Finding Your Trading Success

In the course of your trading education, you’ll come across many various trading strategies, tactics and techniques. Some of them might make sense to you, some of them won’t.

There are traders who have traded for quite some time (and I mean in terms of years, not weeks or months) who still find it difficult to find trading success. Some long-time traders feel they are so close, yet seem to be unable to break through into consistent profits.

The Reality Of the Trading Game


When you consider the minority of traders are the ones who are able to consistently make money, you may wonder how you will ever get into that elite group of traders. So, I want you to consider this:

Trading, in terms of physical labor, is almost sedentary in nature. What do you actually do? Read a few reports, press a few buttons, draw a few lines, etc. You don’t even need to get out of your chair to trade.

So what’s the difference between a winning and a losing trader?

The Mental Game of Trading

Trading is a mental game. It’s a mental game in terms of having the proper understanding of how the markets operate, and having realistic expectations in what you can accomplish within a specific time frame.

Surely you don’t expect a newborn baby to be able to jump and slamdunk a basketball minutes after entering this world, right?

Drawing a parallel, new traders come into this business and expect to consistently make 100% or more a month, when it would be more realistic to serve an apprenticeship over the course of months, sometimes years. Just as you don’t expect a baby to slamdunk right out of the womb, you wouldn’t expect a new trader to consistently turn 100% profits on a consistent basis every month.

In most cases, if you are able to break-even every month you are already on the track towards trading success. That’s because you just require the occasional month of large profits, with the many months of small wins/losses to be profitable for the year.

Realistic Trading Expectations

A realistic expectation of trading would be many small wins, many small losses, and a few big wins that give you your trading profits.

Getting the right perspective on trading success is crucial, because in most cases with new (and sometimes experienced but not profitable) traders is their expectations don’t match with trading reality. And when expectations don’t match, that’s where the frustration and emotional upheavals occur.

But when you realize this is the nature of the trading game, it brings you a lot closer towards trading success because your mental reality of trading is more aligned with the actual reality of trading.

Summary of Finding Trading Success
Understanding the reality of trading will make or break you as a trader. Understanding market structure, price action behavior and having expectations in line with how the markets are will determine how successful you will be as a trader.

Making 5% - 10% a month on a consistent basis, with a large account, is something more realistic and achievable than trying to make 30% to 40% a month, all things considered.

Plus, as you will realize the longer you play the trading game, every single successful trader has gone through their journey of losing, losing, losing and more losing in their early years. It reaches a point where they get fed up with everything and truly question themselves if they are ever going to be successful.

That’s when they start to truly question the nature of the trading game, and seek to understand trading beyond just trading systems, the latest techniques and tactics to find themselves as a trader.

And when they do, sometimes, it’s only that little single idea or adjustment in their trading perspective that suddenly propels them to trading profits on a consistent basis.

Which brings up the next point. Trading is a continual game of managing self-expectations, ongoing education and constant research to improve your trading edge. If you truly want to succeed as a trader, you’ve got to ask yourself what’s the price you’re willing to pay in terms of mental sweat equity, emotional re-alignment with trading expectations and screen time.

Not every trader will break through that barrier. Will you be one of them?