In this article, we will talk about how to do forex trading without a degree. We will also talk about the skills you need to acquire in order to become a profitable trader without a degree.
Why you don’t need a degree to trade forex?
There is no degree in the world that teaches you how to trade forex profitably. If there is, everyone will become a forex trader because of the amount of money you can make by trading forex profitably.
That said, if you want to work as a forex trader for a hedge fund or a prop trading firm, you might find it useful to get a finance degree.
Also, if you are into automated trading and creating automated trading robots then, you can benefit from having a computer science degree or a software engineering degree.
But, most people don’t get into forex trading just because they want to work a job as a forex trader.
Most people get into forex trading because they want to make money online, in their own time without a boss. To achieve this, you do not need a degree.
Sometimes it’s even better not to have a degree because most people go into debt trying to get a degree (student loans). If you don’t have to pay student loans or pay the debt, you are in a better position to trade.
Now, let’s talk about the things you need to learn and the skills you need to acquire to become a profitable forex trader.
The 3 pillars of forex trading for trading without a degree
There are 3 important things you need to learn if you want to forex trade without a degree. The 3 things are
- Profitable traders mindset
- Technical Analysis and trading strategies
- Risk management
Now, let’s talk about each of these, starting with the profitable trader’s mindset.
How to develop a profitable traders mindset
The profitable trader’s mindset comes down to 2 key important things. These are emotional control and discipline.
Emotional Control
This is about controlling your emotions. This is a skill that you must acquire if you want to become a profitable forex trader. You cannot get emotional during trading if you want to be profitable. Most beginner traders get emotional during trading and this leads to losses.
A very common thing that we see among unprofitable traders is revenge trading. This happens when a trader loses a trade and then keeps trading continuously to make up for their losses just after losing a trade.
But then ends up losing even more. Then the trader gets very emotional and quits trading. You definitely don’t want this to happen to you. So how do you avoid this and develop emotional control? The first and most important thing is to have a proper trading plan.
Let’s say you are day trading. It is important that you have a pre-determined amount of trades that you are going to make per day. For example, after 2 trades you stop trading for the day.
This way even if you lose 2 trades, you are not going to make another trade that will lead you to further losses. Also, it is important to note that if a trader is on a losing streak, they can get very emotional.
That said, it is okay to have losing trades. Even professional traders have losing traders. But these traders do not become emotional about it.
They understand that to become a profitable trader, it is not about winning your trades all the time but it is about having larger wins than losses. The key here is your net profit.
Discipline
Developing self-discipline is extremely important to become a profitable trader. The key to developing self-discipline is to do what you said you were going to do and stick to your plan
When you have a trading plan, do not change things continuously. You can improve your trading plan slowly over time. Do it one variable at a time.
Most beginner traders and losing traders, make a trading plan but then don’t stick to it. When the plan doesn’t work, they quit the plan within a week. That is not how you do it.
If the plan doesn’t work, only tweak the thing that you think made it fail based on your analysis. That’s why we tell traders, that it is extremely important to have a trading journal.
This way you will be able to track your trades and know what trading strategies don’t work and what trading strategies do work.
If you don’t have a trading journal, check out our free trading journal. This is completely free and this is the only trading journal you will need. That’s it for the mindset part. Now, let’s talk about technical analysis and trading strategies.
Technical analyses and trading strategies
Knowing how to analyze the forex market technically is the most important skill you need to acquire. To learn technical analysis you need to learn about different ways to analyze the markets technically. Below are the key skills that you need to learn about.
- Support and resistance
- Major Zones
- Candlestick patterns
- Chart patterns
- Supply and demand
- Technical indicators
Also, it is important that you have a good understanding of fundamental analysis as well. Fundamental analysis is analysing the market based on news. We personally do not recommend that you trade based on fundamental analysis alone. But it still it is important that you understand how the news affects the markets.
Now, you might be wondering where to learn all this stuff. Do not worry, that’s why we created a completely free step-by-step guide on trading in the forex market. Click the button below to check it out.
Risk management
Managing your risk is also a very important part of trading. Managing your risk comes down to a few key things,
- Your Risk to reward ratio
- How much capital you are going to risk per each trade
- Where to place your stop loss and take profits
- Whether you should use a trailing stop loss or not
Now, if you are interested in learning about all these checks out our complete trading guide.
Choosing the right broker for forex trading without a degree
Another extremely important thing when trading is choosing the right broker. There are 1000s of forex brokers out there. This confuses a lot of new traders on what broker to choose.
There are also brokers who are scams. They get you to deposit money in their accounts but do not allow you to withdraw your money. There are several things that you need to consider when choosing the right forex broker for you. These are,
Regulations
Is the broker regulated by financial regulators? It is preferred to have brokers who a regulated by tier 1 regulators in the industry. Never ever use a broker who is not regulated. If the broker is not regulated, you risk your money being stolen.
Trading software
Does the broker provide software for trading on all different platforms, mobile, desktop, and web? For example, if you prefer trading on your mobile device, you might prefer a broker with a good mobile trading platform.
Minimum deposit
How much capital do you need to start an account with this broker? Some brokers require a small capital of less than $10 to start trading with them. But some brokers require $1000s of dollars. Depending on the capital you have you need to choose the right broker to work with.
Customer service
Does the broker provide you with good customer service? Ideally 24 hour customer service.
Methods of payment
Does the broker accept your preferred payment method? Some brokers do not accept certain payment methods.
Based on these criteria, we have narrowed down 100s of brokers to a few brokers that you can use. These brokers are as follows.
Top Forex Brokers
Conclusion
In this article, we talked about how to trade forex without a degree. As discussed, you do not need a college degree at all to become a profitable trader.
You only need to acquire skills by learning about trading and practicing trading. If you haven’t checked out our free trading guide, make sure to check it out below.