Thanks Jim

I have a concern about todays gbp/usd trade. You noted on the FLMA that it reached the first target at 1.6121. According to my broker's chart the high was 1.6119. It's a good thing I decided to close the trade at -14 pips or else it would have hit the stop loss at -54 pips. I'm wondering if there was broker fraud here.

No, I don't think that it is a broker fraud. Different brokers prices can be different for a few pips and sometimes few pips. Sometime your target or stop loss becomes triggered while you can not see on the charts and candles that the price that was necessary for triggering the target or stop loss has been reached. We can not still stay that it is a stop loss hunting because if it was, it couldn't trigger the targets too. Stop loss hunter brokers, increase the spread to help the stop loss to be triggered sooner and the targets not to be triggered and so the trades stay open.

First of all, I have to commend Vincent for his excellent post.
Vincent, it was not a rant, it was an article in itself and full of home truths.

I have been trading Forex for a very short time, but I have traded the stockmarkets for about 10 years, so a newbie to Forex, but not to trading.

Fear and greed are the traders worst enemies. Greed will make you open positions with too large a risk so that your bank cannot cope with the inevitable losing periods. Greed is easy to deal with, a few losers and hopefully common sense will kick in and you will lessen your exposure to loss in each trade to manageable levels.
Fear is not so easy to conquer.
Fear has 3 characters.
(1) There is the fear to miss out on a good deal, maybe jumping in on a deal too late, maybe there is an irrational rise that you don't understand, but "Hey it's going up, I don't want to miss out on that action!". Most people who enter a rising market just because it is rising, enter just around the top of the market, just before it turns. It's the same in a falling market.

(2) There is the fear/impatience to accept a temporary loss. I still haven't quite conquered this one myself, although I've made giant steps recently. This is when you have a good trade set up, you enter the trade and it doesn't immediately go into profit ( do they ever ). After you have opened the trade, it meanders, maybe down a bit, up a bit, but doesn't seem to have any real motivation. If you gave it some thought, you'd realise that you entered this trade based on the 4 hour chart, what the H*** are you doing looking at it tick by tick? This fear will make you close a deal at break-even or with a small loss because the fear/impatience mix won't allow you to let the trade run its course. You've set your targets and stoploss based on your analysis, but don't give the trade room to breathe. You end up kicking yourself when you get out of a trade early and have to watch it heading towards your original target.

(3) Fear/arrogance.This is maybe the biggest killer. When a trade does not go the way you expected. You get annoyed because you were wrong, but you won't accept it. Your stoploss is hit and it starts to move in the direction that you anticipated, so you re-open the trade. The trade moves against you and you are frightened to accept the loss as your arrogance won't allow you to believe that you were wrong. The trade continues to move against you, but you are frightened to cut your losses, because your arrogance keeps telling you that the market WILL turn around and prove you right.

This is psychology of the trader - not psychology of the market.

To make a statement that you are making money, but not enough indicates either greed or desperation, neither of which are good ingredients for the recipe of success!