The Forex Zone

What exactly is the Forex Zone?
How do we find it? How do we lose it, and how can we get it back?
When an experienced forex trader has mastered the markets and finds flow in his trading he is considered to have found "the Forex Zone". When he is in the zone he can do no wrong, everything goes great, he might have a loss here and there, but that doesn't bug him. Lets take a look at some of the characteristics of the Forex zone.

Lets use trader "Rich" as an example.

First: Rich is relaxed about his trading, he's not stressed about what will happen next, this is because he is looking at the bigger picture and he knows that if he follows his rules he will be profitable month after month. Getting stressed over every little trade or down turn in the market does nothing but encourage Rich to act, and acting on his emotions while he is trading is the first step toward going to the dark side.

Second: Rich is also disciplined while he is in the zone. As mentioned above, he is following his rules. He has done the work to test and trade his systems over time and has figured out the basic probabilities of his Forex system. Rich probably got help learning and testing his system in his Forex trading club for example, he has been able to cut the testing time down dramatically as many people test a strategy together. Rich knowing the probabilities of his Forex strategies makes it easy for him to stay disciplined and follow the rules each and every time.

Third: When Rich is in the zone he is confident in himself and his systems; he knows that as long as he follows his rules and stays relaxed, it will work out profitably. If he loses his confidence, either in himself or his system, he will begin to falter. He will question his ability to trade and will doubt the reliability of his strategy. Soon he will stop taking every trade that meets his rules and even start taking some that don't. Ultimately he will find himself searching for some new strategies and systems.

Fourth: Rich also sees the big picture. One of the things about forex probabilities is that you have to look at them from a larger point of view. It takes time and testing to determine the probabilities of a system. Just because there is a 50% probability of getting heads when I flip a coin, doesn't mean that I should expect to get one heads and one tails each time I flip it twice. Probabilities need larger numbers to show their true nature.

To summarize, being in the Forex Zone consists of being relaxed, disciplined, confident and focusing on the big picture.

So far we have defined the Forex Zone and what it looks like, I will be answering the rest of the questions asked at the beginning in future articles, so stay tuned.

Good luck trading and may you spend many happy hours in the zone yourself.