What is a trading plan, why is it needed and how to draw it up? How to create a trading plan for a trader (example) How to create a Forex trading plan.

Freedom in the financial market does not mean a lack of work discipline. A trading plan is an example of how you can combine your goals and means, strategy and tactics, preparation and execution of transactions, money management and analysis into one working tool.

The financial market respects a professional approach to business. The main “business document” - the Forex trading plan - must clearly define your goals, methods for achieving them, actions in any situation, as well as the amount of funds required for the business and the acceptable level of losses. Otherwise, it is not difficult to lose your investments.

When creating a personal trading plan, you must learn to combine the skills of an analyst, financier, risk manager and only then a trader. A carefully drawn up plan and its mandatory implementation give you an undeniable advantage. The general scheme of how to create a trading plan for a trader consists of mandatory sections, arranged in order of importance for trading.

Setting goals and trading plan for Forex

When starting to work on Forex, you must define the following goals for yourself:

1. Personal: ambition, professional development and discipline.
2. Financial:
   • by profit: long-term (for the next year or more), medium-term (1-3 months), daily, in each transaction;
   • on risks: acceptable level of losses and subsequent actions.

All goals must correspond to the actual level of experience, the size of the deposit, correct self-assessment and be adjusted if necessary.
The trading plan should contain a detailed description of your actions in any trading situation.

When choosing and setting up a trading strategy, the following must be determined:

1. Trading and technical parameters for using various trading strategies.
2. Set and parameters of technical tools or trading advisor.
3. Conditions are determined separately for each asset:
   • to open a deal (price levels, indicator signals, graphic designs, direction, timeframe);
   • exiting a transaction (based on indicator signals, reaching a profit level, stop loss or manual closing);
   • for applying various types of orders (limit/market);

Money management conditions

Mandatory points of the capital management plan:

1. Division of investments according to their intended purpose (initial, working and guarantee capital).
2. The critical level of risk in general and in each transaction - as a percentage of the total amount, in trading points or in monetary terms.
3. Methodology for determining the minimum, average and maximum trading volume (for different types of transactions).
4. Capital management plan in case of:
   - incorrect entry or in drawdown situations;
   - exceeding the number of trade transactions during the trading period;
   - reduction of the free margin level below the minimum;
   - when profit or loss exceeds the calculated level.
5. Conditions for:
   - application of dangerous money management methods;
   - adjustments to the trading plan;
   - missing the next trading signal.
6. Mechanism for withdrawing funds and distributing profits (consumption, covering losses, reinvestment).

Ultimately, you decide for yourself how to create a trader's trading plan, but this section should be, if not the first, then the most important point in it. Only strict adherence to these rules will allow you to keep your trading account in working order.

Selecting a financial asset and trading conditions

Before opening, each transaction must be checked for compliance with the trading strategy (see above). When choosing a trading asset, you need to pay attention to:

1. Complexity of technical analysis, availability of information and reaction to fundamental events.
2. Cross correlations with other assets.
3. The time of greatest liquidity and dynamics, as well as the correspondence of this period (day, night) to your physical condition.
4. Trading parameters:
   • costs: spread/swap/commission/collateral conditions;
   • technical conditions and stability of the broker’s work with this particular asset;

You need to trade assets that are optimal for the chosen strategy and risk levels, during periods with the maximum number of possible trading signals.

• Comprehensive market analysis (see below);
• Stable physical condition and positive mood (see section “Psychology”);
• Availability of comfortable working conditions and technical support;
• Current trading plan (in a form convenient for work).

The trading result will depend on the quality of the preliminary study of any trading situations.

Fundamental and technical analysis of the trading situation

The need for preliminary market analysis is beyond doubt. The analysis mechanism must be clearly worked out, tested, and its general scheme must be indicated in the trading plan.

When conducting fundamental analysis, you need to pay special attention to:

• Reliability and relevance of sources (news, economic calendar, official messages, analytics, reports);
• Stable access to information (free or paid);
• Mandatory volume and mode of working with information;
• Rules for applying the results in practice.

When performing technical analysis, you need to pay attention to:

• The result of the analysis for different periods (round levels, support/resistance, max/min, volumes);
• Graphic analysis (figures, trends, patterns);
• Conditions for positions - entry/exit/reversal, Take Profit/Stop Loss (according to money management);
• Scheme of work in different trading situations and analysis of related markets.

