Forex trading is an endeavor that requires a certain attitude for success. Many novice traders are unaware of the mental attitude involved for successful trading and begin trading allowing their personal defects of character to be manifested in the results.

When referring to personal defects of character, many conscious and subconscious elements of personality can and often do get manifested for the first time when a person begins trading for their own account.

This often happens because many elements of a personality lie dormant until certain conditions in the environment arise. Much like a person that has no idea they can become violent when angry, because they have never experienced a situation where they became angry enough, trading can open a floodgate of unexpressed emotions.

The Programming of Greed

Trading psychology can cause a person to experience an entire range of emotions that they may not have consciously known existed, such as greed for example, which is the desire for more than you need. Modern western society constantly programs people for greed through unbridled materialism demonstrated and promoted via the mass media.

As a result, many people have no idea of how greedy they have been conditioned to be. Greed is therefore one of the primary emotions commonly experienced and acted upon by novice traders.

Character Manifestations: Deserving or Undeserving

In order to achieve success in trading, a key element for a person to make money versus losing money or breaking even, has to do with the subconscious feeling of being worthy to receive and to be deserving of the large amounts of money that trading can produce.

Unfortunately, the great majority of people have been adversely programmed by society, their education, their parents and upbringing to feel they do not deserve to make large sums of money unless they work hard for it.

This fundamental mental device implanted in the subconscious at an early age, can impede a person from making profitable trading decisions and may even drive a person to lose money if the programming makes them feel undeserving.

A more appropriate attitude for a trader would be "I am open to all the abundance of the Universe, my trading reflects I deserve to receive abundantly." This type of affirmation can undermine previous programming and influence the trader in the direction of making a profit versus taking a loss.

Fear and Analysis Paralysis

Fear makes up the other major emotion which people constantly cite in trading and which manifests constantly in the trading arena. The reason for this emotion's ubiquitous nature in financial markets involves the fact that everyone is afraid of losing money.

While losing money is the apparent cause, the root cause is a fear of poverty; no one wants to be poor. The fear of poverty is another deep-seated fear that society has programmed into its members and directly affects the trading community.

Fear, in many cases will impede a trader from making decisions and sometimes is covered up by intense analysis of a trading idea before establishing a market position. This is commonly known among traders as "analysis paralysis."

The Forex Trader's Solution

While eliminating the emotional element in trading is unlikely, the way emotional and character elements have been minimized by seasoned professionals, is by education and a trading plan.

Being well educated on the economic forces that cause prices to change and considerable familiarity with the financial product or commodity one is trading, give the trader confidence.

Confidence in trading makes up a large part of a successful trader's attributes. Nevertheless, in order to be completely confident, a profitable trading plan which allows the trader a framework to trade upon is the other part of a successful trader's secrets.

Risk Statement: Trading Foreign Exchange on margin carries a high level of risk and may not be suitable for all investors. The possibility exists that you could lose more than your initial deposit. The high degree of leverage can work against you as well as for you.