The Psychology of Forex Trading(2)

• What emotions should you watch for in yourself while trading?
To be a little bit more specific about “emotional” trading, let’s go over some of the most common emotional trading mistakes that traders make:

1-Greed – 
                       There’s an old saying that you may have heard regarding trading the markets, it goes something like this: “Bulls make money, bears make money, and pigs get slaughtered”. It basically means that if you are a greedy “pig” in the markets, you are almost certainly going to lose your money. Traders are greedy when they don’t take profits because they think a trade is going to go forever in their favor. Another thing that greedy traders do is add to a position simply because the market has moved in their favor, you can add to your trades if you do so for logical price action-based reasons, but doing so only because the market has moved in your favor a little bit, is usually an action born out of greed. Obviously, risking too much on a trade from the very start is a greedy thing to do too. The point here is that you need to be very careful of greed, because it can sneak up on you and quickly destroy your trading account.
2-Fear – 
                  Traders become fearful of entering the market usually when they are new to trading and have not yet mastered an effective trading strategy like price action trading (in which case they should not be trading real money yet anyways). Fear can also arise in a trader after they hit a series of losing trades or after suffering a loss larger than what they are emotionally capable of absorbing. To conquer fear of the market, you primarily have to make sure you are never risking more money than you are totally OK with losing on a trade. If you are totally OK with losing the amount of money you have at risk, there is nothing to fear. Fear can be a very limiting emotion to a trader because it can make them miss out on good trading opportunities.

3-Revenge – 
                           Traders experience a feeling of wanting “revenge” on the market when they suffer a losing trade that they were “sure” would work out. The key thing here is that there is no “sure” thing in trading…never. Also, if you have risked too much money on a trade (starting to see a theme here?), and you end up losing that money, there’s a good chance you are going to want to try and jump back in the market to make that money back….which usually just leads to another loss (and sometimes an even larger one) since you are just trading emotionally again.

4-Euphoria – 
                                While feeling euphoric is usually a good thing, it can actually do a lot of damage to a trader’s account after he or she hits a big winner or a large string of winners. Traders can become overly-confident after winning a few trades in the market, for this reason most traders experience their biggest losing period’s right after they hit a bunch of winners in the market. It is extremely tempting to jump right back in the market after a “perfect” trade setup or after you hit 5 winning trades in a row…there’s a fine line between keeping your feet grounded in reality and thinking that everything you do in the markets will turn to gold.
Many traders enter into a tailspin of emotional trading and losing money after they hit a string of winners. The reason this happens is because they feel confident and euphoric and forget about the real danger of the market and that ANY TRADE CAN LOSE. The key to remember here is that trading is a long-term game of probabilities, if you have a high-probability trading edge, you will eventually make money over the long-term assuming you follow your trading edge with discipline. But, even if your edge is 70% successful over time, you could still hit 30 losing trades in a row out of 100….so keep this fact in mind and always remember you never know WHICH trade will be a loser and WHICH will be a winner.

Forex trading mistakes and traps (2- Over-trading)

 

• Over-trading


Most traders do not make money in the markets over the long-run for one simple reason: they trade way too much. One curious fact of trading is that most traders do very well on demo accounts, but then when they start trading real money they do horribly. The reason for this is that in demo trading there is virtually no emotion involved since your real money is not on the line. So, this goes to show that emotion is the #1 destroyer of trading success. Traders who over-trade are operating purely on emotion.
Trading when your pre-defined trading edge is not actually present is over-trading. Trading if you have no trading plan or have not mastered a trading edge yet is over-trading. Essentially, you need to know EXACTLY what you’re looking for in the market and then ONLY trade when your edge is present. Trading too much causes you to rack up transaction costs (spreads or commissions), and it also causes you to lose money a lot faster since you are purely gambling in the market. You need to take a calm and calculated approached to the market, not a drunken-gamblers approach…which seems to be the favored approach of many traders.

