10 habits of a Good Trader

[Frederick Foresight]

Hello, friends! Today I want to talk about the next... Any trader should have a good trading plan. Do you stick to the well-thought-out trading plan? What habits (and how many) help you to avoid losses and to be disciplined in this uneasy business?

How about Old Faithful:

1. Trade with the trend
2. Cut losses short
3. Let profits run
4. Manage risk

Pablum? Maybe. But it's still a healthy part of a trader's daily diet. You don't always have to follow all of these rules, but why make life more difficult and dramatic than it has to be?

 

[Frederick Foresight]

1. Use the smallest stop possible
2. Use the smallest stop possible
3. use the smallest stop possible
4. Use the smallest stop possible
5. Use the smallest stop possible
6. Use the smallest stop possible
7. Use the smallest stop possible
8. Use the smallest stop possible
9. Use the smallest stop possible
10. Use the smallest stop possible

^^

 

[qxr1011]

Hello, friends! Today I want to talk about the next... Any trader should have a good trading plan. Do you stick to the well-thought-out trading plan? What habits (and how many) help you to avoid losses and to be disciplined in this uneasy business?

with trader its easy he needs just one habit - to follow his own method

it is the wannabe trader who needs many, often mutually exclusive, incompatible habits in order to survive, to live to see the sunrise

 

[Harry Butcher]

A good trader trades with a trading strategy. With every trade he is learning enough to improve his strategy. Sometimes he can add an indicator to a trading system after backtesting the indicator in a demo account.

 

[Overnight]

...
20) The market is always right:

...Watch what the market is doing and then follow it.

Since all charts are looking at the past, how can one know what the market it going to do in the next instant?

Of course the market is always right. So are our charts. Because they look to the PAST, not the FUTURE. It's the same old story of getting in too late on a trend. A previous hour of movement does not mean, in any way, that the market will do that same movement in the following hour, or even for the rest of the day/week/a couple of weeks, let alone the next ten minutes.

 

[Alpha Trader]

Since all charts are looking at the past, how can one know what the market it going to do in the next instant?

Of course the market is always right. So are our charts. Because they look to the PAST, not the FUTURE. It's the same old story of getting in too late on a trend. A previous hour of movement does not mean, in any way, that the market will do that same movement in the following hour, or even for the rest of the day/week/a couple of weeks, let alone the next ten minutes.

@Overnight your post holds true to a lot of different strategies, esp. the ones using indicators. Most times these are lagging signals. The only "in-real-time" indicator is pure price action. It tells you a lot of what is happening NOW, but unfortunately learning to read it well takes a lot of time and dedication.

 

[ReynaJohn]

I say that hard work is everything to a trader. And business skill also contributes for the success.

 

[Simples]

Since all charts are looking at the past, how can one know what the market it going to do in the next instant?

Of course the market is always right. So are our charts. Because they look to the PAST, not the FUTURE. It's the same old story of getting in too late on a trend. A previous hour of movement does not mean, in any way, that the market will do that same movement in the following hour, or even for the rest of the day/week/a couple of weeks, let alone the next ten minutes.

How do you walk together with a friend in the woods?
How do you run together while orienting in the woods?
Also climbing, diving?

Trading may be like Ironman (triathlon).

@Overnight your post holds true to a lot of different strategies, esp. the ones using indicators. Most times these are lagging signals. The only "in-real-time" indicator is pure price action. It tells you a lot of what is happening NOW, but unfortunately learning to read it well takes a lot of time and dedication.

What is happening NOW is also lagging, as it NOW has become past. Your reading price action is also lagging, unless you only look at the latest close all the time, which isolated give too little info to trade on.

 

[AbbotAle]

What is happening NOW is also lagging, as it NOW has become past. Your reading price action is also lagging, unless you only look at the latest close all the time, which isolated give too little info to trade on.

Which is why a good trader has to have IMAGINATION.

You have to be able to imagine what may happen and then trade it.

For example, price is trending down, we get a sharp rally often into some sort of area where it broke down from in the past. The boys are probably playing their games, pushing price high so as to kill 2 birds with one stone, 1) get those unchanged stops, and 2) sucker longs into the market.

This is where the imagination comes in because you have to be able to imagine price dumping from those levels. The worst thing you can do is say something like 'I wonder what happens next'. So you have to say 'imagine if the rally was a classic move by the boys, imagine if buying dries up, imagine if I can see sellers starting to attack it again etc'.

You also have to imagine the other way as well. So imagine if that was the low, imagine if the moves wasn't done by the boys, imagine if the buying was real, we could blast off from here.

Use imagination.

 

[IronFist]

Ok, that journal idea by Handle123 is a good idea.

I love how everyone is like "I gotta follow my rules" but most people don't even have a profitable strategy in the first place. So even following rules isn't probably going to help. In the event that I had a profitable plan I would follow it exactly. I mean seriously, "do this and make money" how can you not follow it?

I have ranted about this at length before which you can read about in this thread.