Every traders goal is to make money in the markets. We do countless hours of research, reading, and backtesting hoping to find that optimal point of knowledge that will make us a consistently profitable trader.
Unfortunately, most Retail Traders end up searching for the incorrect information that will actually lead them further away from the truth.
As stated in my previous blog, the trading industry is filled with lots of noise that may actually steer you off course without you even noticing, and perhaps finding out you were looking in the wrong places months or years later.
It is extremely difficult to avoid these common pitfalls as they are not intently meant to mislead you.
The truth is that most people are actually all searching for the correct insights on the markets and bloggers may be genuinely trying to help you, but do not know themselves that they are giving out the incorrect types of information. 
Now combine that inefficiency along with the noise that is on social media nowadays where there are legit scammers who are trying to lure you into their traps just to profit off of you.
It is like driving at night on a pitch black road in the middle of the wilderness with no street lights. Those of you that have driven through the desert highway corridors of Arizona know exactly what I am talking about.
So there are a couple of elements that I would like to touch base on in this blog that you should start to focus on more and hopefully it brings more clarity to mind and helps you along your journey.

Trading Flaw #1 Leverage

The top of the chain when it comes to appealing things that brings most retail traders into the industry is leverage.
Having a sufficient knowledge on leverage and how to properly use it is essential to your overall journey as a Retail Trader. 
Everyone knows a little about leverage from the amounts of advertisements that you see online through financial websites on the side banners of brokers offering high amounts of leverage for a small minimal deposit.
But what you really don't know is how deceiving these adverts actually are. 
Sure you can deposit as little as $100 USD and even less and trade with 500 times your trading capital or I've even seen some brokers that go as high as 3000:1!
But leverage is also considered a "double edge sword", in which you can use it to your advantage if you understand the proper risk to position size or it can also impale you and get you eliminated out of the trading profession very quickly.
When trading with such high risk, what the broker doesn't tell you is that it actually limits your flexibility in the markets and disables you to utilize certain long term strategies that will actually benefit you in the long run.
In short, the higher the leverage, the smaller your stop in the markets, which ultimately reduces your ability to see the bigger picture and forces you to use tighter stops, that ultimately forces you to have no choice but to trade in the smaller timeframes that makes you reluctant to even peeking at the larger timeframes where the big money actually moves the markets.
This allows over 90% of Retail Traders to lose their money within the first couple months of trading.

Trading Flaw #2 Self-Actualization

Finding out your own strengths and weaknesses is the toughest part of trading.
Really, think about it, in this life your greatest competition is yourself.
Most failures in life always find others to blame and external sources to their problems, it is hardwired from birth.
So, I can literally give you the L.I.F.E-G.R.I.D System for free along with many other profitable systems and you will still be unable to use it successfully.
Why do you think I don't go searching through all of my students to see if they've stolen it and tried to resell it? YOU CAN"T TEACH WHAT YOU HAVEN'T MASTERED!
It is as useful as a used tissue if you do not know its rules and how to properly execute it along with your own flaws.
A decade old saying goes, "the beastly entity known as The Market will expose you of all of your flaws; lust, discipline and panic.
In order to become a consistently profitable trader, you must defeat these trading sins.

That is all for now! 
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If you like what I blog and can relate I have a FREE FOREX EBOOK available here and also check out my FOREX Academy to learn my profitable L.I.F.E-G.R.I.D System which will help accelerate your journey.

There are 7 deadly trading sins every trader should avoid and moving your stop loss to break even is one of them, let me explain WHY.

Everyone wants to look like a profitable trader and want to eliminate risk as soon as possible.
The mistake is that once you do this, you not only eliminate the risk of losing more than you would like to, but you also eliminate any possibility of a potential winner.
When you are trading without a plan, you tend to trade very sloppy and lose discipline which is a main component to successful trading.

Losing is not fun and no one wants to admit that they have lost a trade when that money could have been used elsewhere.
No one wants to confront their friends or spouse that they have lost their bill or discretionary money on a single loss.
It is a very ugly reality that most traders face. This is WHY it is important to never risk any more than you are willing to lose.
So if you cannot afford to take the loss, reduce your position size to a feasible amount that you are willing to risk and may never get back.
This is one of the easiest rules to remember, but hardest to follow.

Play The Long Game

If you have a solid trading plan with a proven long-term edge, you will notice that the edge normally plays out in your favor in thelonger term.
Most of the time when you enter a trade, no matter how accurate your entry may be, the market tends to swing back to your entry point before continuing in your desired direction. This is very common and difficult to avoid as the market is unpredictable most of the time.
Even if you have been in profit and all of your technical targets have lined up, you will still have moments when the market may swing back to your entry or even past your entry and bring you in a drawdown after 75% of your target is reached.
This is commonly called a stop-hunt, which is a term traders use to describe the phenomena of price redirecting itself to hit the highly predictable stops of nervous day traders and scalpers before continuing in the direction of the overall trend.
It takes a skilled seasoned trader with lots of failure and experience to be able to position yourself to avoid these stop-hunts.

The Average True Range (ATR)

Many of you that have been following me for some time have noticed that almost all of my charts for many years have had an indicator attached to it called the Average True Range (ATR for short).
This is one of the only 2 indicators that I religiously use and I teach my Forex Academy students how to properly use it to get the greatest edge over the retail crowd in the markets.
There are specific parameters that must be modified to meet my criteria of a "safe trading zone", which is discussed in my Private Training.
When combined with a couple other indicators, this can be the single most powerful tool I have ever used in trading, and I have had my trial and errors with many of the indicators you all have learned about.

