Daily Affirmations Will Improve Your Trading

Anything  you want to achieve in this world can be attracted to you by following the core principles in this article. For those reading this who have the goal to become a better trader – please take this knowledge, practice it and harness it’s power to improve your trading and your life.

An affirmation is defined as: “The assertion that something exists or is true”. Daily affirmations are a widely practiced method for attaining success and accelerating your ability to achieve goals.

Napoleon Hill is one of my favorite authors, and in my opinion he was the best motivational coach of all-time. He became famous by interviewing many of the most successful people of his time like Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and others, and the one thing that they all seemed to have in common was that they “acted as if” what they desired most already existed before they had it. Indeed, this is the core philosophy of Hill’s work and is the main reason why daily affirmations are so important to long-term success in any field, including trading. Here’s my favorite quote from his work:

“What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve” –Napoleon Hill

This is perhaps the most famous motivational quote of all time, I have it on the wall in my trading office and I read it out loud to myself every day, I strongly suggest you do the same. After reading this article you can check out Napoleon Hills Videos here to learn more about his amazing work on personal development and attaining success.

Here is a list of 17 daily trading affirmations that you can incorporate into your trading plan and that you should read out loud to yourself every day. Doing this will work to keep you motivated to practice proper trading habits and generally stay on the path to Forex trading success:

1. “What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve” – Napoleon Hill

This is the most important motivational quote of all time, which is why I have it listed again. If you haven’t read Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich Book, I suggest you do so in the near future, it’s the single best piece of motivational literature ever written in my opinion, and it will likely have transformative effects on your trading and your personal life.

2. “I am a successful trader”

If you repeat to yourself everyday that you are a successful trader, it will make you a lot more likely to do the things that are necessary to become one. If you do not believe you are a successful trader, you will never become one, as with anything else in life, you have to believe in your cause or goal before you can make it a reality.

3. “I am consistently following my trading plan”

You need to approach Forex trading as a business and be strategic and logical in following your trading plan; don’t deviate. If you’ve taken the time to formulate a comprehensive trading plan based on your trading strategy, your trading will be the most effective when you follow your plan, since you were objective and clear-minded when creating it.

4. “I have a Forex trading journal and I use it”

If you have a Forex trading journal and you actually use it, you will be far ahead of most traders. It’s critical to keep a running track record of your trading performance so that you have a tangible piece of evidence that reflects your trading ability or lack thereof. A trading journal will also give you something to stay accountable too and help you remain disciplined and organized.

5. “I practice proper risk management”

It’s important to remember that trading success is defined over a large series of trades, not over one or two. This means that you should not give too much significance to any one trade, and the way to do this is by never risking more than you are comfortable with losing per trade. By that I mean, never risk an amount that keeps you up at night thinking about or watching your trades. Remember to take small losses and that you are going to have losing trades; it’s just part of doing business in the Forex market.

6. “I trade according to what the market IS doing, not what I think it ‘should’ be doing”

We want to trade what we actually see on our Forex price charts, not what we “think” should happen or what we “want” to happen. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what you want the market to do; it’s going to do what it wants, so your job is to learn how to read its price action and take advantage of it, not fight against it.

7. “I will only take trades that give me a reward which clearly outweighs my risk”

The goal of any trader or investor is to make sure that the prospective reward of a trade clearly outweighs the risk involved. You need to gauge the market structure prior to entering a trade and make sure there is a logical reason for expecting that the risk reward on the trade is at least 1:1.5 or 1:2 or better.

8. “I will find other things to do besides watching my trades after they are live”

There’s nothing wrong with checking in on the market every 4 or 8 hours, but if you are sitting there addicted to your charts like a junkie, you are going to self-sabotage your own trades and probably end up losing a lot of money in the process. We have to learn to let the market “do the work” and just forget about our trades for a while after they are live. The set and forget forex trading strategyis something that I stand by and that I implement in my own personal trading, because meddling in your trades after they are live is an emotional decision and thus it’s usually the wrong thing to do. Find anything to do except watch your charts after you enter a trade.

