For this thread, I'm not gonna talk about money management or risk...just the most important skill you need to learn in order to win.

If I could go back in time and tell myself to learn ONE thing what would it be? I have watched over and over again, new guys struggle with different strategies. You are not unique like a snow flake. I personally did this so many times, but like Edison, I learned 10,000 different ways that these methods/strategies didn't work. Or did they?

The answer is yes, they all work and they all fail.

But how do you tackle the problem? Recognize that there are only 2 real situations, trends and breakouts. Churning? If you think a pair is churning then drop the time frame and you will see a trend. So should you trade the trend or breakouts? You will literally drive yourself nuts over this one so I'm gonna tell you a serious short cut.

Trade both. In order to do that you need a serious skill and what is that ONE single skill to master? Here is the gold...you need to master trading the pullback.

In both scenarios, trading the breakout or the trend, you MUST master the pullback. Think about it. In a trend, the pullback returns to support then resumes its course of the trend. In a breakout, a trend was in place and it looked like a pullback was taking place then it just kept going in that new direction...the breakout to establish the new trend. Then once you see what has taken place you will want the best entry and that will be the pullback of the new trend after the initial breakout.

In order to really master the pullback, you should really hone your skills at drawing diagonal trend lines. Remember, a diagonal trend line is only 2 things...support and resistance. But support, sell resistance. Once it's broken then do it all over again.