How To Survive Your First Year Of Trading- Whiteboard Wednesday

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Expectations-Its easy to come into trading expecting to succeed far beyond your wildest dreams in a short period of time. After all, most trading products are presented to you through ” Lifestyle selling” and rags to riches testimonials of the one bedroom, divorced, bankrupt loser living in a one bedroom apartment who is now a millionaire dating a movie star. In fact this marketing format has been around for years in late night infomercials covering real estate, weight loss, and financial freedom businesses. Lifestyle selling hits you deep emotionally so its only natural for people to buy into it with the hopes of being the ” top student” or ” the next one”. Unfortunately, no matter what it is success in any area of like does not come easy. Trading is no different than any other business in the fact you mast take a few bumps and bruises along the way. Its okay to have lofty goals and set the bar high for yourself but you need to be reasonable and patient with your development

Style– Trading styles are a lot like love. You dont chose your style it chooses you. The important thing to remember is you will never be able to successfully clone another trader and their performance. You can learn their style inside and out but in some way, shape, or form you will end up making a hybrid version of it to fit your personalty and risk tolerances. As soon as you know what it is you are looking for it is easy to find.Trading is about you and what you find that works. Not what someone else tells you.

Study-Many think studying is just books, DVDs or some form of instructional knowledge. To me studying is learning from experience. The fastest and most effective way to be successful at trading, like most things, is by doing it. Be sure to review what you did well and what you didn’t do so well at the end of each trading day. Remember, just because you had a losing trade doesn’t mean it was a bad trade or if you had a winning trade it doesn’t mean it was a good trade either. You should be paying attention more in the early stages of your trading to your execution and discipline, not your P/L.

Trade Small– It still amazes me on how many people jump right into trading, full balls and full risk, before they even learned how to trade. You have no business whatsoever trading any size until you have developed consistency. Otherwise, you will blow up at some point. When I mean consistent I dont mean a few good days. Consistency is being able to routinely win 3 of the 4 weeks each month. Also, do yourself a favor and do not paper trade. Paper trading is emotionless and serves you no purpose. It will only hinder your development. Even if you trade 1 real share its better than 10,000 shares of paper trading.

Get A Mentor– There are a lot of places out there to chose from when it comes to trader education. The most important thing to focus on is not just the lead traders performance but the community itself. Most rooms have other pro traders that have been with them for years and that helps get a fresh set of eyes and thoughts on the market. Also, trade rooms are not for piggybacking trades. They are for learning how to trade and how to survive through the tough days. It helps to have people around you that have walked the plank before rather than put your future in the hands of foolproof systems and magical trading software.

Hope this lesson helps you

Doug