Nial Fuller explains:
I can certainly identify with this bit: 
[I]“It’s typical of the retail trader to not understand how long trades actually take to pan out, and it’s typical that they will question themselves and what they are doing when nothing is happening, i.e., no open trades and no signals.”[/I]
It is often incredibly frustrating waiting for a possible signal to form up. Waiting for yet another 5 or 15 mins for another bar to complete seems excruciatingly long, let alone an hour or more!
But often the waiting is most painful once the trade has actually been entered! I always expect the market to respond immediately because it surely must see the same reasons as me for opening a trade - but it doesn’t…it just sits there [I]glued [/I]to my entry level - or more often an aggravating couple of pips minus, teasingly forcing me to stay in it! And it will sit there for as long as it takes for the seeds of doubt about the wisdom of the trade to take root. So I wait and I wait. Now I am totally convinced that the trade is wrong, It moves a couple of pips in profit and I snap it closed with a satisfied grin…and on the very next bar the trade takes off staight towards what would have been my target point 
Yes, I agree,trading is characterised by long periods of nothing, and the trades themselves often take a lot of time to mature. Patience is a great virtue in trading.
soo agree. took me 1.5 “heavy loss and burned accounts”-years to finally learn patience. funnilly only after i stopped the babypips school wisdom and threw it completely out of my head and started reading books it started turning slowly into profits coincidence or reason? who knows who knows
“Adopt the pace of nature; her secret is patience"
(Ralph Waldo Emerson)
(PS: discussing how ‘natural’ markets could be something for Turbo
The cycles of nature, and the human cycles of greed and fear…
Discuss.
Patience is boring, when you can’t find any signal for days, that is the most frustrating part of trading and yet you have to stick to your plan, the pain of discipline is less than the pain of regret.
…which, of course, is easier said than done when someone who has decided to try making their living out of forex trading from home gets in this situation, because every day where he/she is not able to make (positive) trades is potentially going to put more pressure on them to overtrade when opportunities finally present themselves again…
In other words, if (as a metaphore) you went hungry for three days, let us say, and then found a big box of
food waiting for you, would it be likely that you may make the mistake of eating too much all at once? Of course…and we all know that this would be a bad mistake (you could get terrible stomach pains)… So with trading: if you are having to pay for living expenses from your trading, every day that goes by without you being able to make any trades at all will put pressure on you to ‘binge’ trade when finally you see opportunities again…
So it is a skill, remaining calm when under pressure to earn your living from trading, and not to overtrade when those opportunities present themselves again.
F
I’m going to take a nap every 15 min and watch the volatility. I would also draw an avatar to keep myself moving, yes indeed it is boring ng especially when we wait for the right set up.
Patience in Forex is very boring when you are not making anything in it!
…Hope you never go three days without a beer…
Or wine…
:18::18::18:
…honest officer, I’ve only had the one
Ah, what a classic!
I wouldn’t call profitable trading boring, simply because I am always thrilled when I make a profit, in the sense that I am immensely pleased with what I’ve done. I do agree though, that good trading shouldn’t involve a lot of stress.
Sensible post, Dianajs. Profits should indeed create a sense of pleasure and satisfaction. But neither should losses cause stress as they are part of the process and already anticipated within one’s plan. If one is obeying one’s trading rules and money management then negative stress should not be an issue…
I think that a little stress normal when you experience losses is natural, we’re all human after all. The idea is not to let your stress to overcome your critical thinking skills, which comes with experience, I suppose.
Well yes, indeed. That was why I specified “negative” stress. There is of course positive stress which is a very good thing and is always present in, for example, sports, driving, etc. Strangely, I feel more stress when my positions are going well than when they are behind! I always need to keep a very strong focus on my plan’s exit criteria to prevent closing winning trades early! But losses only frustrate me when I know they are the result of a poor entry (and therefore kind of “extra” losses) otherwise I only need to monitor are they in the right (i.e. anticipated) ratio to the winning trades.
But, regarding boredom, it is always a help to turn to a forum such as this while watching trades work out…
Trading is not easy as 1.2 3 it need analysis market watch and plan to do it effectively . then it shows its best and good results. It is said god trading is boring because you have to wait for proper time to trade with proper strategy.
i partially agree and a good post. but to be honest tradibg actually is very easy. thats why starters tend to first win a bit before tzey start educating thenselves in the wrobg directions and then start loosing. the hard part is to shape yourself the way that you act right on the floor.
the boring part in trading is true because after you found out how to then youll know the right opportunities and then you wait for them lobger and stick to your trades longer AND (very important) you have self confidence and the “thrill” you have as beginner who doesbt know what hes doing is simply not existant abymore.
What you call positive stress can certainly be distracting too, though it is much easier to bear than the frustration losses cause. And I do agree that it’s good to be on this forum, so we can talk to people with similar interests.