Can Forex Trading Ever Be Stress-Free?

Can Forex Trading Ever Be Stress-Free?

by James Woolley

As rewarding and as profitable as forex trading may be, there's no denying that trading forex for a living can be extremely stressful. It can really get your heart racing at times, particularly if it's your own money at stake, but nevertheless there are ways in which you can reduce your stress levels, as I'm about to discuss.

One way of doing so is to devise a form of trading which is automated to an extent and eliminates the need for you to make trading decisions yourself. A classic example would be a breakout system where your main job is to identify tight trading ranges. Then you just need to wait until the price moves outside of this range and trade in this direction, hoping it's the start of a solid breakout and the price will subsequently move away from this range.

Breakout systems are very popular amongst forex traders and are definitely one way which you can trade without too much stress.

Another way of reducing your stress levels when trading forex markets is to stop scalping and placing very short-term trades as this form of trading is arguably the most stressful. Yes you can make big profits within just a few minutes but you can just as easily lose a lot of money as well, particularly when you get spikes in price which immediately takes out your stop loss. So scalping is definitely not for the faint-hearted.

Instead you should focus on longer term trading where you can take your time making trading decisions and have plenty of time to watch the markets and move your stop losses and limit prices as required.

Long term trading also enables you to test the idea of trading for a living whilst still keeping your present job. There's nothing more stressful than trading knowing that your entire income depends on you making consistent profits, so by taking a longer term view you can trade knowing you have your main job, and therefore another regular income coming in, which reduces stress levels dramatically.

The final method you can use to eliminate stress (which is obviously not for everyone due to the high cost involved) is to devise your own trading robot which places trades for you, depending on certain criteria being met. This is very complex and definitely beyond most people but is one other option you could consider.

Anyway the main point to remember is that although forex trading can be a highly stressful profession, there are ways in which you can make regular profits without consistently being on the edge all the time, and at risk of having a heart attack.