The 10 Top Skills of Profitable Traders

The 10 Top Skills of Profitable Traders

Most long term profitable traders possess a set of skills that lead to their consistent success over a long period of time. Here are the 10 skills that I have seen in common with so many successful traders. These were skills that had to be mastered before I was able to generate and keep long term profits from trading the financial markets. 

  1. Traders must have the skill to create a trading system with an edge that rises above randomness and creates a high probability of long term success. 
  2. Profitable traders know how to create good risk/reward ratios by managing their margin of safety on entry, their stop loss, and their potential open ended upside profits.  
  3. Backtesting and doing historical chart studies is a skill they possess to see what worked in the past. To give them better odds of success in the present. 
  4. They are not tempted to fight trends. They go with the flow until that stops making them dough. 
  5. The ability to accept an unprofitable trade is wrong early in the loss. 
  6. Trading is their business for making money and they treat it that way, not a form of entertainment and excitement. 
  7. The flexibility to let a winning trade run when there is no reason to exit it early. 
  8. They possess the skill to navigate the random nature of prices and focus on the signals that really matter. 
  9. Profitable traders have developed an unbreakable faith in their trading system and their own ability to execute it with discipline over the long term. 
  10. They have the skill to accept the unknown and that the future is unknowable and to trade what is currently happening.