Often I see speculators changing their trading system as soon as they run into a loss. I was like that sometime ago when I first started trading currencies. I didn’t have the necessary patience to test the system and keep going with it after a few losses.

Later I understood that it is not the system but the trading style that is important. If you are patient, you will succeed with long-term styles like swing trading. Otherwise if you have better control over your emotions then try shorter-term styles or scalping.

I personally like longer-term trades. I don’t have the emotional control necessary to succeed with scalping. I don’t scalp the market because of spreads. You  don’t pay your broker a commission as in the stock market but a spread - the difference between buy and sell prices of a currency pair. Its a strategy that requires many entries in a short time very hard to make into a successful one.

Let us  say you trade some currency pair with a broker who has 3 pips spread. If you’re scalping, then you’re probably making around ten trades a day with about ten pips of profit in each trade. This will cost you 30 pips in spread per day. It will add up to 150 pips a week and about 500 pips/month. You see how hard it is to make profits like this.

On the other hand when I’m making one trade in a few days and my target is usually well over 100 pips it becomes much easier to make profits. Besides there is little emotional stress since I monitor a trade for very little time everyday. If you are consistently profitable with scalping then do continue. Depending on your strengths and weaknesses, it’s easier to pick a successful system.