The following 10 reasons may be why the 10% of long term profitable traders take the money from the 90% that are unprofitable. I see these differences in real life all the time. There is a big difference between profitable and unprofitable traders that usually comes down to homework, mental discipline, and risk management.
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Winning traders let winning trades get as big as possible before exiting. They have the really big winners to pay for all the losers.
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Winning traders have no patience for losing trades, they keep losses small. They know how not to give back their profits with big losing trades.
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They are focusing on trading actual price action not their own opinions or beliefs.
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They are experts on the trading vehicles that they trade.
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The trade with the trend in their time frame.
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Good traders know that their trailing stops are smarter than they are.
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Profitable traders know that it is their robust methodology that makes them profitable not any one trade.
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Winning traders are great risk managers. Their #1 concern is how much they can lose, their #2 concern is how much they can make.
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Profitable traders have put in the time, usually years and thousands of hours to learn what really makes money in the markets.
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Profitably traders have studied historical price data, chart patterns, trends, and price action.
