If you are trading forex as a beginner, or if you have been trading for some period of time but have not been a consistent profitable trader, then it may be necessary for you to take a pause in trading and to reconsider and review your forex trading strategy with the primary objective to improve your trading skills. Here are three factors you need to look into.

Develop and "over-study" your trading system

Your trading strategy should involve the use of a defined trading system. The first step in a practical trading strategy is to develop or adopt a proven trading system that will incorporate generating signals for entry and exit positions with the relevant risk management controls such as initial stop loss, trailing stop losses , risk-reward ratio requirement. There are many trading systems but generally they can be classified into systems that are capable of, from a functional purpose, trading the bottoms and the tops, trading at the outbreaks, and trading the pullbacks. But among all these trading systems, I would like to single out time-price trading or price action analysis which can be very powerful effective trading systems that you can use. Once you have developed or adopt these trading systems, over-study them. In other words, you must keep on studying how to use these trading systems and use the trading systems in a disciplined way. This is important because any deviation from following the trading signals from the system is going to work against you. The sure way to ruin is to over-ride well planned and well thought out trading action from a proven trading system.

Understand the nature of trading

In forex trading, like in any other business, there are losses and gains. Being consistently profitable does not mean there are no losses. There are times when your trades may not pan out, but once they hit your stop losses, take the trading signals and cut your losses. Understanding this is important because it keeps you level-headed so that you are able to handle losses and continue to take the trades as they come. In trading, the pressure may gets heated up especially when you are faced with a series of losing trades. But if you keep to your trading strategy, those losses will be small. When the signal works, and moves into a sustained trend, it is very usual to make a lot more profits that will cover the series of small losses which you may have sustained in following strictly to your trading system.

Have an Overall Wealth Creation Plan

Your forex trading activities should only form part of an overall wealth creation plan. In your forex trading strategy, you may use part of your trading profits to add on to your capital monthly, and also withdraw some profits for savings or as an income to "pay yourself to trade". In other words, you pay yourself as a forex trader with your profits, creating an income source as an incentive for performance. As part of your wealth creation plan, you may like to pay yourself up to 20% of the profits montly as your income or allowance. At the same time, allocate 10% fo the profits into a miscellaneous account that will pay for trading related literature, courses, seminars or software that will add on new skills to help you to trade better. The balance of 70% of the profits can be ploughed back into your trading account as additional capital.

Having a forex trading strategy allows you to have an overall perspective of whatever you are doing as a forex trader. The forex trading strategy acts as a simple guide that will allow you to grow as a trader and yet maintain a way to tap the profits from your trading in a sensible way as you develop your career as a professional trader