9. “I am not emotionally affected by my profits or losses”

Both losses and profits have the ability to induce emotional reactions in us. A loss can cause us to want to take ‘revenge’ on the market and try and ‘make back’ the money we just lost. A profit can cause us to become overly-confident or even euphoric, which can cause us to deviate from our trading plan and take a trade that is lower probability than what we normally would take. Either way, you have to always be on guard against making an emotional trade immediately after a trade closes out, whether it was a winner or a loser. The best thing to do is to simply remove yourself from the markets for 12 to 24 hours after any trade.

10. “I try to trade with the dominant daily trend as much as possible”

I know you’ve heard this before, and I know it’s very cliché, but it’s also very true; the trend is your friend. I am often amazed at how many emails I get from traders telling me they are losing money in the markets and simultaneously asking me to comment on the chart they’ve attached to the email that shows a counter-trend trade on the intra-day charts. The easiest way to make money in any financial market is and has always been trading with the dominant trend. There are times when trading counter-trend is warranted, but until you’ve mastered trend-trading you should forget about counter-trend trading. Remember, don’t fight the dominant daily chart trend, instead, capitalize on it and ride the momentum until it ends.

11. “Instead of over-trading, I will be patient and let trading opportunities present themselves to me”

Don’t trade just because you feel like you have to or you want to…make sure there’s a real reason to do so and never trade when your pre-defined trading edge is not present. The downfall of most traders is over-trading, because most traders simply don’t have enough patience to trade forex like a sniper and not a machine gunner.

12. “I’m a professional trader and thus I will not engage in gambling my money in the markets”

Gamblers make random bets in casinos or elsewhere, and traders who don’t have trading plans or who don’t follow their trading edge are also gamblers. It’s really easy to click your mouse and put a trade on and hope to get lucky, kind of like pulling the arm of the slot machine at a casino. The difference is that you can actually develop and implement a high-probability trading edge like price action strategies when trading the markets. So, it’s up to you if you want to be a gambler or a trader.

13. “I will not interfere with my trades without just cause”

This one is similar to number 8, but it’s so important I wanted to touch on it again. Interfering with trades is usually an emotional reaction born out of risking too much or over-trading, both of which cause you to become overly attached to any one trade, which in turn causes you to over-analyze your trades and meddle with them once they are live. There are times when there’s just cause to interfere with your trades, such as a giant pin bar reversal that forms counter to your position, or some other opposing price action. However these instances are rare and it takes time and effort to develop your discretionary trading sense to the point where you can “effectively interfere” in your trades.

14. “News and fundamentals will not influence my trading decisions”

Traders who fall into the temptation to over-analyze the thousands of Forex news variables that occur each day, usually end up losing their trading accounts pretty quickly. All market variables are reflected via the natural price movement of the market, so by analyzing and trying to “figure out” what’s going to happen by reading economic news or watching CNBC you’re simply adding unnecessary and confusing variables to your trading approach.

15. “I am happy to take a profit and I will not be greedy”

Take your profits when your targets get hit, don’t change targets in an effort to try and get “just a little bit more” profit…These attempts to get a “little more profit” are usually in vain, and they usually lead to you letting a winning trade turn into a losing trade. Traders with smaller accounts especially need to take logical profits as they come, in order to build their accounts up and their confidence. If you get a 1 to 1.5 or 1 to 2 risk reward, there’s nothing wrong with taking the money off the table. Don’t fall into the trap of hoping that every trade you take goes on a parabolic run in your favor, the markets ebb and flow, meaning they don’t go in straight lines for very long.

16. “I invest in my trading education & myself”

Investing in your own education is paramount to success in any field. Forex trading is no different; whether it’s a book on trading psychology or the knowledge of an experienced Forex trading coach, learning something each day to make yourself a better trader will only improve your edge in the markets.

17. “I believe in my trading strategy completely and whole heartedly”

It’s critical to your trading success that you learn and trade with a strategy that’s proven and that you personally enjoy trading with. You have to follow it without deviation by remembering the fact that one loss does not negate the whole trading strategy. Don’t jump from one strategy or system to the next just because you stumble upon a few losing trades; losing trades are a natural part of any trading method. The key lies in losing trades properly and making sure you are trading with a strategy that is both simple and effective.

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