Analysis of results and trading actions

Mandatory keeping of a trading journal, regardless of trading results, allows you to find “weak” areas in time and adjust your trading strategy. Even the simplest trader’s trading plan (a sample is given below) should contain an analysis of trading actions:

As a result, you should evaluate:

• Your reaction and actions during trading (entry/closing/support of transactions);
• Fulfillment of money management conditions and actions according to the trading plan;
• Errors, transactions made not according to the strategy and reasons for violating the trading plan;
• Correctness of strategy signals and fulfillment of profit plan.

Psychology and Personal Development

In the process of working on Forex, you should analyze:

• Your behavior in the process of opening transactions;
• Personal reaction to a loss, behavior during periods of drawdown;
• Personal weaknesses, inadequate emotions and thinking characteristics;
• State of failure to achieve set goals.

It is necessary to develop personal methods of protection against stress. During critical emotional states, trading is prohibited!

Conditions for adjusting the trading plan for:

• Increasing the deposit load - if the risk is below critical;
• Replacement of an asset - the presence of effective dynamics;
• Replacement strategies - only after testing.

You yourself must constantly develop and improve your trading skills, and therefore the trading plan and trader’s diary can be changed if this does not worsen the final result.

Freedom in the financial market does not mean a lack of work discipline. A trader’s trading plan is an example of how you can combine all your goals and means, strategy and tactics, preparation and execution of transactions, money management and analysis into one working tool. But a successful result is possible only if all the conditions set for yourself are honestly fulfilled.

A reasonable person starting a new business in finance develops a business plan to determine possible profits and risks. Trading plan– a type of business plan for a trader. This is a document, without which successful activities are impossible, a program that determines behavior and takes into account all the personal qualities of the developer.

Goals of developing a trading plan

Only people who are unmotivated, passionate, and who live by emotions do not plan their activities in any field. The main one is greed, not subject to reason. It is based on the hope of making a big profit. When working with binary options, it is better to be guided by calculation.

The second destructive emotion is fear. It appears along with losses and paralyzes the trader. Afraid of losing even more money, he enters into unreasonable and mutually exclusive contracts. Planning helps you fight fear and act wisely and clearly.

Trader's trading plan , designed by or for another person may not be useful. This is a theoretical basis based on someone else's experience and someone else's intuition. You won’t be able to teleport them into your brain.

You need to develop your own document. He must take into account accounting and work algorithm, personal strengths and weaknesses. The program should be understandable and clear only for its developer, and should not cause him doubts regarding the method of use.

The main task is to determine what to do, for what reason, when. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate your own personality and behavior in the process of preparing for work. Important components are also the management of funds, time, and risks. External factors should be taken into account: periods of volatility, technical and fundamental analysis data, time of news release.

Composition of a binary options trading plan

Beginners often confuse a plan with a system. This is not true! The system is just one part of the program.

Binary Options Trading Plan comprises:

• determining the goals of the activity;
• determining one’s own psychotype, assessing emotional indicators;
• analysis of risks, means, time;
• income planning;
• descriptions of the transaction preparation process;
• criteria for choosing a broker and trading instrument.

Goals can be short-term or long-term, they depend on the type of trading. Scalpers and day traders prefer short-term contracts, investors prefer medium- and long-term ones. The program developer must define a goal for the month and for the year. If trading is a source of adrenaline or a hobby, then the type of transactions does not matter.

Three types of traders are distinguished by psychotype: intellectuals, instinctive and intuitive. The first type includes those who are based on analysis and quickly make objective decisions. The second type is characterized by increased emotionality, which interferes with trading. The third type has good intuition, so it makes decisions at the subconscious level.

With increased emotionality, it is necessary to clearly establish in what state activity in the market is completely excluded. In any case, you should not even approach the computer when you are sick, angry or depressed. Fear and overexcitement are also bad helpers.

• when will the transition from a demo account to a real one be made;
• how much money will be in the trading account;
• for what amount (in percentage) of the deposit each contract will be concluded;
• what will be the profit and loss;
• profit behavior.

The main points of the trading plan

Only “free” funds can be transferred to a trading account. Experienced traders believe that for one contract You should not use more than 2% of the deposit amount. As for profit, you can set different limits for yourself. For example, if 20% of the deposit volume is earned, trading stops until next week.

