The Most Important Trading Skill

Quote from Mvector:

#1 practice - psychology of protecting oneself.

If this is not your top priority it is just a matter of time - bye, bye funds.

If you don't within every aspect of your overall trading endeavour have "protecting oneself" as an inherent design priority, it is just a matter of time - regardless of your trading knowledge or edge.

How do billion dollar funds blowout? They have plenty of trading knowledge - but they stopped being fully aligned with "protecting oneself" in every aspect of their fund operations. Psychology, and the recognition of how critical it is to adopt full time 100% self protection, is the master in trading.
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I've been trading the markets a long time.

One thing I know for sure... over a long trading career the market will take a half-dozen or so serious shots at taking everything you've got. Think of them as bullets. You might survive taking one. You probably won't survive taking two.

Every strategy... every play.. must have in the back of a trader's mind... "how do I protect my capital if I'm wrong"?

Yes, you must adapt to make money over time... "figure it out on the fly"... but you're playing with fire if you don't think about protecting capital above all else.
 
Quote from Scataphagos:

I've been trading the markets a long time.

One thing I know for sure... over a long trading career the market will take a half-dozen or so serious shots at taking everything you've got. Think of them as bullets. You might survive taking one. You probably won't survive taking two.

Every strategy... every play.. must have in the back of a trader's mind... "how do I protect my capital if I'm wrong"?

Yes, you must adapt to make money over time... "figure it out on the fly"... but you're playing with fire if you don't think about protecting capital above all else.
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Why are so many people shooting at you? :)

Seriously, this is a very good post from scata-phagos.

+

P.S. Statistically speaking, if an idiot makes too many posts every day, some will end up on the 6 sigma side of the intelligence scale but that doesn't mean that the poster is intelligent.
 
Most important trading skill is experience , tough gig as a trader as you play your first game and every game thereafter in the major league . its widely recognized to become an expert at almost anything 10,000 hours of training , mentoring and playing is required . To get muscle memory , instinct , the ability to react decisively and fearlessly isnt easy , the skills to use both sides of your brain all take immense and intensive training . The failure to put in these hours to get the experience is where many fail . Its almost obligatory to blow up account at least once and possibly more . Possibly persistence might rank higher than experience as without persistence the experience will not be acheived , lets call it a combination of the 2 .


Jog on >>>>>>>>
 
Quote from quatron:

Why would you ever need to read the market then? Actually, serious question - what the reading of the market is? How do you read it?
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market internals, s/r in correlating markts
 
Quote from Scataphagos:

I've been trading the markets a long time.

One thing I know for sure... over a long trading career the market will take a half-dozen or so serious shots at taking everything you've got. Think of them as bullets. You might survive taking one. You probably won't survive taking two.

Every strategy... every play.. must have in the back of a trader's mind... "how do I protect my capital if I'm wrong"?

Yes, you must adapt to make money over time... "figure it out on the fly"... but you're playing with fire if you don't think about protecting capital above all else.
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I concur.
 
Quote from jnbadger:

The Most Important Trading Skill:

Adaptability.
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And the OP neglected to mention two other critical skills: Patience and Discipline.

Because without both, any trader is destined to fail.
 
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