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Trading is a business

  
  Education
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Trading can be mastered if you concentrate your efforts on how you will react to price rather than desiring to predict it. Reacting is a business decision, predicting is an ego play.

Traders want to make money. Losses in the long run don’t matter. Forecasters (prophets) want to be right (ego). And that’s all that they are concerned about.

Don’t decide anything (ego), let the market do that job for you (business).

Like any other business you have a business plan and the financial portion of that plan is the most important.

In this business your inventory is stocks, bonds, futures or options. Like any other business you define what an acceptable loss is on an item and what is an acceptable profit for the risk undertaken. Like any other business if the item of inventory doesn’t do what you expected it to do, you put it on sale and liquidate it to raise capital to purchase inventory that will do what you want it to do. Your acceptable loss is your stop. Your money management system tells you how much that is. Your mark up is dependent upon your trading system and trading style. It doesn’t make any difference if you are a day trader or an investor. Like any business, some turn their inventory 10 times a day, some 20 times a year and some only twice a year. Your trading style and inventory volatility will tell you what your turnover rate will be.

Trading is a business and if you treat it as anything else you will be a loser.

What is important in trading

  
  Education
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Trade with your personality

Regardless of what has been working for other people, you have to trade a system that suits your personality. It either has to compliment your strengths, overcome your weaknesses or both. That is not to say that a system that someone else creates cannot work for you, but you have to figure our your own unique way of trading it.

You have to have an edge

You have to have a specific, definable edge over the market. Like with any other endeavor, if you are not skilled, you will not do well. The best traders understand the edge that they have over the markets and constantly exploit it for profit.

Work hard, work smart

All of the top traders worked hard to refine their technique and constantly improve themselves in order to become better traders. It is not only about putting in a lot of hours, it is also about being open to ways of improving that may seem foreign or strange at the beginning.

No loyalty to a position

Top traders know how to cut losses short and take profits when the target is hit. They don’t get too excited about a position and make a business decision to take the profit or take the loss, based on the parameters of their system.

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