The time spent on trading varies from person to person. A working person will write down how many hours a day he will trade, a non-working person - how many days a week. It is advisable to choose the time so that no one interferes. Please note that a short time frame (minute) requires more time to study news and charts.

When determining the level of planned income, you should not immediately draw a plate with attractive numbers. You cannot compare an exchange with an investment deposit with a certain interest rate. There is no specific income in binary options.

But you need to plan the return on your investment. The basic rule of deposit management is not to plan to conclude contracts for an amount exceeding 2-5% of the deposit volume. An increase to 7-10% is allowed only by experienced traders. Another important condition is to trade exclusively with the trend.

To reduce risks, you need to plan the number of transactions and profits from them at the beginning of each day. For example, you need to earn 10% of the deposit amount. The initial investment can be approximately 70-75% of the planned profit. If the first transaction turns out to be profitable, the second one can also be made with the same investment. The session ends immediately after the amount set at the beginning of the day is earned.

Before starting work, it is advisable to also determine after how many unsuccessful transactions the trading will end. You should not hope that a large profitable trade will cover your losses on the same day. For example, stop trading until tomorrow if 5 trades turned out to be unprofitable.

Using one well-studied strategy helps to avoid financial losses. Before choosing a trading instrument, you need to look through all available ones and study in detail the one that seemed the best. During the trading process, it is worth devoting at least 10% of the planned time to other instruments. This will allow you to find a more profitable tool based on your experience.

It is advisable to think through in advance all the steps preceding the conclusion of each transaction. This could be studying previous contracts, getting acquainted with news related to the asset, or choosing a trading session. You can also draw support and resistance lines for all time intervals. All this must be indicated in the program to avoid headaches before the start of each working day. It will be enough to review and follow all the indicated steps.

Some traders include in their binary options trading plan a list of criteria they will use when choosing a broker and methods chosen to monitor profits and losses. Everyone can develop a program at their own discretion. The main thing is that this document helps to avoid making transactions dictated by emotions. What is important is not strict adherence to some scheme during the development process, but the ability to take into account one’s own shortcomings and strictly follow the plan.

Emotional trading– one of the factors that has a negative impact on a trader’s trading results. As a rule, numerous uncontrollable emotions are the main reason why a trader makes a large number of mistakes in the Forex market. Precisely, trading psychology is a factor that is underestimated by many novice traders.

Entering the market based on emotions, the desire to win back a loss immediately, instinctively opening a trade deal when the price of an asset moves sharply and quickly, overtrading - this is not a complete list of erroneous decisions that arise in a situation of stress, under the influence of emotions.Having a trading plan in the Forex market will help the trader to largely avoid the influence of these factors. It is the trading plan in the Forex market and, most importantly, strict adherence to it that is the basis for the successful work of many traders. In essence, a trading plan in the Forex market is a complete instruction for working in the market for a certain time interval (daily, weekly).

Requirements for a trading plan and what it includes

A trader must draw up a trading plan only in writing. There should not be any “mental plans” or plans written down on pieces of paper. You should develop the most serious approach to planning your trading activities.

A trading plan should be drawn up exclusively before the start of trading and for a specific period of time. Drawing up a trading plan in the Forex market is carried out on the basis of a comprehensive analysis of the market for a certain time period using data from fundamental and technical analysis.

The Forex trading plan includes:

Selection and list of financial instruments that you plan to trade on the market

Clear definition of signals for entering and exiting a trading position

Justification for setting and calculating the level of limit orders

Significant reasons to change your trading plan

Analysis of transactions, both individually and all transactions for the day. Identification and analysis of mistakes made, and determination of actions to eliminate them.

After completing each transaction, the trader needs to conduct a comprehensive analysis of it: the correctness of entering and exiting the transaction, the result obtained. It is also necessary to note and record all thoughts and emotions that arise during the trading process, identify the positive and negative aspects of the trading process, and note the negative aspects that still need further work. It should also be remembered that the situation on the Forex market almost always changes quickly and dramatically and the movement of most currency pairs is characterized by high volatility, especially when important economic news is released or speeches by the governors of the world's leading central banks. In this situation, the trading plan can be partially revised in accordance with the changed market conditions and another plan can be drawn up, in accordance with which the trader needs to work.

It is also extremely important to know that even the ideal forex trading plan It will not help you if you do not comply with all its provisions. In this regard, the trader’s personal discipline is extremely important, without which it is almost impossible to achieve success.

