We can call ourselves a swimmer when we have the basic swimming skill. Becoming a professional swimmer is different story altogether which involves advanced skills and dedication. Similarly we can call ourselves a trader when we have a basic trading skill of keeping our working capital intact. Becoming a professional trader is totally a different ball game and requires to develop more skills to make money. Some people have basic trading skill naturally without any kind of guidance, knowledge or training. Others have to keep practicing until gaining the basic trading skill of protecting the investment. Becoming a professional trader may need considerable amount of knowledge and more advanced trading skills. But to become a basic trader needs only this : BASIC SKILL Without developing the basic skill of keeping the working capital intact, there is NO POINT in developing any amount of knowledge. Its like becoming very knowledgeable about swimming without the basic swimming skill. Whats the point in that knowledge ? The basic trading skill can be developed ONLY through PRACTICE and not by acquiring more knowledge. Here is one basic strategy created with primary focus to develop basic trading skill of keeping the money intact. https://www.elitetrader.com/et/threads/principle-based-day-trading-strategies.304974 Note : When practiced sensibly with some experience and creativity this strategy may become a professional strategy. This is my regular strategy and while trading I add to it some experience and creativity. A person who is "left-brained" is often said to be more logical, analytical, and objective. A person who is "right-brained" is said to be more intuitive, thoughtful, and subjective. To be more successful trader there must be a balance between our analytical and creative skill, because trading demands both. Investors may need wholesome of knowledge. For traders chart analysis and creativity is enough. In fact investor related knowledge confuses the trader. A professional is one who knows what to do and also what not to do. In any profession we can see that successful people are not just analytical but also creative. The same applies to trading profession. Be wise.
Well. It may not be a perfect example. You can test the waters (not so deep) once you learn basic swimming. But as you gain confidence/experience you may try to swim in neck deep waters. Beyond that depth you need more skills and more experience. Of course good and skillful swimming can be taught but IMHO trading is a skill that is learned and cannot be taught. Everyone has to do it(learn it) on their own pace/effort. Some of my other trader acquaintances who are/were pilots relate trading to flying/piloting which requires very strict discipline of following rules. Also swimming once you know the safety/basic rules, you can master it to some extent and not much of emotion control (once you get rid of the fear of water/depth). But in trading IMHO it is all about managing one's emotion mainly greed/fear. Irrespective of whether you learn on your own or take training, I guess all have to go thru or fall under the following steps. I am in the range of 31-- 35... ===== http://www.dacharts.com/articles/_38steps.htm 38-STEPS TO BECOMING A SUCCESSFUL TRADER -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Steps to Successful Commodities Futures Trading as published in Commodity Futures Trading Club News and in Traders Organization's Real Success Daytrading Course We accumulate trading information - buying books, going to seminars and researching. We begin to trade with our 'new' knowledge. We consistently 'donate' and then realize we may need more knowledge or information. We accumulate more information. We switch the commodities we are currently following. We go back into the market and trade with our 'updated' knowledge. We get 'beat up' again and begin to lose some of our confidence. Fear starts setting in. We start to listen to 'outside news' & other traders. We go back into the market and continue to donate. We switch commodities again. We search for more trading information. We go back into the market and continue to donate. We get 'overconfident' & market humbles us. We start to understand that trading success fully is going to take more time and more knowledge then we anticipated. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Many Traders Will Give up at this Point as they Realize Work is Involved We get serious and start concentrating on learning a 'real' methodology. We trade our methodology with some success, but realize that something is missing. We begin to understand the need for having rules to apply our methodology. We take a sabbatical from trading to develop and research our trading rules. We start trading again, this time with rules and find some success, but overall we still hesitate when it comes time to execute. We start trading again, this time with rules and find some success, but overall we still hesitate when it comes time to execute. We add, subtract and modify rules as we see a need to be more proficient with our rules. We go back into the market and continue to donate. We go back into the market and continue to donate. We start to take responsibility for our trading results as we understand that our success is in us, not the trade methodology. We continue to trade and become more proficient with our methodology and our rules. As we trade we still have a tendency to violate our rules and our results are erratic. We know we are close. We go back and research our rules. We build the confidence in our rules and go back into the market and trade. Our trading results are getting better, but we are still hesitating in executing our rules. We now see the importance of following our rules as we see the results of our trades when we don't follow them. 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. We continue to trade and the market teaches us more and more about ourselves. We master our methodology and trading rules. We begin to consistently make money. We begin to consistently make money. We get a little overconfident and the market humbles us. We continue to learn our lessons. 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. We are making more money then we ever dreamed to be possible. We go on with our lives and accomplish many of the goals we had always dreamed of. from -- http://www.commodities-futures.com/ ====
I've always thought of it as more like fishing. It may be exciting to jump in chasing fish with your hands, but you'll probably have more success on a boat with a pole.
It's very much like fishing-- make a cast, enter a trade-- hope for the big one to bite, or price to move in your direction, if not, cast again into a new spot. Hopefully luck smiles on your before you run out of capital or the big one bites before its time to quit for the day...
the analogy is bunch of baloney same is the recommended strategy... the persistent problem on this forum is that often the blind one leads the other blind one, and like the bible says they both destined to fall into the pit...