• Lack of discipline: It takes an accumulation of knowledge and sharp focus to trade successfully. Many would rather listen to the advice of others. They just want to believe, like Fox Mulder.
• Impatience: Some have an insatiable need for action. The day trading adrenaline rush and the gamblers’ high can have heroin-like addiction pull.
• No objectivity: Some are unable to disengage emotionally from the market. They create a virtual “lifelong” marriage to their trades. Divorce is not an option.
• Greed: A desire for quick profit blinds many from the diligent work needed to actually win in the long run.
• Refusal to accept truth: Some do not want to believe that the only knowable truth is price action. They feel more secure following cult leaders serving Kool-Aid.
• Impulsive behavior: Many jump into investments based on the morning paper or Good Morning America. Thinking that if you act quickly, somehow you will beat everybody else in the great race is a recipe for a messy failure.
• Inability to stay in the moment of now: To be a successful trader, you cannot spend your time thinking about how you are going to spend your profits. Trading because you have to have money is not workable.
• Stay open-minded: Come into the day knowing your future steps. Do not be stubborn when the market does not go your way. Cut your losses and follow your stinking trading plan.
• Avoid false parallels: Just because the market behaved one way in 1995, 2000, or 2008 does not mean a similar pattern today will give you the same result. A great example of this: The Hindenburg Omen. It is a technical analysis pattern that is said to portend a stock market crash. The problem: Sometimes it is right, sometimes not. You don’t want to bet your life savings on a coin flip.