Greetings, dear readers! As you know, a Forex trading plan is extremely important. If you do not clearly plan all your actions, you will not be able to consistently make money in the market.

Traditionally, novice traders confuse the concepts of a trading plan and a Forex strategy, believing that they are one and the same thing. In fact, these are completely different things. Today we will talk about what a Forex trading plan is, what it consists of and how to create it?

This topic is aimed at novice traders, because experienced people probably themselves know what’s what. So let's get started!

Four components

In general, every trader should have 4 components for trading:

• Trading strategy rules
• Login checklist
• MM rules

Strategy rules– clear rules for entering and exiting a transaction, trading time, choice of time interval and any elements related to opening or closing a transaction.

Login checklist– this is a certain list of conditions for opening a specific transaction. In order to open a trade, market conditions must completely coincide with the checklist.

MM rules– here is everything related to money management. Position volume, transaction risk, limiting losses and profits, and the like.

– in simple terms, a Forex trading plan is a combination of all the components that I noted above + some additions. A trading plan should answer all questions regarding your trading.

All about the plan

Now we will analyze the components that should make up a trading plan. Of course, I will give general examples, and in practice everything may be individual. But for a general understanding, I think it makes sense to consider these examples.

Force majeure circumstances. What will you do if there is a sudden power outage or your computer suddenly breaks down? You must immediately think about how you will act if this happens. For example, you can keep a laptop ready, use a VPS server, or, as a last resort, go to a place where there is free Wi-Fi.

Limitation of profit and loss. At this point, you must determine for yourself how you will limit your profits or losses. Of course, everything here is individual and depends on the specific strategy and style of work. But, as an example, so that you can better understand, a few theses:

• “Having received 30 points of profit per day, I no longer trade”
• “After receiving 3 stop losses in a day, I don’t trade”
• “When I reach a drawdown of 30% of the account, I take a break from trading to work on mistakes”

Emotional condition. Emotional and psychological mood plays a key role in the quality of trading. If you are in an unsuitable moral or physical state, it is better not to trade. For example, something is bothering you, you have personal problems, then you need to first solve all the problems, and only then trade. In trading, your head should always be bright and clear, and you should always be as motivated as possible.

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Quite often people try to work in a psychologically unstable state. But you need to understand that trading is not an ordinary job in an office, where you can just sit for the whole day and go home. Trading is a fairly creative profession, and you need the appropriate psychological state for the work to be as effective as possible.

Don’t forget, if you feel unwell or have a bad morale, it’s better not to trade!

Set goals for yourself

As you know, living aimlessly is stupid. In any endeavor, we must have an end goal. Goals can be short-term or long-term. For short-term goals, you set yourself what you want to achieve in the near future, for example, earn a certain amount in a month.

Long-term goals are things you set for yourself over a long period of time. For example, you want to earn money for an apartment and so on. In trading, it is also very important to have certain goals. You should set goals for the month, for the year, and generally for the very long term.

Your goal is your motivation, which will allow you to draw more and more strength to achieve success.

How to make a plan for Forex?

This question may confuse a novice trader, but I assure you that there is nothing complicated in creating a trading plan. Let's start with the fact that on the Internet you can find a huge number of different examples of creating a trading plan.

Naturally, this matter is quite subjective, because everyone’s trading approach may be different. It is very important here to find your way and understand what specifically suits you and what does not. The plan of this or that trader may simply not suit you, since everyone has different trading styles and here you should find your own way.

Why is it needed?

I think the answer here is obvious. If you don't have a clear trading plan, then you're doomed. You initially need to understand how you will act in a given market situation. Every experienced trader has a clear trading plan, and they are successful in large part because they always act according to the plan.

For example, if it is written in your plan that you receive 2 losses per day and stop trading, then if you, having received these same losses, continue to trade, you are thereby violating your plan.

Again, a trading plan and a trading system are two different things and should not be confused. A Forex trading plan is a broader concept. I will even say that the trading system is part of the trading plan.

In general, no one says that a trading plan should be very complex and large.

On the contrary, it should be simple, but at the same time answer basic questions regarding your trading.

In absolutely any area of ​​our activity a plan is needed. You always need to know what you will do at one time or another. In addition, you need to clearly understand how to act if the situation does not go according to plan. For example, let's imagine that you had a losing day. You entered the market for the first time - you hit the stop, you entered the second time - you also hit the stop.

