What is the single most important characteristic thatâll determine if youâll make it as a trader?
The ability to trade what you see, no matter what you think, is the single most important characteristic for successful trading. If you look at the list of mistakes traders describe making again and again, mistakes that limit profits and increase losses, they come down to fighting what price is showing you. Hesitation - fear of putting on a trade where price signals an entry because of what you think could possibly happen. Hey, it's game of probability, and you'll miss 100% of the shots you don't take. Chasing - running after the trade you hesitated on because of thinking about it too much, and now you think it will go forever without you. (It may go a long way without you, but don't worry, another train will come along in a while.) Overleveraging, averaging down, letting a loser run, trading without protective stops - all caused by the fact you are so certain price will do a certain thing that risk management is for stupid amateurs who get shaken out of "good" positions just when price is about to finally run their way. Trading against a strong trend - you think price has run too high or too low because you have special indicators that tell you price is "overbought" or "oversold" and therefore has to reverse, even though price is showing you otherwise. Taking profits too soon - you think no one ever went broke taking a profit and you think that normal price action retracements are reversals, so you grab tiny profits, while allowing losing trades to hit full stop, leaving you with a very poor reward:risk ratio.
I'd say everything that nodoji wrote is true but that all comes from a lack of confidence in your method/system. The most important thing is finding something that works and getting really good at it then following it like a machine. Also know its limitations and nuances.
Well, I have three: 1.) Leave your emotions out of it. 2.) Find a simple system or setup and only trade that. 3.) Focus.
1. impossible. Human is human. 2. give any simple system to 100 traders, 98 of them will fail. 3. Isn't "focus" the same as "emotions"? intense emotions, actually.
1 Nothing is impossible. Controlling emotions is what differentiates the winners from the losers. 2. 98% of the traders fail not the system. 3. Focus isnât the same as emotions, Focus is paying attention to what you see, emotions are the feelings you have that cause you to react the way you do to what you see.