Risk Reward and Money Management in Forex Trading

This could possibly be the most important Forex trading article you ever read. That might sound like a bold statement, but it’s really not too bold when you consider the fact that proper money management is the most important ingredient to successful Forex trading. Money management in Forex trading is the term given to describe the various aspects of managing your risk and reward on every trade you make. If you don’t fully understand the implications of money management as well as how to actually implement money management techniques, you have a very slim chance of becoming a consistently profitable trader.
I am going to explain the most important aspects of money management in this article; risk / reward, position sizing, and fixed dollar risk vs. percentage risk. So, grab a cup of your favorite beverage and follow along as I help you understand some of the most critical concepts to a profitable Forex trading career…

Risk : Reward

Risk reward is the most important aspect to managing your money in the markets. However, many traders do not completely grasp how to fully take advantage of the power of risk reward. Every trader in the market wants to maximize their rewards and minimize their risks. This is the basic building block to becoming a consistently profitable trader. The proper knowledge and implementation of risk reward gives traders a practical framework to do this.
Many traders do not take full advantage of the power of risk reward because they don’t have the patience to consistently execute a large enough series of trades in order to realize what risk reward can actually do. Risk reward does not mean simply calculating the risk and reward on a trade, it means understanding that by achieving 2 to 3 times risk or more on all your winning trades, you should be able to make money over a series of trades even if you lose the majority of the time. When we combine the consistent execution of a risk / reward of 1:2 or larger with a high-probability trading edge like price action, we have the recipe for a very potent Forex trading strategy.
Let’s take a look at the 4hr chart of Gold to see how to calculate risk / reward on a pin bar setup. We can see in the chart below there was an obvious pin bar that formed from support in an up-trending market, so the price action signal was solid. Next, we calculate the risk; in this case our stop loss is placed just below the low of the pin bar, so we would then calculate how many lots we can trade given the stop loss distance. We are going to assume a hypothetical risk of $100 for this example. We can see this setup has so far grossed a reward of 3 times risk, which would be $300.
Now, with a reward of 3 times risk, how many trades can we lose out of a series of 25 and STILL make money? The answer is 18 trades or 72%. That’s right; you can lose 72% of your trades with a risk / reward of 1:3 or better and STILL make money…..over a series of trades.
Here is the math real quick:
18 losing trades at $100 risk = -$1800, 7 winning trades with a 3 R (risk) reward = $2100. So, after 25 trades you would have made $300, but you also would have had to endure 18 losing trades…and the trick is that you never know when the losers are coming. You might get 18 losers in a row before the 7 winners pop up, that is unlikely, but it IS possible.
So, risk / reward essentially all boils down to this main point; you have to have the fortitude to set and forget your trades over a large enough series of executions to realize the full power of risk / reward. Now, obviously if you are using a high-probability trading method like price action strategies, you aren’t likely to lose 72% of the time. So, just imagine what you can do if you properly and consistently implement risk reward with an effective trading strategy like price action.
Unfortunately, most traders are either too emotionally undisciplined to implement risk reward correctly, or they don’t know how to. Meddling in your trades by moving stops further from entry or not taking logical 2 or 3 R profits as they present themselves are two big mistakes traders make. They also tend to take profits of 1R or smaller, this only means you have to win a much higher percentage of your trades to make money over the long-run. Remember, trading is a marathon, not a sprint, and the WAY YOU WIN the marathon is through consistent implementation of risk reward combined with the mastery of a truly effective trading strategy.

Position Sizing

Position sizing is the term given to the process of adjusting the number of lots you trade to meet your pre-determined risk amount and stop loss distance. That is a bit of a loaded sentence for the newbie’s. So, let’s break it down piece by piece. This is how you calculate your position size on every trade you make:
1) First you need to decide how much money in dollars (or whatever your national currency is) you are COMFORTABLE WITH LOSING on the trade setup. This is not something you should take lightly. You need to genuinely be OK with losing on any ONE trade, because as we discussed in the previous section, you could indeed lose on ANY trade; you never know which trade will be a winner and which will be a loser.
2) Find the most logical place to put your stop loss. If you are trading a pin bar setup this will usually be just above / below the high / low of the tail of the pin bar. Similarly, the other setups I teach generally have “ideal” places to put your stop loss. The basic idea is to place your stop loss at a level that will nullify the setup if it gets hit, or on the other side of an obvious support or resistance area; this is logical stop placement. What you should NEVER DO, is place your stop too close to your entry at an arbitrary position just because you want to trade a higher lot size, this is GREED, and it will come back to bite you much harder than you can possibly imagine.
3) Next, you need to enter the number of lots or mini-lots that will give you the $ risk you want with the stop loss distance you have decided is the most logical. One mini-lot is typically about $1 per pip, so if your pre-defined risk amount is $100 and your stop loss distance 50 pips, you will trade 2 mini-lots; $2 per pip x 50 pip stop loss = $100 risked.
The three steps above describe how to properly use position sizing. The biggest point to remember is that you NEVER adjust your stop loss to meet your desired position size; instead you ALWAYS adjust your position size to meet your pre-defined risk and logical stop loss placement. This is VERY IMPORTANT, read it again.
The next important aspect of position sizing that you need to understand, is that it allows you to trade the same $ amount of risk on any trade. For example, just because you have to have a wider stop on a trade doesn’t mean you need to risk more money on it, and just because you can have a smaller stop on a trade does not mean you will risk less money it. You adjust your position size to meet your pre-determined risk amount, no matter how big or small your stop loss is. Many beginning traders get confused by this and think they are risking more with a bigger stop or less with a smaller stop; this is not necessarily the case.
Let’s take a look at the current daily chart of the EURUSD below. We can see two different price action trading setups; a pin bar setup and an inside-pin bar setup. These setups required different stop loss distances, but as we can see in the chart below we still would risk the exact same amount on both trades, thanks to position sizing:

