Do You Have the Discipline to Trade for a Living?
That’s the question for the ages isn’t it! To succeed in this business, you are going to have to
get an education. You are going to have to develop a trading plan that includes strategies and
management techniques that you will have learned during your education. You will have to
track your progress. You will have to keep track of expenses and anything else that it takes to
run a business. Do you really think you can run a trading business, of being an entrepreneur?
That’s exactly what you are when you run a trading business. Most who come into trading are
not suited to this environment because they either have no discipline or have limited
emotional control. But how can you tell you are ready to take on the challenge or whether you
should explore other options that will save you a lot of time, money, and aggravation?
For those of you, who think you are disciplined, consider the following questions. Take a very
honest, serious, objective self-assessment and judge for yourself whether you think you have
what it takes to make a living at trading.
Questions related to your current trading habits:
• Do you chase stocks?
• Do you try to hit “home runs?”
• Do you over trade?
• Do you have too many open positions?
• Do you take excessive share size?
• Do you switch time frames?
Questions related to your personality type:
• Do you rationalize?
• Do you become overconfident?
• Do you become nervous when risking even small amounts of money?
Questions related to creating your trading business:
• Can you create a plan for a trade and then objectively enter and manage it to conclusion,
using the principles you learned in PTS or some other educational course?
• Can you follow your trading plan?
• Can you take your stop losses without hesitation?
• Can you refrain from dollar counting?
• Can you comfortably hold until your targets are hit as outlined in your trading plan?
If you answered “No” to most of the first group of questions you might be suitable to become a
full-time trader since you will be coming into trading with very few bad habits. If you answered
“Yes” to some of them, you’ll probably need extra time to overcome these bad habits.
If you answered “No” to the three questions in the second group of questions you might be
suitable to become a full-time trader since you won’t be fighting your personality on a regular
basis. People who try to rationalize all their bad decisions have a hard time succeeding
because they can’t admit to making mistakes. Trading is all about making mistakes, we are
going to make them daily. We must learn from them and to move on. Being overconfident can
also be a problem because it can cause you to over trade. To me over trading is one of the
top reasons that traders fail. Having a fear of losing money will keep you in a state where it’s
hard to take trades you should be taking. It’ll be hard for you to make decisions that must be
made quickly, and you won’t succeed.
The last group of questions relate to your ability to get your business setup and running. If you
answered “Yes” to most of them, you could be on your way to making it as a trader.
I hope you took the time to go through the questions and were honest with yourself. Reading
a chart and finding a strategy is easy. Making a living from the strategies you find is not.
Before you invest thousands of dollars in your education make sure you have the makeup to
succeed in this business.
If you need help with your trading, whether is be technical, patience, discipline or mindset consider joining my group “Coaching With Cliff” here at Live Traders. Why struggle on your own when you can work with 70 like minded traders?
More information about the group can be found at the following link: https://livetraders.com/groups/detail/2b144965-1248-4117-a8e0-be3f70c5725d
