#2) Sometimes, a winning trade is a trade NOT made.
99% of the monkeys approach trading though they are taking a multiple choice exam. They go on filling in the circles hoping to be right.
But, it is different... Since each dollar lost takes 2 dollars to make that back. Thus, it is a mutiple choice exams where you get +1 point for every right answer, but you get -2 pts for every wrong answer. If you see it like that, you would approach your trading differently.
Only of my colleagues, whom I think is the best trader aside from me, well.. he made $500 million pretax trading profits/fees for the last 3 years. He didn't have one single month where he lost money. You cannot afford to have a DRAWDOWN. You cannot take LOSING trades hoping that they go your way. You have to be precise in your research, excecution and in trade selection that the virtual certainty of you losing significant amount of money to cause a ~DRAWDOWN~ is nil.