What exactly is the Forex Zone? How do we discover it? How do we lose it, and how can we get it back?

When an experienced Forex trader has mastered the markets and has consistently good trades over months (not days) he is said to have found "the Forex Zone". When he is in the zone he can do no wrong, everything goes great, he might have a loss occasionally, but that does not bug him.

Let's use a Forex trader we'll name "Rich" as an example:

First: Rich is relaxed about his trading, he's not worried about what will happen next, this is because he is looking at the long-term potential and he knows that if he follows his rules he will be profitable - consistently. Getting worried about every little trade or down turn in the market does nothing but push Rich to act irrationally, and acting on his emotions while he is trading is the first step toward beginning to fail, so he avoids it like the plague.

Second: Rich is also disciplined while he is in the zone. As stated above, he is following his rules. He has done the work to test and trade his systems over time and knows the basic probabilities of his Forex system. Rich probably got help learning and testing his system in his Forex trading club for example, so he has been able to cut the testing time down dramatically as many people test a strategy together. Rich knowing the probabilities of his Forex strategies makes it easy for him to stay disciplined and follow the rules each and every time.

Third: When Rich is in the Forex zone he is confident in himself and his systems; he knows that as long as he stays on track with his rules and stays calm, it will work out profitably. If he loses his confidence, either in himself or his system, he will begin to waver. He will question his capacity to trade and will doubt the dependability of his strategy. Soon he will stop taking every trade that meets his rules and even start taking some that don't. Eventually he will find himself searching for some new strategies and systems.

Fourth: Rich also looks at the whole picture. One of the things about Forex probabilities is that you have to look at them from a larger point of view. It takes time and testing to determine the probabilities of a system. Just because there is a 50% probability of getting heads when I flip a coin, doesn't mean that I should expect to get one heads and one tails each time I flip it twice. Probabilities need larger numbers to show their real colors.

To summarize, being in the Forex Zone means being calm, disciplined, confident and focusing on the big view.

So far we have defined the Forex Zone and what it looks like. I will be answering the rest of the questions asked at the beginning in future articles, so watch for more to come.

Good luck trading and may you enjoy many happy hours in the zone yourself.