The currency market is one of the toughest markets to trade for many reasons. One of those reasons is that it is an international market so it is literally open (in American) from Sunday at 5pm to Friday at 5pm.  This means that anything can happen at any moment and because of this it is key that you try to stay at least one step ahead of the market at all times.  My trading coach Jason Stapleton (www.triplethreattrading.com) taught me an acronym that helps to do this: I.P.D.E. which stands for Identify, Predict, Decide, and Execute.  However, even if you do this it is important that you are not just disciplined in your analysis but also just as disciplined in your scheduling.  And because I wasn't I have possibly missed out on a very good trading opportunity.

Over the past 6 months I have gotten into a great morning routine of how I attack the market. I wake up at the same time every day, read my trading plan, go through my analysis of the pairs I trade, get some breakfast, then proceed to start my trading day. I have also added a new section to my trading journal where I keep specific notes on what I'm looking at on each pair (along with having my charts marked of course). However, I noticed that after my trading day is over (12noon) I have no set pattern on when I check the charts for the rest of the day. I usually do so in the evening, but it's nothing set in stone. Yesterday was a busy day for me as far as coaching and running errands and even though I had my charts up when I came home, I never really went through my list of pairs to look for updates. I simply tracked the one trade that I was in at the moment. This morning when I checked my pairs I noticed a beautiful bat pattern complete and reverse that I had indentified about a week in advance.  All of the lines were there on the chart and I even had it under the label "Watching" in my trading journal. So I asked myself "How did I miss this?" (There were some other words missing but I'd like to keep this post family approved lol).  And the answer was because I didn't check my charts last night. Now I have to put in a specific rule on when to check my charts in the evening.

The point of this point is that discipline is more important that skill by itself.  this isn't the type of market where you can simply stroll in when you want and make money. You have to make sure you stay on top of things and do so on a consistent basis.  if I would have checked the pair last night I would have seen that it was on its way to completion and I would have set a limit order which would have been filled over night.