The fixed dollar risk model VS The percent risk model

Fixed dollar risk model = A trader predetermines how much money they are comfortable with potentially losing per trade and risks that same amount on every trade until they decide to change their risk.
Fixed percent risk model = A trader picks a percentage of their account to risk per trade (usually 2 or 3%) and sticks with that risk percentage.
In a previous article that I wrote about money management titled “Forex Trading Money Management – An Eye Opening Article”, I argued that using a fixed dollar amount of risk is superior to the percent of account risk model. The primary argument I make about this topic is that although the % R method will grow an account relatively quickly when a trader hits a series of winners, it actually slows account growth after a trader hits a series of losers, and makes it very difficult to bring the account back up to where it previously stood. This is because with the % R risk model you trade fewer lots as your account value decreases, while this can be good to limit losses, it also essentially puts you in a rut that is very hard to get out of. What is needed is mastery of one’s trading strategy combined with a fixed dollar risk you are comfortable with losing on any given trade, and when you combine these factors with consistent execution of risk / reward, you have an excellent chance at making money over a series of trades.
The % R  model essentially induces a trader to ‘lose slowly’ because what tends to happen is that traders begin to think “Since my position size is decreasing on every trade it’s OK if I trade more often”…and whilst they may not specifically think that sentence…it is often what happens. I personally believe the % R model makes traders lazy…it makes them take setups that they otherwise wouldn’t…because they are now risking less money per trade they don’t value that money as much…it’s human nature.
Also, the %R model really serves no real world purpose in professional trading as the account size is arbitrary; meaning the account size does not reflect the true risk profile of each person, nor does it represent their entire net worth. The account size is actually a ‘margin account’ and you only need to deposit enough in an account to cover the margin on positions…so you could have the rest of your trading money in a savings account or in a mutual fund or even precious metals…many professional traders do not keep all of their potential risk capital in their trading account.
The fixed $ risk model makes sense for professional traders who want to derive a real income from their trading; it’s how I trade and it’s how many others I know trade. Pro traders actually withdrawal their profits from their trading account each month, their account then goes back to its “baseline” level.

