How Can You Be A Successful Trader?

Success doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a long,often arduous, usually painful road full of sacrifices and upsets. At least,that’s how it usually is. But if you want to be a successful trader, don’t worry; your success can come much more quickly than that.

 

Ready? Good, Because This Won’t Take Long…

 

To be a successful trader you need to know a few things first. And you need to do a few things. However, once those things are known and done, you’re good to go and you can trade away to your heart’s content. Within reason. There are rules you need to follow – that’s what separates the successful from the not so successful – of course.

 

The First Step Towards Success

 

Stop trading. It’s that simple. Stop everything you’re doing, step away from the trades. It may sound counter-intuitive, but if you really want to be a successful trader you need to not trade for a week or so. That’s because you need to look at what you’ve been doing in the past and work out what it hasn’t been working for you. You can’t do that if you’re caught up in the middle of a trade. You need to be objective,distant from the action, and really interested in finding out what went wrong.

 

Now that you’re not trading, you’ve got a week to get ready to go again. The first things to do is look at your trading plan.If you’ve not been successful so far, your plan is not doing its job. You need to update it, or completely start again. Or create one if you don’t have one.There are a number of online courses that will show you exactly what to do, and it’s vital that you have a workable plan that will lead you where you want togo every time; that’s how to be a successful trader. Or at least, that’s one of the ways.

 

You also need to organise yourself and becomes more disciplined. That includes seemingly small things like printing out a nice, neat chart and posting it up on a board. Learn patience. You’re going to need a lot of it. Trading is not about rushing in, guns blazing, shooting at every trade you see in the hopes that you’ll hit something worth hitting. It’s about taking the time to plan, aim, and only firing when you are absolutely sure.

 

The Next Step: What Is Success?

 

Until you know what your definition of success is (note: your definition, not the definition) you won’t know how to reach it, or even if you already have. To be a successful trader you must have a clear goal in mind. The definition of success might be lots of money, a sports car, a huge house with a swimming pool, but your definition will have to be different if you want to succeed from the beginning. Shift your thinking.Success is about making the right trades at the right time. That will lead to the money and the material thing. But if you can’t take the time to learn to trade and how to be a successful trader, you’ll never get there.

 

Finally, This Is Not A Game

 

Dead right. Trading is not – or shouldn’t be –considered a game. This is real money, real trades, and if you get it right it can go very right indeed. Unfortunately, if you get it wrong… well, exactly.Let’s not think about that. You’re going to be a successful trader, so it shouldn’t be much of a problem. The key is not to gamble. Once you become a gambler, you lose that plan you so meticulously worked on and it becomes all about trading more and more – and that’s not sustainable. Trading can become addictive, and that’s when things get dangerous. If you feel that you’re straying from your plan and you’re making mistakes, step away. Take some time to think and refocus. You’ll be glad you did when you come back to be a successful trader again.