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At our recent trading roundtable we discussed the eight "P's of trading success. In this essay I want to focus on the second P, which is preparation.
Every once in a while you hear a story about an athlete who has overprepared or overtrained for particular event. They work so hard in practice, pushing it right up until the start of the event, that they had nothing left in the tank once they got into the game or into the ring. For every one of those stories that is true, and I have no doubt that that can happen, I am willing to bet that there are 1000 athletes who fail from a lack of preparation. Sure if you were going to make an error in preparation, tried the overprepared rather than underprepared. If you are a discretionary trader, then it is true that you have to have a certain amount of vitality to take on the trading day. Trading, after all, is very much like combat and you need to go in thinking and feeling your best. |
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In our recent traders roundtable discussion on the keys to trading success, we began with the idea of persistence. We all agreed that it was an essential element of trading success. Even when you are part of a trading mastermind, at the end of the day only you can make the decision to pull the trigger to make the trade. Only you are there to gather the results, good or bad and apply them to your own bottom-line.
Persistence is all about grit and determination. It is about pushing on through the obstacles that life and trading set in your way. It has everything to do with pursuit of your goals and dreams and it takes into account a realistic appraisal of just how difficult this profession is. Everything in life that is worth achieving has a price that must be paid. In trading, part of that price is having to endure losing streaks, second-guessing, bad fills, power outages, unfortunate timing, making the right decision for the right reason and watching the trade continue on to extraordinary profits without you. All of these events can suck the life out of you and make your experience bitter and tiresome. |
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At a recent weekend traders roundtable discussion, the topic of the keys to trading success came up.
Experienced traders with different styles and different favorite markets and techniques identified what they thought were their best pieces of advice for novice traders. It was late in the day and adult beverages may have been served and so our creativity was perhaps in full force. What finally emerged from our freewheeling discussion was the idea of the 8 "P's" of trading success. After we discussed each of these concepts, ourinsight was that your trading results were probably shaped by the concept you were least effective with. At least, that is our working idea. Here are the eight keys that we identified: |
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