Example of Fixed $ Risk Vs. % Risk

Let’s take a look at a hypothetical example of 25 trades. We are comparing the fixed $ risk model to a 2% account risk model. Note: We have chosen the 2% risk because it’s a very popular percent risk amount amongst newbie traders and on many other Forex education sites. The fixed $ risk was set at $100 per trade in this example just to show how a trader who is confident in his or her trading skills and trades like a sniper would be able to build his or her account faster than someone settling on a 2% per trade risk. In reality, the fixed $ risk will vary between traders and it’s up to the trader to determine what they are truly OK with losing per trade. For me, if I was trading a small $2,000 account, I would personally be comfortable risking about $100 per trade, so this is what our example below reflects.
It’s quite obvious upon analyzing this series of random trades that the fixed $ model is superior. Sure you will draw your account down a bit quicker when you hit a series of losers with the fixed $ model, but the flip side is that you also build your account much quicker when you hit a series of winners (and recover from draw downs a lot faster). The key is that if you’re really trading like a sniper and you’ve mastered your trading strategy…you’re unlikely to have a lot of losing trades in a row, so the fixed $ risk model will be more beneficial to you.
In the example image below, we are looking at the fixed $ risk model versus the % risk model:
Now this example is a bit extreme, if you are trading with price action trading strategies and have truly mastered them, you shouldn’t be losing 68% of the time; your winning percentage is likely to average close to 50%. You can imagine how much better the results would be with a 50% winning percentage. If you won 50% of the time over 25 trades while risking $100 on a $2,000 account, you would have $4,500. If you won 50% of the time over 25 trades while risking 2% of $2,000, you would have only about $3,300.
Many professional traders use the fixed dollar risk method because they know that they have mastered their forex trading strategy, they don’t over-trade, and they don’t over-leverage, so they can safely risk a set amount they are comfortable with losing on any trade.
People who trade the %R model are more likely to over-trade and think that because their dollar risk per trade is decreasing with each loser it’s OK to trade more trades (and thus they lose more trades because they are taking lower-probability trades)…and then over time this over-trading puts them much further behind a fixed $ trader who is probably more cautious and sniper- like.

Conclusion

To succeed at trading the Forex markets, you need to not only thoroughly understand risk reward, position sizing, and risk amount per trade, you also need to consistently execute each of these aspects of money management in combination with a highly effective yet simple to understand trading strategy like price action. To learn more about price action trading and the money management principles discussed in this article

How to calculate profit and loss

Lot size / Contract size
In Forex, positions are quoted in terms of ‘lots’. The common nomenclature is ‘standard lot’, ‘mini log’, ‘micro lot’, and ‘nano lot’; we can see examples of each of these in the chart below and the number of units they each represent:
 

• How to calculate pip value
You probably already know that currencies are measured in pips, and one pip is the smallest increment of price movement that a currency can move. To make money from these small increments of price movement, you need to trade larger amounts of a particular currency in order to see any significant gain (or loss). This is where leverage comes into play; if you don’t understand leverage totally please go read Part 1 of the course where we discuss it.
So we need to know now how lot size affects the value of one pip. Let’s work through a couple examples:
We will assume we are using standard lots, which control 100,000 units per lot. Let’s see how this affects pip value.
1) EUR/JPY at an exchange rate of 100.50 (.01 / 100.50) x 100,000 = $9.95 per pip
2) USD/CHF at an exchange rate of 0.9190 (.0001 / .9190) x 100,000 = $10.88 per pip
In currency pairs where the U.S. dollar is the quote currency, one standard lot will always equal $10 per pip, one mini-lot will equal $1 per pip, one micro-lost will equal .10 cents per pip, and a nano-lot is one penny per pip.

• How to calculate profit and loss
Now, let’s move on to calculating profit and loss:
Let’s use a pair without the U.S. dollar as the quote currency since these are the trickier ones:
1) The rate for the USD/CHF is currently quoted at 0.9191 / 0.9195. Let’s say we are looking to sell the USD/CHF, this means we will be working with the ‘bid’ price of 0.9191, or the rate at which the market is prepared to buy from you.
2) You then sell 1 standard lot (100,000 units) at 0.9191
3) A couple of days later the price moves to 0.9091 / 0.9095 and you decide to take your profit of 96 pips, but what dollar amount is that??
4) The new quote price for the USD/CHF is 0.9091 / 0.9095. Since you are now closing the trade you are working with the ‘ask’ price since you are going to buy the currency pair to offset the sell order you previously initiated. So, since the ‘ask’ price is now 0.9095, this is the price the market is willing to sell the currency pair to you, or the price that you can buy it back at (since you initially sold it).
5) The difference between the price you sold at (0.9191) and the price you want to buy back at (0.9095) is 0.0096, or 96 pips.
6) Using the formula from above, we now have (.0001 / 0.9095) x 100,000 = $10.99 per pip x 96 pips = $1055.04
For currency pairs where the U.S. dollar is the quote currency, calculating profit or loss is pretty simple really. You simply take the number of pips you gained or lost and multiple that by the dollar per pip you are trading, here’s an example:
Let’s say you trade the EURUSD and you buy it at 1.3200 but the price moves down and hits your stop at 1.3100….you just lost 100 pips.
If you are trading 1 standard lot you would have lost $1,000 because 1 standard lot of pairs with the U.S. dollars as the quote currency = $10 per pip, and $10 per pip x 100 pips = $1,000
If you had traded 1 mini-lot you would have lost $100 since 1 mini-lot of USD quote pairs is equal to $1 per pip and $1 x 100 pips = $100
Always remember: when you enter or exit a trade you have to deal with the spread of the bid/ask price. Thus, when you buy a currency you will use the ask price and when you sell a currency you use the bid price.

