A column currently published on Toyo Keizai ONLINE: Only profits remain in the trading account
Good morning, this is Matsushita.
After we held a trading study group the other day,
we conducted one-on-one coaching with intern Tsutchy.
He is a four-year veteran investor in FX,
but he has been profitable every year since his first year,
never losing,
and he continues to earn profits annually.
When he first started FX,
he read my first book, “FX Trade Exercise Book,”
participated in the Personal Investor Support Festival,
and then joined all the courses at Makoto Investment School
and has been consistently profitable—an exceptional trader.
That person is currently trading using cycles,
but in fact, at first he was exploring short-term
breakout trading as his style,
continually seeking it.
Knowing his wishes, I continued to offer advice in line with it.
However, after that kind of effort continued for about a year,
he began to question,
'Is what I really want not short-term breakout but
mid-term trading using cycles?'
From there, he began validating and practicing cycle trading.
After another year, he had completely become a cycle trader.
Then recently,
he said,
“What I love about cycle trading is
when I log into my trading account,
all of my positions remain in profit.
It feels extremely reassuring.”
I understand that feeling well.
The cycle trading I advocate emphasizes that
the entry point is the turning point of the cycle, but
ultimately it involves riding the mid- to long-term trend,
developing from cycle trading into trend-following trading.
And trend-following trading aims to ride the trend,
and when you are riding the trend,
your positions remain in unrealized profit
and continue to expand.
Therefore, what he said—
“When I log in, all positions are profitable”
—is achievable.
This is exactly what I have experienced for 14 years.
However, unfortunately, most individual investors
cannot properly cut losses,
cannot properly ride the trend, so
they take small profits and leave losing positions to salt away,
and end up riding a downtrend,
so when they log into their trading accounts,
only losing positions remain.
Moreover, those losses grow larger day by day.
Knowing how to read the trend
and knowing how to cut losses properly
makes a huge difference.
This is not a small issue of profit or loss,
or of being right or wrong; it is a literal heaven-or-hell difference mentally.
With proper cut losses and take-profits,
and learning to ride the trend properly,
you can create a situation where “all profitable positions remain when you log in.”
Please learn proper cut losses quickly,
and learn the trend, and experience having an account full of profitable positions too.
It really is calming and happy.
Proper cut losses and trends can be learned at
