Category: Tips / Psychology / General

Sometimes you will find that certain things happen when you are trading that might make you feel that the market is out to get you.

The number going around is that 90% of traders fail. Sometimes it’s hard to believe that the failure rate of traders is so high. This is especially true in the beginning when we tend to be more ignorant and we believe that we are going to be different.

Traders often base their risk only on the trade they’re about to take; they don’t think ahead.

Do you know under which market conditions / environment / regime your strategy performs at its best and at its worst? Knowing this can be of great benefit to traders.

When in doubt, stay out!… If you’ve been trading for a while, you probably have heard that saying. It took me a long time to realise that when I have doubts before entering a trade it is much better to rather not enter it.

We’re all bound to make mistakes as traders. And making them is okay as long as we learn from it and try our best not to repeat them. Repeating trading mistakes often mean that you’re careless or that you’re not serious about your trading. 

If you are one of those traders that think psychology is the most important aspect when it comes to being a successful trader, I would say you are right. But, I feel that many traders jump too quickly to the conclusion that psychology is the root of all their problems.  

Apart from trading and blogging, I’m also a full time shift worker. And although I normally get done what I plan, I still feel that I can do much better.

We all start trading because of the amounts of money we stand to make. This leads to our imaginations running wild as to all the ways how our lives will improve because of this. So it’s easy to understand why we mainly focus on money when we start trading.

How I Made $2 Million In The Stock Market is a book written by a dancer, Nicolas Darvas about his journey to becoming profitable in the stock market. Even though the book was written a long time ago (1950s), it’s remarkable how we (traders) can still relate to what he went through. In the following paragraphs I will be quoting from the book.