Trading? 10 Things You Should Consider
Suggesting advice on how you approach and perceive the trading experience is tricky. It might be useful and might not. This is because of the fact that every individual has different personality traits. Some might be risk takers, while others conservative. Some could have a strong mental stress absorption, while some may be more susceptible. Having said that, the suggestions I present below is not meant to limit your thinking about the trading process, if it suits your personal traits take it, if not find your own conclusions.
1. Trading is not a get rich quick scheme. It is a normal investment that gets traders return on capital.
Have you ever met a trader making double-digit percent return per month on a consistent manner?
Trading professionally with proper money management would likely get you a return of few percents a month. From my personal experience a 3-5 percent return on capital per month is a very realistic number.
So if you’re that kind of person who wants to “make a killing” trading, please reconsider your expectations.
2. You should be well-capitalized. Small accounts will probably burn you.
This point is correlated to the first one. let me illustrate with an example:
Suppose that you have a $30,000 trading account. According to the 3-5 percent return per month rule, that would give you 1000-$1500 return per month, which is a very good number, relatively speaking.
Now let’s assume that you have a $5,000 account, according to the 3-5 percent rule, that would return 150-$250 per month.
In the second example(smaller equity), the return would likely be unsatisfying for someone looking to trade for a living. Would it be for you? Wouldn’t you break your money management rules and take more risk to increase that return?
3. Technical Analysis doesn’t work all the time.
Assumptions we make will always have a percentage of failure. The main goal is to keep your risk limited, your targets bigger than your risk, looking for consistent profit on the long run.
4. Trading is not about forecasting the market.
Do not try to forecast where markets are headed all the time. What a trader does is wait for the market to GIVE him certain conditions that validate a trade. (Don’t trade under the market rules, trade under your rules.) Do you feel sometimes that you’re lost and don’t know what to do? it’s probably because of this.
5. Limit your risk.
If you did use stop loss on your trades within the past year, but you didn’t and took excessive risk only on one trade, this single trade might wipe out all of the profits you gained through the year.
How many times did you ignore your stop loss convincing yourself that you will close at a better price? It may have worked sometimes, but what if the price goes against you more and more? Are you mentally strong enough and able to close at a bigger loss? You probably won’t, until forced to close on a margin call.
6. Don’t over analyze.
Over analysis and complicating your tools will lead to confusion and is not necessarily efficient.
7. Ignore your bias
Initiating a trade requires technical evidence, three, four or five conditions that occur concurrently.
8. Always use a top-down analysis approach.
Start from the higher time frame to the lower time frame. The higher the time frame the more strong and invulnerable the trend is, and the more strong and invulnerable the support and resistance levels are.
9. Trend-trading increases your chances of success.
Trading setups that occur within the context of the trend tend to have a higher success rate than those against it.
10. Don’t give up when you encounter a losing streak
Yeah it can go up to 10 losing trades… Don’t worry, it’s normal in trading.
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