The main purpose to start this thread is to find out about those traders who have been struggling to be winner in this game since long time. You are all welcome to the board and plz put you nice input so people can take advantage out of it. Steps to Successful Commodities Futures Trading as published in Commodity Futures Trading Club News and in Traders Organization's Real Success Daytrading Course 1- We accumulate trading information - buying books, going to seminars and researching. 2- We begin to trade with our 'new' knowledge. 3- We consistently 'donate' and then realize we may need more knowledge or information. 4- We accumulate more information. 5- We switch the commodities we are currently following. 6- We go back into the market and trade with our 'updated' knowledge. 7- We get 'beat up' again and begin to lose some of our confidence. Fear starts setting in. 8- We start to listen to 'outside news' & other traders. 9- We go back into the market and continue to donate. 10- We switch commodities again. 11- We search for more trading information. 12- We go back into the market and continue to donate. 13- We get 'overconfident' & market humbles us. 14- We start to understand that trading success fully is going to take more time and more knowledge then we anticipated. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MANY TRADES WILL GIVE UP AT THIS POINT AS THEY REALIZE WORK IS INVOLVED. 15 We get serious and start concentrating on learning a 'real' methodology. 16- We trade our methodology with some success, but realize that something is missing. 17- We begin to understand the need for having rules to apply our methodology. 18 We take a sabbatical from trading to develop and research our trading rules. 19- We start trading again, this time with rules and find some success, but overall we still hesitate when it comes time to execute. 20- We add, subtract and modify rules as we see a need to be more proficient with our rules. 21- We go back into the market and continue to donate. 22- We start to take responsibility for our trading results as we understand that our success is in us, not the trade methodology. 23- We continue to trade and become more proficient with our methodology and our rules. 24- As we trade we still have a tendency to violate our rules and our results are erratic. 25- We know we are close. 26- We go back and research our rules. 27- We build the confidence in our rules and go back into the market and trade. 28- Our trading results are getting better, but we are still hesitating in executing our rules. 29- We now see the importance of following our rules as we see the results of our trades when we don't follow them. 30- We begin to see that our lack of success is within us (a lack of discipline in following the rules because of some kind of fear) and we begin to work on knowing ourselves better. 31- We continue to trade and the market teaches us more and more about ourselves. 32- We master our methodology and trading rules. 33- We begin to consistently make money. We begin to consistently make money. 34- We get a little overconfident and the market humbles us. 35- We continue to learn our lessons. 36- We stop thinking and allow our rules to trade for us (trading becomes boring, but successful) and our trading account continues to grow as we increase our contract size. 37- We are making more money then we ever dreamed to be possible. 38- We go on with our lives and accomplish many of the goals we had always dreamed of. from -- http://www.commodities-futures.com/ Special thanks to buffy & her team @ www.dacharts.com for posting it at their website.
I'd say that is a fair description of what most new traders go through. It took me 7 years before I got wise enough to pass step 14. Three years later and I'm now between 37 & 38. Personally, I think the two biggest take-aways from that list is that 1, you must always take full responsibility for everything that happens to you and that 2, success in trading is not about the methodology you use, but in your head. Trading is a fantastic challenge, but once you realize that it's really you against yourself, your whole perspective shifts and you can then take giant steps of progress.
NP., did you know that when you submit a post, and then read it and find a screw up with in your post, you can change it, without submitting another post? Just click on "edit/delete", change whatever you want, click "save changes." Doing this will save on thread space. If you already know this, forgive my intervention please.
thanks for posting that. From my personal experience, I can't say I went through the first 14 steps at the start of my trading career 6 years ago. I was trading the dot com mania and make 8x my initial capital between 1997 and 2000. Everything came easy and everyone was making a killing. There wasn't much education during that time. However, since that time, I have lost over $100,000. In the past 2 years, I can relate to the spirit of the article. So although I have over 6 years of market experience, I only really started learning about the market 2 years ago. It is about learning about yourself and paying tuition for that knowledge. Right now I'm between step 25, 'I know I am close' and step 30, 'We begin to see that our lack of success is within us (a lack of discipline in following the fules because of some kind of fear) and we begin to work on knowing ourselves better.' It's encouraging to know that I'm on the right path and that eventually, I'll get there. Thanks for the article.
The problem or error is to "have been struggling to be winner" instead of "have been struggling NOT to be a LOSER" which is completely different in term of risk approach. So today's quote inspiration http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=433789#post433789