It doesn’t get easier, you just get better. Or do you?

It doesn’t get easier you just get better. That’s a phrase often used in professional sport but when it comes to trading the harder you try, the more hours you watch the charts doesn’t necessarily mean you will get better at trading. With trading, it’s about understanding how to replicate an edge again and again with good risk management.

As time goes on you are either going to get better or worse at applying your edge. It’s black or white you’ll either be making money or losing money and if you are losing money it will be because you are continually switching edges and not applying sold risk to reward on your trades. Making money is a simple process of replicating an edge but it never gets easier and you will never be able to pick the winners, it’s a game of probabilities that requires you to win more than you lose and replicate it again and again.

Why can’t everyone do it? It’s because the outcome on each edge is random and you don’t know which trades (your edge) will be the winning ones and which ones will be the losing ones. That’s why trading is emotional for people because they feel like they’ve tried hard, worked hard on “getting the system right” and when it presents on the screen they expect certainty. Certainty does not exist, probability is what exists and unless you can learn to deal with random probability and let go of certainty you won’t likely get better as a trader. Apply a simple edge, ensure it has solid risk to reward and focus on replicating the edge over 50 trades. You will then have something that you can measure the success over a series of trades and look to see if you can improve the edge and money management.