So you want to be a trader, eh?

How much are you willing to pay?

Money flowing out of your pocket will certainly happen, but I am not talking about that.

What will you sacrifice? Months and years of first mental stress followed by physical stress brought about by learning to trade in an arena that gives the lessons first and then gets you to ask the questions later. How will you react to learning to stick to some very basic rules and commands and not make you a liar to yourself by breaking them? How many times can you make the same mistakes over and over again while not getting depressed about it? How will you feel about putting in countless hours of study and learning that takes time away from friends and family in order to achieve your dream?

If you think you are willing to pay the price to achieve your success then there is a glimmer of hope for you.

The journey will not be easy. That is an understatement. Trading will strip away all pretences at times and possibly leave you questioning even your desire to live. If you lose all your money in a very short time it can destroy the person that is you. Relationships and self esteem can all be easily crushed. The ensuing trauma can devastate a person.

Ah ha, but if losing money and being wrong is the crux of the matter, they can also be turned around and used to build a strong foundation for trading by looking at the situation from a different angle.

What if you could not care if you win or lose. Not care if you make money or not on each separate trade?. Not care if you are right or wrong? Not have to know what will happen next? Money and ego go together. What if you can separate them and break them down so that they have no effect on you.

Money. What is money? What does it represent to you? Hard work? Status? Security? Power? Intelligence? Those all have to do with your feeding your ego and how you view yourself and life expectations.

Separating them requires you to examine your heartfelt feelings regarding the value of money to you and the reasons you desire to make it. Work vs. luck. Value vs. unimportance, credentials vs. connections.

Making money from trading is the outcome of putting on a successful trade from beginning to end. Finding opportunity, establishing risk, gauging interrelated strengths and weakness, application of your system. Can you do this?

The ego wants to be stroked, loved, built up, told that you are a good, smart person. If you make money and are successful then it feeds on that. If you lose and are wrong it can drive you into the ground. You must eliminate this tendency.

The solution to this scenario is to commit yourself to following your trading plan/edge/system with no deviations. Your system becomes the ONLY thing you think about. You know it works. Carrying it out as designed and adapted to every trade is your responsibility. The money that flows to you or from you is the result of how well you applied yourself and also just probability. No matter how good you are or how well you traded you will still have unprofitable trades. That is just a cost of doing business both financially and emotionally. That is the nature of this business. Your ego does not have to get involved in thinking about wins or loses. Only the plodding application of your system that you designed and are responsible for. Money doesn’t have to enter into this if you view it as an expendable resource instead. If money is the focus then you probably don’t have enough capital to start with and you are taking opportunities based on that instead of what the market is telling you to do. The market is always right by the way.

At the moment that you are ready to place a trade, what enters into your mind? Momentum is present, risk is acceptable to my edge, my edge says it is the time to move, now. At this moment if you feel fear you have to really ask yourself why in order to deeply examine the feeling. Fear of losing, fear of seeing money disappear, uncertainty of what will happen next? Break it down and turn it around. Turn uncertainty and loss into probability and profits. Turn fear of losing into playing the odds and applying your system and letting the chips fall as they may. Of course you need a system proven to work for any of this to be any more than a grope in the dark. This is where your education and knowledge in all areas of trading comes into play. When you first start out you know nothing. Even for the first 2 years I still say you know virtually nothing. That is because most would be traders are trying to learn how to be smarter than the markets through technical analysis and learning fundamental reasoning. Well you will never be smarter than the markets so stop trying to be. A monkey can be taught to recognize basic repetitive chart patterns in a short time. My five-year-old daughter can recognize an uptrend and downtrend (one has green candles going up, the other has red candles going down) and what a doji looks like and the probable effect that comes afterwards.

What the aspiring trader needs to do is to turn inward for the answers. Discipline to search themselves. To formulate and ask the questions about money, ego, self worth and determine the way forward. To be absolutely honest in their approach and not sabotage their efforts by letting ego and emotions intrude. Develop the system. Apply the system.

Working with the markets, applying yourself in the best way for you, remembering what is necessary, forgetting what is not and applying the correct knowledge for any given situation is the way of the successful trader.

Do not think you can do this after a month or two of looking at charts and visiting chat rooms. Save your money and sim or paper trade and get down to the point where you can feel the opportunities and know how to methodically apply your edge without fail. Then learn about order entry in and out. Don’t try to rush it. It will probably end in tears if you do.

That being said, I believe anyone can learn how to do this. It just takes time and dedication. The freedom you have when you are successful at this will blow away any dreams you may currently have. The freedom to do anything you want whenever you want to do it. You answer only to yourself. How many people can honestly say that.

Keep working at that other job and grow your savings. Watch the markets in real time every day all day. Have no expectations.

Listen to no one about what they think the markets will do. It's ridiculous to think they know. As if they control things. I’ll tell you what markets do: This week they will go up and down and sideways, all in different timeframes. Each moment presents opportunity. Just like last week and just like 100,000 days before and after that. Thats all you need to know about that. It's an ocean of opportunities, served to you on a platter. How will you use these opportunities depends on you. How it all fits in with your personality and lifestyle is something you need to determine. Look inwards to your self and psyche. That is where the answers to success ultimately reside.