How to Trade the Forex Market - Take Off the Training Wheels

I know that when you are first start to learn about how to trade the forex market, people tend to really go "indicator crazy". This means they will put any kind of indicator on their charts. It doesn't matter if they don't have a clue about how to use it or even understand what's the purpose of it.

I suppose using these indicators provides some kind of reassurance to the trader. I can safely say that when I first started to trade I was suffering from the indicator fever. I used to be the kind of trader that would spend all day on forex forums trying to get my hands on new proprietary indicators.

But something eventually dawned on me. While all these indicators looked really pretty on my chart, I didn't have the first clue about how to actually trade the forex market. After all, I was just blindly following these indicators as the sole reason to enter and exit a trade.

This is what I like to call the training phase of a trader. It's somewhat akin to when you first learn how to ride a bike. Nobody knows how to ride a bike the first time they get on one, so they put training wheels. In this metaphor, the training wheels are the indicators.

But just like when you are riding a bike that is on training wheels, it may seem like you are really riding the bike. But in the back of your mind, you KNOW that you aren't really riding a bike unless you are unassisted.

It's the same exact thing in trading.

You can't call yourself a trader unless you can say with great certainty, you understand what is going in the market, and I hate to say it, but you can't really do that with indicators. The reason is, because you are using the indicators to tell you what is going on in the market, instead of you understanding it for yourself.