how do you determine if youre a success??? by the calls you make? by the money you make? by your experience? what makes one a success???
The great thing about being a trader is you get a grade every day, and there's nothing subjective about it.
For me being a success is doing well enough that I can continue to trade full time as my means of making a living ... and it's been a little over 7 years since I went full time ... but it also means adapting ones trading to what the market is saying (as we've seen both bull and bear markets in the past 7 years).
If you want to be happy, you will define success for yourself. If you try to live according to someone else's definition, you are probably going to be unhappy in life.
My hopes and dreams are to be walking through the rest of my life close with the Lord Jesus Christ following his will. My hopes and dreams are to be able to make a good living from my full time trading. I want to have an edge and be in control of my trades. I want to discover a statistical approach to system trading with an adaptive means of adjusting to market character changes. I want to learn about pattern recognition and search as many combinations of patterns to constantly track winning patterns. If I have several computers working on it 24 hours a day this would be great. Constantly churning through the candlestick bars searching the ES for high percentage win rate combinations while I am sleeping....wow I want to learn how to scalp the ES to keep me occupied in between my position trades in the ES. I want to be respected and have a circle of friends such as professional traders here in ET. Then I could feel comfortable living in remote places to legally avoid paying too much tax and still have my working friends to talk to. This way I would never feel isolated. You cant take the city "outta" this boy but you can take this boy "outta" the city. I want my wife to be happy, because as you married folks know, "how can you be successful with an unhappy wife"? I want to maintain enough cash out of the market to survive for 6-9 months with my current expenses whatever they may be at that time. Then I want to have other money outside of the market in a retirement account to maintain my lifestyle if I quit trading which I probably never will. I would be successful if I could get that Hummer H2 that my loves so much without worrying how much the insurance cost is......now, that is success! I currently drive my 1990 plymouth voyager and am completely happy.....its paid for.....but the wife loves the Hummer! I want to continue my lifestyle of paying cash for everything ....with no credit cards.....loans, car payments or mortgages. Why am I spilling my heart out here? Success is individual for everybody and this thread makes no sense! But thank you for the forum. ET is great. Michael B.
If 95% of traders fail, success can objectively be measured as NOT losing money. By doing so, you will be in the top 5% where the rest of your brethren lay on the wayside like so much refuse and debris. And the top 5% of any category can rightfully be considered a success. If you will... an elite trader.
Having a setup that works, including the mental powers to make it work (discipline). I believe this is the key to success. The measurement is only one - making money or not. Tol.
Success is being able to wake up each morning and do whatever the hell you feel like doing. Runningbear