I tell traders what they NEED to hear, not what they WANT to hear, and that is one of the approaches I take in my training, for which I am proud of. The fastest way to succeed in trading is by learning the truth about what trading is and what it takes to be successful.
The following five tips are things that will be very difficult to find on other blogs or trading sites, and that’s why I’m telling you right here. As I often say, this is not what you possibly “want” to hear, but it is what you NEED to hear and it is ultimately what will help you achieve success quickly in your trading.
Trading is about Your Mastery, Not the Market
With so many attractive trading systems and strategies in place, it is easy to believe that trading success comes from figuring out “how to get the mastery of the markets.” But, in reality, success in trading comes only when you have achieved a master’s degree on a personal level since the market cannot be dominated.
So, while traders often spend a lot of time and money looking for their success on something external, they should take a look inside themselves. Do you need a good methodology/trading strategy? Yes, of course, you need it. But, the key point is that the trading methodology is not the only component of your trading success and it is not even the most important, and yet many traders seem to focus mainly on it.
It may not be easy for you to accept the fact that your biggest obstacle between your failure and your success in the markets is YOU, but that is the truth. Until you learn to defeat your mental blocks, such as succumbing to greed, fear and a desire for revenge, you will not make money in the markets.
Sure you should learn a trading strategy – you need one – but that’s just one piece of the puzzle, the rest of the ‘pieces’ have to do with you, not the market or a trading robot.
If Your Goal Is To Make Money, Don’t Trade…
Trading is a huge mental trap for most people because the appeal of “easy money” and “financial freedom” is what many people get hooked on, but if those are your “goals,” you’re not going to get success.
When talking about realistic goals for traders, instead of focusing on huge goals like “get rich” or “quit the job now” … which are undoubtedly very good and ambitious goals, it is HOW you are going to achieve them. Therefore, your focus on trading cannot be fixed on this type of thing, because if you do, ironically you will get contrary results; to lose money.
It sounds clichéd and I know, but the honest thing – the truth about trading – is that to make money from it you have to enjoy the process, the game, and the challenge of trading. This means enjoying acquiring personal skills and coping with challenges by analyzing charts and price action, finding optimal inputs and outputs that make you ENJOY managing your risk appropriately. To truly enjoy these things, you must be disciplined, patient, and understand that this is your mastery, not “market mastery.”
You must transform your desire to earn money into a desire to trade the right way and develop good trading habits and routines. You achieve this by being aware, believing, and acting the FACT that HOW you earn money as a trader is through a focus on the process, not the money.
Have no memory
Well, I admit, THIS is probably the most difficult part, even for me at certain times. But, as a trader, you really should not have memory. Surely you wonder why?
The main reason you should have no memory when trading is that your last trade doesn’t mean anything; It does not affect the development of your next trade. Now, it can be easy to read this last sentence and understand it, but it is a very different thing to put it into practice “at the same moment”, for example just after closing a trade.
Think about it: the market is never the same, it is always changing. Even the same pattern is never going to develop the same twice in the same market. Also, your trading strategy has a random distribution of winning and losing trades over several trades. For this reason, you should not allow your previous trades to influence your future trades. By this, I mean that just because you took a trigger that was negative in result in your last trade, for example, doesn’t mean the next one is a loser.
It is very easy to fall apart and feel discouraged after losing some money. You may feel that your trading strategy is no longer working and begin to let previous trades influence your future behavior in the market. The second you start thinking and behaving this way, you stop trading with skill, objectivity, and clarity, but with confusion, emotion, and frustration.
You must stay emotionally detached from the results of previous trades and practically forget about them.
This presupposes that you are using a trading methodology… if you don’t know what you are doing or are doing too much trading, then you should learn from mistakes and remember not to make them again. The point here is that if you follow a trading strategy, a losing trade is normal and there is no reason to get emotional. A winning trade shouldn’t make you emotional either. Forget about your last trade and continue executing your trading plan.
It’s Going to Take You Longer Than You Think to Succeed
Most new traders are not mentally prepared for the time it takes to trade with consistent results. If you are not prepared to be in this activity in the long term, you will quickly fall into temptations such as doing too much trading and leveraging your account too much to test and accelerate your trading success. However, the opposite occurs when you behave in this way; you end up losing money, putting yourself in a worse position than you were and seeing success in trading as something more and more distant.
The only way for the majority to stay long enough in the market to develop
profitable consistency in their trading is to have a real passion for the
trading process and all that goes with it, as I mentioned earlier. Taking a
short-sighted approach and thinking that you will get “rich quick”
in the market is the perfect recipe for losing money, rather than getting
it.
Adapt and Upgrade to Stay Profitable