Order types

Now it’s time to cover order types. When you execute a trade in the Forex market it is called an ‘order’, there are different order types and they can vary between brokers. All brokers provide some basic order types, there are other ‘special’ order types that are not offered by all brokers though, and we will cover them all below:

Market order – 
                                 A market order is an order that is placed ‘at the market’ and it’s executed instantly at the best available price.

Limit Entry order –
                                        A limit entry order is placed to either buy below the current market price or sell above the current market price. This is a bit tricky to understand at first so let me explain:
If the EURUSD is currently trading at 1.3200 and you want to go sell the market if it reaches 1.3250, you can place a limit sell order and then when / if the market touches 1.3250 it will fill you short. Thus, the limit sell order is placed ABOVE current market price. If you want to buy the EURUSD at 1.3050 and the market is trading at 1.3100, you would place your limit buy order at 1.3050 and then if the market hits that level it will fill you long. Thus the limit buy order is placed BELOW current market price.

Stop Entry order – 
                                       A stop-entry order is placed to buy above the current market price or sell below it. For example, if you want to trade long but you want to enter on a breakout of a resistance area, you would place your buy stop just above the resistance and you would get filled as price moves up into your stop entry order. The opposite holds true for a sell-stop entry if you want to sell the market.

Stop Loss order – 
                                   A stop-loss order is an order that is connected to a trade for the purpose of preventing further losses if the price moves beyond a level that you specify. The stop-loss is perhaps the most important order in Forex trading since it gives you the ability to control your risk and limit losses. This order remains in effect until the position is liquidated or you modify or cancel the stop-loss order.

Trailing Stop – 
                               The trailing stop-loss order is an order that is connected to a trade like the standard stop-loss, but a trailing stop-loss moves or ‘trails’ the current market price as your trade moves in your favor. You can typically set your trailing stop-loss to trail at a certain distance from current market price, it will not start moving until or unless the price moves greater than the distance you specify. For example, if you set a 50 pip trailing stop on the EURUSD, the stop will not move up until your position is in your favor by 51 pips, and then the stop will only move again if the market moves 51 pips above where your trailing stop is, so this way you can lock in profit as the market moves in your favor while still giving the trade room to grow and breath. Trailing stops are best used in strong trending markets.

Good till Cancelled order (GTC) –
                                                                   A good till cancelled order is exactly what it says…good until you cancel it. If you place a GTC order it will not expire until you manually cancel it. Be careful with these because you don’t want to set a GTC and then forget about it only to have the market fill you a month later in a potentially unfavorable position.

Good for the Day order (GFD) – 
                                                               A good for day order remains active in the market until the end of the trading day, in Forex the trading day ends at 5:00pm EST or New York time. The exact time a GFD expires might vary from broker to broker, so always check with your broker. 

One Cancels the Other order (OCO) – 
                                                                          A one cancels the other order is essentially two sets of orders; it can consist of two entry orders, two stop loss orders, or two entry and two stop-loss orders. Essentially, when one order is executed the other is cancelled. So, if you want to buy OR sell the EURUSD because you are anticipating a breakout from consolidation but you don’t know which way the market will break, you can place a buy entry and stop-loss above the consolidation and a sell entry with stop-loss below the consolidation. If the buy entry gets filled for example, the sell entry and its connected stop loss will both be cancelled instantly. A very handy order to use when you are not sure which direction the market will move but are anticipating a large move.

One Triggers the Other order (OTO) – 
                                                                          This order is the opposite of an OCO order, because instead of cancelling an order upon filling one, it will trigger another order upon filling one.

