I realised that I’ve never looked back.
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Thanks for reminding me, I need to catch up on my reading. Great authors, by the way.
I agree. That 1:10 R/R is a pipe dream. You need to take profit when the market offers it to you.
Congratulations on joining the 1% 
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To my mind, key element is analysis. A lot of traders fail just because of lack of proper analysis. In fact, it include two important parts:
- Market analysis. Each day you should scan the market and search for interesting situations even if you missed them in realtime. Each time finding such situations you should answer yourself the following questions:
- What was the reason of price movement (catalyst) ?
- Was it possible to spot it before?
- What is the best way to trade such situations?
- What should you do to spot this setup next time?
- How would you trade it?
This checklist would help you to be prepared to new interesting opportunities that take place at the market each day.
- Analysis of your trading. You should make some records even you have no time to fill the detailed trading journal. At least you should write down the reason why you performed in a such way, what should you do to improve your performance and also some interesting things spotted at the market. And save a lot of screenshots for all setups in your playbook. If you would analyse all this at the weekends, for example, you would see that it is a great source of information that is extremely useful if you want to trade better.
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to become profitable trader is a big deal , need a long term practice with great discipline.
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I’m finding this a bit difficult to do. I can’t help but check my open trades every couple of minutes.
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This is killer. Especially today. When I started trading everyone didn’t have a smart phone and there wasn’t an app for everything lol.
You took your trades on a computer and left it alone.
It does depend a little on your strategy though as if you are scalping lower time frames you may choose to exit a trade that is not working out with a little bit of profit or something.
I honestly would recommend to all new traders to begin their trading career on the daily time frame as it will build the type of patience and sort of zen like mind necessary for the markets. It filters out a lot of the noise as well too.
I don’t know anything about your trading strategy or experience but why not try opening a demo account you “don’t” care about take some trades set a tp and sl and check back every 4 to 8 hours or even the next day? You might be able to build some confidence in it. Just an idea. 
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I think this is easier when price movement is a little slower but when price is inching closer to TP or SL, that’s when I have trouble also.
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Yes everything is just so easy to access nowadays.
I’ll keep your advice in mind. Thank you for taking the time to share your tips.
now I have a 7 years of experience in forex trading
what made me a pro is trying alot of technical analysis schools and techniques and implenting on charts then measure the results until I found the school that suits me which is VSA
then I started reading books about analysing and reading charts using VSA and watching vids for professional VSA traders and implementing on charts until I became a pro VSA analyst
and now I havea 7 years experience in forex trading generally and 4 years in trading using VSA specially
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How do you know which losses to take early on? One of my issues is that I believe I should trade my plan. So taking a loss early means that I’m not trading my plan.
I take a loss when my trade becomes invalid and this keeps me out of big losses
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