FACT NUMBER 1 to me is that if a person was unable to make a living trading shares, indices, commodity futures , etc, there is little indication that changing to FOREX will change his/her luck… as luck has little or a lot to do with it, depending on your viewpoint.

There are some plusses to Forex, over shares, and the big plus is that Bull and Bear, call it UP or DOWN doesn’t mean a thing. There is no unlimited high and there is no unlimited low. With indices and shares one only has to look at the prices available in 1950, 1960, 1970, 2000, 2010 etc to realise that there is an inbuilt system  of  rising price structure BULL/UP pressure that ensures that prices always continue to rise at some stage, even if it takes years, and that that price high/low pressure does not exist in the FOREX market which always plays a pair where one is Buying one and Selling the other.

In fact Forex is a kind of zero sum game. The lowest a country’s currency price can ever get is zero – worthless. But this never happens as the world’s worst currencies can be theoretically worthless but can still be sold for a meagre amount on the world’s Forex markets. Try Zimbabwe.
And if you stick to 5 major currencies and their offspring like USD EUR GBP CHF and JPY there will always be both price and volume available for you to trade.
I’m not going to go into my methodology in this note.  Sufficient to say that I am blessed with many years of trading experience and this allows me the privilege of trading positions and using targets, risk/reward strategies, and my own overriding “take a profit or take a loss” strategy at a time of my choosing, to make Forex work for me.
That doesn’t mean it is going to work for you.  Remember a couple of months ago I suggested having a Master Mind Group who could work together to share strategies and ideas with each other.  Over the following weeks about 10 people said they were interested. Most of these people contributed nothing and most have now drifted away without… well just drifted away… some joining $10,000 Trading Mentorship Trading Floors, others saying they lack time which to me says lack commitment… etc, etc, etc.
No one actually contributed much and I have been answering Q&A to just 2 or 3 people – and that’s fine with me. I will continue to do this for those few.
Here’s what I have determined that may help you with your trading.
Rules all on their own are no use to traders because we all have our own way of determining what kind of trader we are. And what rules mean to us. Each of us is better off answering our own questions, rather than listening to some Forex guru who may or may not be wiser than you are, IF you have had a few years trading successfully.  That’s the rule that counts. What I am saying is YOUR TRADING STYLE HAS SUIT YOUR PERSONALITY.

e.g.
Mike A is perfectly suited for a patient plan where he places his trade and checks on its progress once a day for updating of his stops/targets or quit levels. A bit like me.
Mike B loves the excitement of day trading and is happy to trade for 4 or 5 hours a day doing a little scalping and taking short snappy profits or accepting short snappy losses during his trading hours. He enjoys being an impulsive trader.
Mike C trades only on Mondays after evaluating the previous week’s weekly charts.
Mike D trades the bloody obvious and the emotional reaction to the world’s disasters, like Tsunamis, earthquakes, panic on Wall Street action etc. Again Mike D is a little like me.
Understand that you may be a Mike A or you may be a Mike B or you may be a Mike C or D. Or a combination of all these. It doesn’t matter. Fact is you should KNOW what trading style suits your personality… and as such, be very careful not to select a “coach” if doing this; whose trading style or system is radically different from the way you like to trade. Or you will end up being a copy cat of a method that differs from what and who you are. And possibly end up as a failure.
YOU HAVE TO HAVE A SET OF RULES even if those rules are empirical and subject to you being the decider, rather than say, rules that use indicators that make the decisions for you.
YOU COULD HAVE, AT SOME STAGE, DONE A LOT OF WORK ON TRADING METHODOLOGY AND ACTUAL LIVE TRADING.
e.g. I have a system I am using to take 100 pips out of certain markets at certain times.  But this system is still “alive” and I am still developing it as I go and it is SUBJECT TO CHANGE  at my desire as it is my method and I AM INDEPENDENT AND FOLLOWING MY OWN LIFE STYLE. And to go over all the little idiosyncrasies of this method might well take me two or three hours, and there is no guarantee you would follow it and still make all the same decisions that I do. That’s trading.
YOUR RULES SHOULD INCLUDE A ‘CUT YOUR TRADE IN HALF’ IF IT IS GOING BADLY. VERY IMPORTANT IN FOREX. And you must understand and apply a RISK/REWARD structure on each trade.
Lastly…  if you’ve done the work you should arrive, sometime in the future as a place where
YOU TRADE WITH EFFORTLESS EFFORT… and also you do what I call
TRADE THE BLOODY OBVIOUS.  And I point out that the bloody obvious in Forex is not necessarily the same as that which may appear if, for instance, you are a trader of the NASDAQ. But you cannot get to this EFFORTLESS EFFORT trading area without doing the work.
Friends…  I don’t know what you want from trading. I have made it my full time lifestyle. I trade for a living. And I trade in such a way that my risk/reward gives me a 100 pip profit on most trades and risk/loss strategy is such that I can be 60% successful and still make money. On other trades I am getting more than 100 pips and I am happy to lose in accordance with my RISK/REWARD structure so the most I can ever lose on any one trade is 2%.
Now I want to go into that 60% figure for a moment. That means I am prepared to lose 40 trades in every hundred. Of course by trading the bloody obvious and using techniques like being stopped out and going right back into the same trade a day later I am, in my mind, a high risk trader… but that high risk bit is what keeps me successful, as many traders when they are stopped out on a Tuesday will become blind sided to the fact that the same significant material that made them trade on a money may exist again on the Tuesday… but they adopt the one bitten twice shy principle and do not accept that
EACH NEW DAY IS A TOTALLY NEW TRADING DAY.  EACH LOSS IS NOTHING MORE AND NOTHING LESS THAN A STRUCTURED PART OF YOUR TRADING PLAN. As Jesse Livermore used to call it:
“His fee for being a trader.”
And the only way to make FOREX work for you is to be responsible to yourself for using your rules on each day as though it is a new day… regardless of whether yesterday was a part of the 60% success rate or a part of the 40% failure rate.
Lastly, the Master Mind Forex is not open to new members at this stage… but those who are already emailing me… I am very happy to continue answering your questions.
I might say IF IT’S TO BE IT’S UP TO ME but for you I would say IF THIS IS TRUE IT’S UP TO YOU.
Be yourself. Trade your way.  Don’t get carried away by trading room strategies, mentorship, or systems that work outside your comfort zone. Be yourself. Do the work and effortless effort will arrive some day. No one said it had to be easy so don’t believe all those advertisements that say you can make 2000 pips before lunch. It just isn’t true.
To those who do a Q and A with me please note I shall be away from my computer for two weeks between 6th and 18th September. I am doing a 10 day Buddhist Meditation course (Vipassana) in Singapore and will not have any access to electronic equipment during this period.

Best wishes to you personally.
I always appreciate those who keep in touch with me.

Regards

Michael S Johnson