Every trader must believe in God.
Ok, not God but you have to have a believe in something you can’t always see, profits and progress. This is a big problem I see with traders. Either they are new to trading or they have gotten beat up in the past. They do not know what hard work is or how to not self destruct. They are uncommitted.
Hard work (new trader)
They see other people making money and they think it is easy. It takes awhile to become an overnight success. It takes even longer if you start from scratch and without help. I am perplex to find that many traders have not done the first thing required to be successful, a trading plan. We define a trading plan as a set of rules applied to a strategy. However you define it; it should shift the focus away from you and unto the market, answer the questions the market answers, and strategy must be repeatable and improvable. If you do not have plan it is hard to make money because you are always doing random things for random reasons, there is no constant and every experiment needs a constant.
Self destruction (older trader)
A trader can be his own best friend or worst enemy. At some point he will become his own worse enemy. Undoing days, weeks, or months of psychological and financial progress in a single trading session. When you lose “too much” , you probably have not stopped losing. Take a deep breathe when you are hurting, take some time away. I said it before but the bad does become worse with frightening regularity. When it is hardest to be discipline, it is the most important time to do so. As my mentor always told me, be able to trade tomorrow whenever tomorrow is.
Why belief is important.
You have to be committed to accomplish anything that is a difficult. There are times when it is going to be bad. There are times when you have to pick yourself up. There are going to be times when you figure it all out and it changes the next day. There are many times when you are going to question whether it is worth it, if you are asking that question the answer is always no. It is not worth it; you have not reached your goal, yet. The better question is, will it be worth it? You can’t be half pregnant when it comes to trading, in the times when you are in front of the screen you have to be 100% committed.
If you are new, believe the work you are doing has value. If you have lost a lot, that is in the past and believe you will put yourself in a situation to make it back. In order to sustain belief you have to see progress but to progress you need to start with belief. Does God exist, I am not sure. Do I believe in God, yes I do. The problem with not believing in God is that you may be wrong. Upside of believing in God is you might be right, if not you are dead anyways. Trading is the same, yes you are going to have to do some extra work but it beats the alternative which is not giving yourself a chance.
Hard work (new trader)
They see other people making money and they think it is easy. It takes awhile to become an overnight success. It takes even longer if you start from scratch and without help. I am perplex to find that many traders have not done the first thing required to be successful, a trading plan. We define a trading plan as a set of rules applied to a strategy. However you define it; it should shift the focus away from you and unto the market, answer the questions the market answers, and strategy must be repeatable and improvable. If you do not have plan it is hard to make money because you are always doing random things for random reasons, there is no constant and every experiment needs a constant.
Self destruction (older trader)
A trader can be his own best friend or worst enemy. At some point he will become his own worse enemy. Undoing days, weeks, or months of psychological and financial progress in a single trading session. When you lose “too much” , you probably have not stopped losing. Take a deep breathe when you are hurting, take some time away. I said it before but the bad does become worse with frightening regularity. When it is hardest to be discipline, it is the most important time to do so. As my mentor always told me, be able to trade tomorrow whenever tomorrow is.
Why belief is important.
You have to be committed to accomplish anything that is a difficult. There are times when it is going to be bad. There are times when you have to pick yourself up. There are going to be times when you figure it all out and it changes the next day. There are many times when you are going to question whether it is worth it, if you are asking that question the answer is always no. It is not worth it; you have not reached your goal, yet. The better question is, will it be worth it? You can’t be half pregnant when it comes to trading, in the times when you are in front of the screen you have to be 100% committed.
If you are new, believe the work you are doing has value. If you have lost a lot, that is in the past and believe you will put yourself in a situation to make it back. In order to sustain belief you have to see progress but to progress you need to start with belief. Does God exist, I am not sure. Do I believe in God, yes I do. The problem with not believing in God is that you may be wrong. Upside of believing in God is you might be right, if not you are dead anyways. Trading is the same, yes you are going to have to do some extra work but it beats the alternative which is not giving yourself a chance.
