Forex Trading Secrets - No Stop Loss Strategies

One of the secrets to trading Forex successfully is to strictly follow an effective money management strategy. For many Forex traders that means using stop losses. Unfortunately, those very same stop losses are often responsible for the failure of most day traders, especially when stop losses are tightly set. There is nothing more frustrating than having a stop loss close a trade that would have gone on to be profitable.

Trading the currency market is much like trading stocks. Despite the similarities between the Forex and stock market, most Forex traders don’t bother to employ the trading strategies that equities traders have proved over time, such as the buy and hold rule. Warren Buffet will tell you that the only way to consistently make money in the stock market is to buy shares and hold them, at least until the fundamentals change. However, good traders don’t just enter trades based on the results of some cursory technical analysis. Good traders must be satisfied that the underlying economic, fiscal and financial factors will support their trading decision.

The long-term direction of a currency pair is often determined by the economic fundamentals and Geo-political realities of the country in question. These fundamentals might include the interest rate policy of the central bank, balance of payments numbers and the government's general political stance, to name a few. If a country’s economy is doing well and there are no extenuating matters, then its currency should appreciate against currencies with weaker economies.

Doing fundamental analysis like this gives a trader a long-term outlook on a currency and affords him the luxury of not taking multiple small losses, such as those that occur when tight stop losses are used. All he has to do is await for pullbacks to go long on the currency. If a trade goes negative, it can do so to a greater degree than would be possible if high leveraging was used.

However, there are exceptions to this rule. If a correction is imminent, it might be prudent to take a small loss by exiting previously negative trades and reverse positions to take advantage of the changing trend.

Stop losses don’t only exist to prevent losses but can also be used to protect profits; a good example of this is a trailing stop-loss. A

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In order to avoid making large losses, many traders use tight stop-losses, but this often results in multiple small losses that can quickly add up and ruin a trading account. Often, trades that start out badly eventually become profitable, if the trade is just given some time.

Is it possible to trade successfully with no stop loss? The short answer is yes, but for this strategy to work, traders must only trade in the direction of the trend, avoid using leveraging/margin facilities and be bullish only on currencies that are fundamentally strong. The buy and hold strategy is not popular among currency traders, and it will never be as long as Forex brokers offer high leveraging on Forex trading accounts and traders take the bait. While the use of margin can accelerate the growth of a trading account, it is also a double-edged sword that can cause a margin call if things get out-of-hand.

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Forex Trading - No Stop Loss