Stephen Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People has been on the national best-seller lists for years–first as a hardback and then as a paperback. I wondered how its list might relate to commodity futures trading.

My interpretation of Covey’s agenda is as follows: 1) Take responsibility for yourself and your life, 2) Act in light of your vision of success in life, 3) Act with proper attention to the correct priorities, 4) Act in a way that maximizes benefits for everyone, 5) Try to understand the other person before putting your point of view across, 6) Exploit the potential for cooperation among the people in your life, 7) Pay attention to maintaining and refining your physical, mental, social and spiritual dimensions.

While there does not appear to be any direct relationship between my commodity trading list and Covey’s overall life experience list, there are some definite similarities and differences. It is well known that normally successful approaches do not work in trading. Additionally, life in general requires involvement and interrelating with other people, while trading is a more solitary endeavor. Here is my list of successful habits for traders.

ONE. Understand the true realities of the markets. Understand how money is made and what is possible. The markets are what is called chaotic systems. Chaos theory is the mathematics of analyzing such non-linear, dynamic systems. According to Edgar Peters, author of Chaos and Order in The Capital Markets, mathematicians have conclusively shown the to be non-linear, dynamic systems. Among other things chaotic systems can produce results that look random, but are not. A chaotic market is not efficient, and long-term forecasting is impossible. Market price movement is highly random with a trend component. (more…)