Trading the financial markets is a game of high risk and high stakes. The aim to play this game is naturally for financial gains.
To win at trading one has to inculcate good trading habits, which are the foundations of a good trader. Taking my own experience into account, in the beginning I made my trading decisions based on news, word of mouth, analysts' projections, Guru's prognosis and the list could go on. All in all, my trading decisions were constructed on ebbs and flow created by the tide of near junk information.
Over 36 years of trading and being a coach and mentor, taught me few things that really mattered for being successful at trading the financial markets. In these years of continuing formative education, I had the opportunity to meet up and work with many successful traders. All the traders whom I got acquainted with had some form of financial market education, which they had working for them. Though most of traders I knew were adept at reading charts there were those who used fundamental analysis to power their trades and some combined Fundamental Analysis and Technical Analysis to benefit their successful trading endeavours. What made these traders successful was their cultivated mind set, which they specially developed for trading.
All good traders share certain common characteristics traits, which have been cultivated over time. Some of the common traits these traders have are high levels of conviction, ability to take risks, established virtue of patience, using predefined systems, developed decisiveness and conscientious…to pinpoint a few.
Successful traders are absolutely devoted to their style of trading and discipline. They demonstrate complete conviction whilst taking a trade with unwavering consistency. These traders have immense ability to admit to their errors and thus minimise the consequences of taking a loss if the trade were to go against them. This helped them to understand the game of informed probabilities and to go with these probabilities, which they have worked out through their analytical process for achieving trading success.
Because of the conviction they have in their trading process, minimizing s loss comes easy. Taking a loss is not easy and if a trader can do this successfully, half the battle in trading is won because you have conquered your fear of losing. Successful traders are independent in their thought process and not influenced by the happenings around them.
Most traders you come across are indecisive, have a tremendous lack of conviction, are afraid of taking risks, always making mistakes as they are unaware of their personal demons which hold them back from becoming successful at the game of trading the financial markets. They only have to come to terms with their personality imperfections to overcome their underperformance and remedy these flaws to march towards becoming successful at trading.
In short, a journey towards being a successful trader involves getting over the limiting thoughts and changing the bad habits. A trader must constantly modify their trading behaviour and bring about successful changes to the strategies. Once you manage to do all that which is required of you to be successful at trading, the trading results will speak for themselves.
Implement the established trading psychological principles along with your trading skills and the complexities of being a good trader will disappear. This is the only roadmap you need which will enable your probability at becoming a successful trader.
Wish you loads of success at trading.