Custom Indicators

Over the course of my 11 years of trading I have back tested hundreds of indicators available to the retail crowd and learned the development of them and the psychology behind each of them.
I understand WHY they were created and have done extensive research behind the creators of these indicators. 
I even have created my own in the past and continue to work on my own custom indicators that I am coding specifically for my personal advantage.
Indicators are supposed to be understood before used and most retail traders fail to understand WHY and how to use them the proper way.

Average Daily Range

Every currency pair has an average daily amount of pips that it move from open to close.
If your stop loss is within half of that average daily range, then you are setting yourself up for an automatic loss.
Literally, how often have you gotten stopped out of a trade because you tried to use the tightest stops (50 pips or lower), and the market almost "purposely" aimed for your stop?
And right before you can say WTF, it slows down and returns back into the direction of your original trading plan?
This is far too common and the only way to avoid it is to either use "time adjusted stops", which is waiting for a specific period of time before moving your stop to break even or, "calculated pip stops", which are similar to take profit targets in which you only move your stops to break even after a defined amount of pips have passed in your favor, but is also risky or my favorite, the "Average Daily Range", which is a specific amount of days range that have passed by and the reward to risk ratio of your current trade has surpassed a 3 to 1 in your favor.

Marketers, Scalpers, Day Traders

You may have seen on social media lots of traders posing as successful traders and even selling strategies or signals that have "tight stops".
It is everywhere like a plague so it can't be avoided.
They make it look easy by using small offshore brokers with high leverage and literally "flipping" accounts 100%+ in the matter of seconds to days.
RUN and DON'T LOOK BACK!
This is a gambling approach and they know that but compulsively lied to the world so much that they now believe their own misconceptions of the market and price movement. 
They do not show their failure and how often their stops got hit before winning and commonly use sub-accounts or re-deposit funds until they have a winner, like a casino.
The market has an edge over these participant just like a casino has an edge over the gamblers that come in without an edge and try to flip $1000 to $10,000 overnight. 
No matter how successful they may look on their post, these narcissist's have deep pockets and will continue to make their money out of the markets and go back to the arena and lose it all due to a lack of discipline and a defined trading system.

No More Blown Accounts

Can you believe it has been over 5 years since I have blown a trading account?
It is virtually impossible because I utilize a "Hard Stop".
A hard stop is used in case of a black swan event happens such as the recent 2020 presidential elections and 2020 corona virus pandemic where the markets went out of proportion. These events are rare, but do happen and must be protected from by all means so a stop is always necessary and anyone using a stop, just question WHY, the next time you see it somewhere as that person is not the market and cannot predict when another one of these events will happen.

That is all for now, follow me on social media or favorite my website and check back weekly for more free posts and helpful tools I have for the public. If you like this post and my way of thinking, then register for my Forex Academy where I teach you my exact mechanical approach that has taught me to become a consistently profitable trader in todays markets.


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It is quite common that the majority wants to be on the winning side.
Most people want to eat a solid meal, but do not want to go through the tedious task of cooking the food, not to mention preparing it.
People have a desire to replicate a dish that they see online or television, but do not want to go out to the grocery store to gather the ingredients and instead orders delivery nearby.
The need to have instant gratification is so common in our everyday lives that it has become embedded in our minds.

Being a champion is usually related to some sort of tangible award such as a trophy or cash.
In 1987 Paul Tudor Jones betted on a crash in the United States stock market that rewarded him and his company an astounding 125.9 percent return after fees, earning an estimated 100 million dollars.
What comes to thought when you think of situations like this? You might be thinking that was a pretty sweet win right?
It is enjoyable to be a champion and it increases our dopamine levels in our brains.

The 2020 NBA champions are the Los Angeles Lakers.
When we see them on television we see the greatest basketball team in the world.
From the three pointers, to the assists, to the dunks and blocks, and the 21+ point leads they have over their competition, we see an elite team of skilled athletes'.
What we miss however, is the countless hours of practice that they put in daily in order to become such great players that dominate the sport today.
Take the late Kobe Bryant for example, he is my favorite basketball player and in my opinion the greatest player of all time.
He makes the sport look easy.
He can sink three pointers with absolute precision and dunk on anyone that gets in his way, even Goliath sized players, it doesn't matter, do not get in his way or you might end up getting a spot on ESPN Sports Centers' highlight reel the next morning.
What makes him so dominant is not genetics, although that could be used to his advantage.
It is his countless hours of practice and training.
He trains while other players are asleep.
He trains through his injuries, seeing him bounce back after so many torn ACLs' and knee injuries is incredible.
He is practicing while other team members are celebrating.
He is physically and mentally improving his performance daily.
His presence is so intimidating on the court that he earned the nickname "The Black Mamba".
A couple extra hours daily became a dozen extra hours weekly, which quickly added up to a couple hundred extra hours monthly and so on.
Now over 2 decades later he outlasted the superstars of yesterday and was still better that 99% of the industry at his age.
He is undoubtedly a champion and one of the greatest athletes' that has ever lived.

Lets' face it, the journey isn't quite what you had expected it to be.
No one wants to hear the truth about being a consistently profitable trader, I get it.
It is not what you might have thought out it to be.
There is so much noise and facades in the trading world it becomes extremely distracting and frustrating to learn to proper way.
Lots of deceitful characters on social media that will give you the wrong impression of the industry.
It is not the quick profits and large gambling mentality that will get you there, but the journey and appreciation of small incremental gains over time that will get you that championship ring someday. 
How bad do you want it? How many times are you willing to fail before breaking your threshold and trading intuitively?