Here you can act in two ways: rationally and not. If you continue to work after receiving two losses in a row, if the plan says that this is the maximum amount of loss for the day, you will act very irrationally. The most rational thing to do, in this case, is to simply stop any trading activity.

You should not try to play with the market and win back here and now. When the day comes, there will be food, don’t forget about it. If you make a loss today, then you will make a profit tomorrow. The more planned your actions are, the better off you will be in the long run.

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You need to understand that a Forex trading plan is a very important point. Many beginners completely underestimate this, and in vain.

Again, making a trading plan is not as difficult as it might seem. You must clearly know what you will do at one time or another. You should even know what to do when things don't go according to plan.

The market is unpredictable, and this must be understood. You don’t know how the market will behave at one time or another, this is the whole essence of trading, that we operate with probabilities.

A trading plan is one of the key factors that can give you a competitive advantage. Many act without any plan, for which they later pay in the form of numerous losses.

Of course, it is impossible to trade completely without losses! But at the same time, in the long run, you can provide yourself with an advantage, the main thing is that every action you take is planned.

Today we will talk about a very important topic that will be of interest to both beginners and those traders who have already started making money on , but cannot yet achieve stability in this process. You all want to become professional traders, earn quick money, buy expensive cars, travel the world, etc. Everything is in your hands, that’s why we came to Forex. All that remains is to answer the question: how to learn to trade Forex? Most traders who manage to make some money on Forex end up failing or trading either with profit or loss. What is the reason for these failures? You are all looking for that one strategy, one that will give you financial independence. There is a category of traders who search for the Grail all their lives, go through everything, test them for years, find flaws in them and continue further searches. But let’s imagine that you have found your Grail, you start making your first money on Forex, and then your strategy simply stops working, and you are left with nothing. Now let's imagine how professional traders work. You've probably seen how traders trade on Wall Street in films, if not, then check out our selection. They do not have a clear strategy; they try to make money on every opportunity. Forex is a constantly changing market; if yesterday you could earn a fortune trading exclusively in gold, then tomorrow speculation in the grain market may turn out to be the most promising. What unites all professional traders? This is the presence of a trading plan - a set of rules that allows you to quickly decide when to open a trade and when to close it, what goals to set and limit losses, how much to risk in a trade, without relying on intuition. Let's take a closer look at how to draw up a trading plan and apply it in trading.

If you have yet found a broker for Forex trading, then you can find him.

What is the difference between a trading plan and a strategy?

A trading strategy always answers three questions:

What to trade? We look for inefficiencies and patterns in the market, carry out analytical work and testing, search for patterns and, as a result, find trading instruments that are in a trend or will soon be in a trend;

When to trade? This is a search for a worker and an entry point into the market (rollback, breakout, etc.);

How much to trade? Issues of capital management (money management) are resolved here.

But the trading plan answers the following questions: how to trade, how to implement the set goals, how to achieve a positive mathematical expectation, how to gain an advantage over the market, etc. A trading plan is a written set of rules that helps us automate the trading process. Having a trading plan at hand, we must clearly understand where we enter, what must happen on the chart in order to enter a trade, where to put a stop, what goals to take to exit a trade, etc.

Why do you need a Forex trading plan?

When trading on a demo account, as a rule, you do not think about whether you will lose money or not. At the moment, you are in an experimental state, so you understand that the deal may not take place, and you are calm about stops. When you risk real money, at the moment of concluding a deal, you immediately have an internal dialogue - whether to enter into a deal or not. So, having a trading plan helps you focus on trading without being distracted by thinking about decisions. But to do this, you must not only know your trading plan, but write it down in some form, so that if a controversial issue arises, you turn to your set of rules and see what to do in this case. It could be an A4 sheet of paper, a notepad on a computer, an application on a smartphone - it doesn’t matter, the main thing is that you always have it at hand.

conclusions

Thus, developing and strictly following a trading plan will allow you to quickly overcome your psychological barriers that prevent you from making money on Forex. When you deviate from your trading plan by entering several points earlier than the strategy requires, lowering your take profit and moving your stops during the trading process, you are creating artificial slippage, worsening your trading statistics. At first glance, this is not striking, but if you collect statistics for a thousand transactions, your actions will noticeably affect your trading results. Therefore, try to follow your trading plan, write a set of rules on a piece of paper so that it is constantly in front of your eyes, this way you will quickly learn to trade effectively and move into the phase of unconscious competence.