If you are learning, u r still a student of trading and NOT a trader. Just as if you are enrolled for a mba degree in finance doesnt make u a finance professional let alone a successful professional. now that we all know what stages we are, a students ability to learn is direcly related to his passion. Money making should not even be a concern at these stages most are confused if they have graduated or not.
Passion to make money is gambling and of course gambler lose. Passion to trade and not make money is perhaps the ultimate key to successful trading. Because u will only think about winning trades and not focus on PnL.
Passion is about the UNDERSTANDING and STRIVING to understand better how the mkts operate, the money FOLLOWS if these are achieved. EMG, try to not put the cart before the horse, ok?
Passion is perfecting your craft. A labor of love so to speak. Less emphasis on entries, more emphasis on exits. The latter is a taxable event and your bias is now jaded. Addressing your losses, swiftly and with emotional detachment is the hallmark of a good trader. Done consistently, the money will come. Being "right" is a by-product. Making money is a by-product.
Passion adds to the fog of inexperience and insufficient knowledge. Its not passion that is required but problem solving capacity to enable you to arrive, eventually, at a highly reliable methodology . After that its still not passion that brings success; its a suitable trading temperament (calm, robust and unstressed playing). Cutting to the chase, your outline program is to use a liquid volatile market (eg CL) to exploit the intraday swings which are derived from the daily price gyrations of that market. The principle you follow is buying the upswings and selling the downswings. As an example, the price gyrations on Wednesday's CL (June 8, 2011) produced 16 successive swings at a mean average of 84 points per swing. You are talking big money here that is offered by the market to competent players.
Me personally I'm in strong favor of the Passion part. Because if there is not passion about trading then... well, no chance at succeeding on the long term in this business. Plain simple.
When I am thinking of forex passion, I feel glad that I follow zulu' s signal providers who have the passion for trading. I only have to review them and my account. Could become very greedy if I was a trader myself.
So I couldn't help but add my 2 cents. My opinion of gambling is that the odds are less than 50%, and there's a significant emotional attachment that keeps someone from walking away after significant gains or losses. Most traders qualify for this, but not all of them for sure. The trader who's after money will likely gravitate towards gambling. And that describes my first year of trading as well. But somewhere along the way I decided that I just wanted to be better. So I looked for ways to increase my odds and make less mistakes. I would call that passion. I've said this before in other threads, but a pro athlete got to be a pro by looking at his weaknesses and strengthening them. It was about the weaknesses and not about the potential high pay that drove him to that level. Chances are, when he was 8 years old, he didn't think of being a pro. But somewhere along the way he got sick of losing from the same old mistakes and weaknesses and decided to become better. And the process took care of itself. So my vote is 100% for passion. That's what makes traders good.