While the purpose of this blog is to help traders learn and become successful at trading by providing market analysis and simple proven trading strategies, the harsh reality is that 91% of futures traders blow up their accounts within the first year of trading. Even today’s best traders have blown up their accounts about 2-4 times prior to reaching consistent profitability.
Just this week Goldman, Citigroup and JPMorgan reported multi-billion dollar trading gains and those billions are certainly not coming out of thin air (that’s the other billions from our tax dollars). So if you think you are going to sit down on your 6 year old laptop with 11″ screen and dial up internet connection, watch Cramer’s “Mad Money” and BOOYAH your way to profitability in prosperous Cramerica you are in for a rude awakening.
Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs suggests the following:
Well guess what… figuring out how to draw 50% retracement, connecting two dots to form a trendline or come up with a wave count that would make Ralph Elliott proud is only 5% of the battle, the remaining part is becoming robot-like in executing those particular strategies while overcoming two biggest human emotions of greed and fear.
Speaking of being a robot, untli you reach top 1% of traders and return to basic human hierarchy of needs, you might need to spend some time following traders’ hierarchy of needs:
Before you give trading a try, make sure you can afford to lose ALL of the money you will be attempting to trade with. Also, from the very start treat trading as a business, get a good computer w/ fast internet connection and make sure you have a distraction free location to trade. If you plan to use your 2001 edition laptop with mediocre charting platform and trade while babysitting 3 kids and a dog until you make 20% and only then upgrade & fully dedicate yourself to trading, please remember that with odds already against you, you will be competing against top traders utilizing latest technology, institutional traders and black boxes. There is nothing wrong with hitting up Google for some new hobby ideas, actually do it now.. it will save you some $$
Trading seminar organizers often poll: “only 5-9% make money trading, who here thinks they will be in that top bracket?”, and guess what, usually it is 100% of attendees… you get where I am going with this, to make it, you will have to worker harder and be more disciplined than 19 other traders in your same position
Still want to trade?
Good luck 🙂