Definitely agree with this observation. It also seems to me like majority of people on this forum cannot trade. Good profitable traders are usually humble and don't mind helping others. On the other hand, those wannabe traders are just nothing but legends in their own mind, who boost their own fragile broken egos by putting others down. There are people in their 70s who are trading successfully, there are people with disabilities who can trade successfully. But I still have to met a successful trader with huge ego. And this forum is full of them, and I totally agree with trader56 This forum is not the place to learn for new trader who cannot distinguish the load of BS on this forum. There are some very good traders here a new trader can be lead astray by the number of pretenders on this forum. And those new traders who feel lost, here is a hint,. . . posting hundreds or thousands of posts doesn't in anyway way correlate with the poster's trading success. Here are the Traits of Top Traders/Investors, written by Dr. Van K Tharp which describe what it takes to become a trader, it should help any new trader who is confused by the BS on this forum. ---------------------------- Traits of Top Traders/Investors, by Dr. Van K Tharp Quite often I get asked the question, "what are the qualities that most top traders/investors have?" Furthermore, I'm also asked, "Can those traits be developed?" While there are many, many traits that I've noticed in top traders, I though I'd pick four of them in this tip and talk about each of them briefly." In other future tips, I'll be talking about some of them in much more detail. Trait 1: Personal Responsibility. I think the most important trait that all top traders have (or top people in any field) is the ability to assume total responsibility for what happens to them. And for top traders and investors, this means that they assume total responsibility for their investments results. This means that if you lose money it's not the market's fault, it's not your advisor's fault, it's not your system's fault, or the fault of anything else. Instead, it is a direct result of what you did. When you assume this attitude, you can learn directly from your mistakes and trading becomes a big university setting which constantly allows you to improve. When you don't assume this attitude, then you get to repeat your mistakes over and over again because you believe that you were a victim of some external forces. Which would you rather have â the ability to learn from your mistakes or the tendency to repeat them over and over again? Trait 2: Commitment. Becoming a successful investor/trader requires hard work. You must get to know yourself intimately because you are the source of your trading performance. You must develop a business plan to guide your trading. You must develop and test three or four strategies that fit within the big picture (as you see it) and then become part of your business plan. You must do your homework every evening. You must follow certain disciplines during the day that we call the ten tasks of trading. And all of this requires a lot of time and energy. And in my experience, it is only the people who are really committed who will put in the work necessary to become successful. Trait 3: Mental State Control. I'm both a coach for traders and a modeler of top trading behavior. As a coach I help top traders follow the fundamentals (some of which I'm outlining here). And as a modeler, I determine what top traders do in common and those qualities actually become the fundamentals that I teach. For example, there are ten tasks of trading that I expect each of my clients to follow every day. But the key to following those tasks is mental state control. Each task requires a particular mental state in order to execute it properly and you must have the skill to step into that state and perform the task. For example, one of the ten tasks of trading is the action step of pulling the trigger. The mental state required is 100% commitment to action. There is no thinking involved, just 100% action. You should already know what to do when you get this signal because you've already developed a system that works. Thus, your job is simply to act. Think about when the tiger starts to leap on the antelope. He doesn't suddenly think to himself, "Is this a good idea?" If he did that, he'd probably miss the antelope and break his back. No, his mental state is 100% commitment. Well, each essential task of trading requires a particular mental state and you must have the ability to step into that state. Trait 4: Top-Down Discipline. I'm in the process of developing a new workshop entitled "17 Steps to Becoming a Great Trader." One of those steps involves developing top-down discipline. In developing this sort of discipline, you must go through the following steps: Write out your dream life. What would you like to be, do, see, experience, and have in your lifetime in order for it to be ideal? Write this out completely. Write down the purpose behind that dream life. Write down your mission, your purpose and all of the whys behind that dream life. This step helps you get excited about achieving it. Write down your goals for the next year. Write down the purpose for each goal. Write down a series of action steps for each goal. And each action step (if it takes longer that a week for you to finish) could be considered another goal with a purpose behind it and a series of action steps behind that.The net result of following these steps is that you develop a top-down discipline that helps you develop commitment and achieve almost anything you set your mind to achieving. Now let's look at what we have in these four qualities. First you have a top down discipline that really helps you achieve almost anything you set your mind to achieving. Next you have the ability to get yourself into the appropriate mental state to do whatever you need to do with excellence. Third, you have the commitment to see your goals through to the finish. And lastly, but remember that I mentioned it first; you believe that you are personally responsible for what happens to you â which means that you can learn from your mistakes. Now, don't you agree that with these four qualities, you could achieve peak performance as a trader or almost anything else you set your mind to doing?
Quote from whodareswinston: !Please excuse me for now but I am going to fill my battery on the beach!" *********************************************** What on earth does this mean? I was on the beach in Santa Monica last week and no-one had any batteries. Surfboards yes. Maybe they were battery powered ones. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- just by chance do you and apak share rooms? ********************************************** No. I believe he is in America and I reside in England. The Santa Monica bit was true (still don't know what that battery expression means) having recently returned from a West Coat USA holiday and was so taken with that part of the world to the extent I have discussed with the wife re moving the offspring and the winston trading operation (er...namely me) to California. However, I don't fancy working from 11pm until 830am if I wish to continue trading FTSE 100 and DAX and Eurostox futures so will have to spend some time educating myself in the Dow and S&P. Property prices in the Santa Monica region don't seem too cheap either! OP - If you are serious about entering this game read, read and re-read Mr Consistent's post - it is excellent. Also read Trading in The Zone by Mark Douglas, Gold Trading Boot Camp by Greg Weldon (even if you have no intention of trading gold or any other metal or commodity) and Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets by John Murphy. And learn how to read the tape. They are not just numbers on a screen. Phew - this serious posting is hard work. Hope 6pack reads it.
by the way I remote viewed you, you were sitting in bed (presumably morning) and getting up, you had a nice white button shirt on, white skin, blue eyes, brown hair, bedroom looked a bit small perhaps average UK place of living is smaller than here, a bit of a round face, not fat per se but bit bulky and a very very serious face (very serious) you are not to be messed with PS: problem with remote viewing is that I can totally miss the target, and instead of you perhaps I saw some other guy this is exactly why CIA stopped using it, because REAL confirmation was always needed, which made it basically useless the ONLY way around it is to have many people remote view the same target and compare but you would need 50 guys in a team (or gals or gals, people here sue left and right)
Yes I think perhaps you did see another guy. If looking at guys in bed is your thing then....er....jolly good luck to you old son!
you are as predictable in denying it was you as I am predictable in showin up to say I am fully into women we are all just walking predictability aren't we hell that is why trading is so lucrative
Do you live near Santa Monica tupac? We could be neighbours soon if so! That would be splendid wouldn't it?
not really, I collect European and North American rifles and like to engage in mutilation of farm animals and pets PS: type into google, cow mutilation, we have a rather interesting problem in North America
I strongly disagree. From what I've read and analyzed, I think the vast majority of the market is a herd of ignorant and semi-ignorant people who routinely over react to news and following the wrong advice. I do not mean stupid... I mean ignorant - uneducated. I'll up that one notch and say that the investment intellegentia have mis-informed the masses for the benifit of their own domains (media and books and investment web sites) with foolishness like "Buy and hold" advice like that from Suzie Orman. I do not believe that there is a limited number of opportunities for the first MBAs and genius to snap up before I do. There is definitely an element of competition between good traders - of course there is - but the volume of opportunity, expecially now, is quite substantial. Eric