Five Ways to Build the Right Trading Mindset

Five Ways to Build the Right Trading Mindset


Five Ways to Build the Right Trading Mindset

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          Trading is primarily a game of the mind not a math game. The absolute smartest people usually are not the very best traders because while they are doing all the complex math and system development they are blind sided by their egos, greed, and fear. If you have the right mindset as a trader you will eventually succeed if you have the wrong mindset as a trader you will never succeed. Time is the friend of the trader traveling the road of discipline, risk management, and system development they will eventually get to where they are going. Time is the enemy of the undisciplined trader that takes big risks and gambles with no real edge they will eventually redistribute their accounts to those traders doing the opposite.

  1. Back test, study charts, and only trade proven strategies: No trading should begin until you know that your system is a historically profitable one through multiple trading environments. There are many ways to do this and the depth of study into your specific trading system is up to you. But if you do not know how what you are currently doing performed historically then you need to stop until you do understand.

  2. Small losses: Keeping your losses small so you can keep your will and desire to trade strong. Nothing breaks a new traders mindset faster than big, painful losses of capital that are very hard to come back from.

  3. Build confidence through having winning trades: A lot of the great traders we get to see on social media have  built up themselves through many years of learning from failure and then hitting their stride with winning months and winning years. Even if your wins are small, wins will help you build the mindset that you can do this and be successful as a trader. Build yourself up through consistent disciplined trading and winning streaks.

  4. Trade with the right principles: Trading with the right core trading principles like going with the trend in your time frame, never losing more than 1% of your trading capital on any one trade, and follow your trading plan 100% can go a long way to solidifying your peace of mind as trader knowing you will not do anything that will really hurt yourself in the markets.

  5. Match your beliefs to your trading methodology: We can only effect trade a system that matched our strong beliefs about the markets. If you believe in the nature of trends you have to find the markets that trend and trade them. If you are convinced that market always revert to the mean then a robust mean reversion is what you can comfortably trade. Swing trading for traders that love trading ranges, and day trading for those that want action and no overnight risk. The question is who are you as a trader and what trading style matches your personality and risk tolerance.