Trading strategy is more important. The trading edge is one you can think about for a long time before having to do anything with real money. That could be paper trading for awhile, or spending six years modfying code in WL or TS. That would be me to a t, and not everybody can handle the coding part. That takes significantly more patience than the actual trading.
If you have a blowout point and stick to it, the market cant get into your head. Youre just trading the number.
You often hear of traders who attain enormous success for a few years, only to blow a good portion of their capital, and you ask yourself, "How could a good trader do that?". The quote above provides insight into the thinking that leads to this phenomenon. Every trade is absolutely new, no matter what happened again and again in the past. A "savvy, seasoned" trader knows this and never forgets it. In fact, this is something I learned in my first year.
This post is generally incorrect. People do these things and will still almost all will lose over a long time period. Trading is an extremely complex and difficult thing to master or even understand. Few will make a lucrative living over many years.
It is easy to shoot down something that is way oversimplifying the realities. The "elements to trading success" are argued For me: #1 is a trading edge. Many people think they have it, but few do. Commissions, taxes, fees, mistakes by broker or trader, market disruptive events, and time/money invested make trading a very negative sum game. #2 is superb money/trade/portfolio management. A lot of people boast of their trading, and then erupt into a fireball when the Risk of Ruin comes to visit. A large trading house crows when they beat the average annual market rise. 6-10%. Lots of newbie traders expect to come in with a $4000 acount and make 700% annually with minimal risk. Such was the nature of that post. I would say the number of people who make lucrative amounts of money over a long time period are perhaps 0.3 to 1%. The post I responded to was so overly simplistic I am surprised more people did not respond to it. There are new traders and their lists of success all over ET. Few of them are around a year later. If Nexen shows 5 years of verifiable brokerage account statements that earn a lucrative living with modest drawdowns, I might listen. But of course, he does not. His list was straight outr of Trading for Dummies. It is NOT ANYWHERE NEAR that simple. There is a difference between posting lists and posting longterm, reliable profits.