Trading Tip – Self Control

Three quarters or more of all new traders ultimately fail. This startling figure begs the question: why?

Unfortunately, traders will usually blame the system or method they were using. They’ll tell you they had a few bad trades they couldn’t recover from or their computer crashed, and they couldn’t get out of a losing trade.

Everyone has a different reason, some are merely lame excuses, but when you hear enough of them, a pattern begins to develop. I believe most traders fail because they undermine themselves.

The markets work differently from other businesses, jobs and investing opportunities. There is probably more freedom in the trading business than any other industry in the world. You can do what you want, whenever you want to do it. You can trade 1 stock or 20. Buy the market or sell it; it is 100% up to you. The only thing that holds you back is running out of capital. Most people are not accustomed to that much freedom. However much flexibility and freedom that trading offers, there is one constant.

You can’t control the market; the only thing you can control is yourself.

Trading is also very different than the things we do in our everyday life. We exercise some control over our environment, we come and go as we please and see whomever we want when we want In trading you can’t control what the market does. No matter how much you want the market to go in a certain direction, there is nothing you can do to force that to happen. At one time or another, we all have prayed, hoped, pleaded, screamed and cursed, but… nothing will make the market do what you want it to.

So please remember that you can’t control the market, the only thing you can control is yourself.

Successful traders all understand and embrace this concept. Unsuccessful traders continue to try to make the market conform to their wishes.