Advantages of being a Forex trader

Being a Forex trader offers the most amazing potential lifestyle of any profession in the world. It’s not easy to get there, but if you are determined and disciplined, you can make it happen. Here’s a quick list of skills you will need to reach your goals in the Forex market:

Ability - to take a loss without becoming emotional

Confidence - to believe in yourself and your trading strategy, and to have no fear

Dedication – to becoming the best Forex trader you can be

Discipline - to remain calm and unemotional in a realm of constant temptation (the market)

Flexibility - to trade changing market conditions successfully

Focus – to stay concentrated on your trading plan and to not stray off course

Logic – to look at the market from an objective and straight forward perspective

Organization – to forge and reinforce positive trading habits

Patience – to wait for only the highest-probability trading strategies according to your plan

Realism – to not think you are going to get rich quick and understand the reality of the market and trading

Savvy – to take advantage of your trading edge when it arises and be aware of what is happening in the market at all times

Self-control – to not over-trade and over-leverage your trading account

As traders, we can take advantage of the high leverage and volatility of the Forex market by learning and mastering and effective Forex trading strategy, building an effective trading plan around that strategy, and following it with ice-cold discipline. Money management is key here; leverage is a double-edged sword and can make you a lot of money fast or lose you a lot of money fast. The key to money management in Forex trading is to always know the exact dollar amount you have at risk before entering a trade and be TOTALLY OK with losing that amount of money, because any one trade could be a loser. More on money management later in the course.

The Basics of How Money is Made Trading Forex

Trading currency in the Forex market centers around the basic concepts of buying and selling.

Let's take the idea of buying first. What if you bought something (it could literally be almost anything...a house, a piece of jewelry or a stock) and it went up in value. If you sold it at that point, you would have made a profit...the difference between what you paid originally and the greater value that the item is worth now.

Currency trading is the same way...

Let's say you want to buy the AUDUSD currency pair. If the AUD goes up in value relative to the USD and then you sell it, you will have made a profit. A trader in this example would be buying the AUD and selling the USD at the same time.

For example if the AUDUSD pair was bought at 1.0615 and the pair moved up to 1.0700 at the time that the trade was closed/exited, the profit on the trade would have been 85 pips. (See the chart below…)

Had the pair moved down to 1.0600 before the trade was closed, the loss on the trade would have been 40 pips.

Also, it makes no difference which currency pair you are trading. If the price of the currency you are buying goes up from the time you bought it, you will have made a profit.

Here is another example using the AUD. In this case we still want to buy the AUD but let’s do this with the EURAUD currency pair. In this instance we would sell the pair. We would be selling the EUR and buying the AUD simultaneously. Should the AUD go up relative to the EUR we would profit as we bought the AUD.

In this example if we sold the EURAUD pair at 1.2320 and the price moved down to 1.2250 when we closed the position, we would have made a profit of 70 pips. Had the pair moved up instead and we closed out the position at 1.2360 we would have had a loss of 40 pips on the trade.

Remember, we are always buying or selling the currency on the left side of the pair. If we buy the currency on the left side, which is called the base currency, we are selling the one on the right side which is called the cross or counter currency. The opposite would be true if we were selling the currency on the left side.

Now let's take a look at how a trader can make a profit by selling a currency pair. This concept is a little trickier to understand than buying. It is based on the idea of selling something that you borrowed as opposed to selling something that you own.

In the case of currency trading, when taking a sell position you would borrow the currency in the pair that you were selling from your broker (this all takes place seamlessly within the trading station when the trade is executed) and if the price went down, you would then sell it back to the broker at the lower price. The difference between the price at which you borrowed it (the higher price) and the price at which you sold it back to them (the lower price) would be your profit.

For example, let’s say a trader believes that the USD will go down relative to the JPY. In this case the trader would want to sell the USDJPY pair. They would be selling the USD and buying the JPY at the same time. The trader would be borrowing the USD from their broker when they execute the trade. If the trade moved in their favor the JPY would increase in value and the USD would decrease. At the point where they closed out the trade, their profits from the JPY increasing in value would be used to pay back the broker for the borrowed USD at the now lower price. After paying back the broker, the remainder would be their profit on the trade.

For example, let’s say the trader shorted the USDJPY pair at 76.28. If the pair did in fact move down and the trader closed/exited the position at 75.81, the profit on the trade would be 47 pips.

On the other hand, if the pair was shorted at 76.28 and the pair did not move down but rather it moved up to 76.50 when the position was closed, there would be a loss on the trade of 22 pips.

In a nutshell, this how you can make a profit from selling something that you do not own.

In wrapping up, if you buy a currency pair and it moves up, that trade would show a profit. If you sell a currency pair and it moves down, that trade would show a profit.