Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Minimum Requirements in Trading

If you are new to trading and/or you have had difficulty finding some consistent success, you must understand something. This is not a game and it's not a way to get rich quick. I suppose there is the odd exception of the person with a ton of money to play with, but if you approach this business without a business plan and the willingness to follow it, you are almost certainly doomed to failure. A doctor spends ten plus years in a grueling learning curve to be successful and earn a six figure income; anyone who thinks that their pot of gold in this business is a couple of months down the road is in for a rude awakening.

Below is a minimum requirement (in my opinion) to find out without losing your $$$ if this business is for you. By following these recommendations, you will be treating trading like a business and you will be learning and gaining confidence. I think this is so important, I am going to make the following statement: If you start out in this business using no common sense, you have no one to blame other than yourself when you lose all your money. There is no reason to ever lose a dime of your money while learning to trade. A well thought-out business plan, common sense and hard work is required for anyone who wants a chance at success. Many people meet those requirements and still fail, but it does not mean you have to watch your bank account go to zero.

MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS / THIS IS A BUSINESS


WHATEVER / WHICHEVER WAY YOU DECIDE TO TRADE YOU MUST (AT A MINIMUM):

  1. On daily and weekly time-frames, you only demo-trade for three consecutive profitable months in a row. you do not proceed to step two until completed.

  2. Open an account with half of the investment you intended to go full with and continue to only trade daily and weekly time-frames until you are profitable three months in a row minimum. you never risk more than two percent of your account on any one trade. you do not proceed to step three until step two is completed.

  3. Fund a full account and continue to only trade daily and weekly time-frames until you are consistently building your account for at least six months. you never risk more than 2 or 3 percent of your account on any one trade.

  4. If and when you decide to daytrade on a small time-frame and you don't follow this template, at a minimum, you are almost certainly going to find yourselfe in trouble. if you are going to follow a system or any trading style and you don't follow this template as far as the demo process, you are not treating it as a business and you have no one to blame other than yourself if you lose your money.

  5. If you ever suffer the loss of 30 to 35 percent of your account, you stop trading. period-paragraph. you go back to demo and figure out what went wrong. while doing this, you refund your account back to its original amount. you do not go back to live trading again until your demo has shown you what went wrong and your account is back to full strength by whatever means. if it takes one month or six months, it does not matter. you must follow this approach if you don't want blown account after blown account.

Your goal should be this. Learn, learn and learn some more and don't do anything stupid while your getting your feet on the ground. The ultimate goal of any trader is to build an account to a size where just a few good trades a month produces a staggering income. Hardly anyone ever gets there because they don't treat it as a business. They do stupid things that they would never do in any other area of their life and it's because of the money that can be made. If it takes you a couple of years or even five or ten to reach the level of a staggering income, is it worth it? The choice is yours.

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