Today is Sunday 7th of July. The holidays have passed well and looks like we are ready to start a new quarter. I don’t want to bore you with lots of charts and analysis, patterns, mistakes, reviews, trade ideas. I would like to focus your attention on the psychological side of trading.

Like we already know, psychology represents a big piece of trading success. Some say its more than 90%. The more I trade, learn, develop myself as a trading professional, the more I agree with it. I want to share my concepts for overcoming some of the hard times in trading (applies to life also) so maybe you can approach it more effectively without losing so much time and money as I did. In my opinion there are a couple of concepts that every trader should consider on the psychology side.

1. Losses are a part of the game.Trading is like any other job with its ups and downs. With success and failures. This is a probability game and no loser should become a personal insult for you. The best traders on the street have developed a very high level of Emotional Intellect that keeps their personal side of feelings like love, care and joy apart from Trading. This is something you develop with years and its called the FLOW. Once you are in the FLOW, your head, soul and emotions work like a Swiss watch without any interference and errors. Once any of these shows weakness, the whole system collapses. This takes us to the next point.
2. Trading is only a part of life.Friends, family, loved ones are the interactions that truly matter in life. No winner or loser should affect our attitude towards these individuals. The more we put our soul in trading, the less we can give to our close ones so keep it simple and stupid. Take it as a job like any other. I can say that in my experience trading is like a relationship, you build it carefully, you don’t push too hard nor you ignore the important moments. You work hard but you keep it healthy. There is no rush and there is no boundary. That slowly passes the idea to the next point I would like to make.
3. Balance is crucial in life. By working too hard, you might get a burnout quite easily. Remember the last time you watched a few hundreds of stocks and then tried trading a few dozens, it usually ends up badly for your emotional state and which is more frustrating, for your pnl. Balance is all you. Balance is having a healthy emotional status, doing sports, having time for creativity, enjoying life and people around you. Balance will keep your soul, body and mind healthy in any situation. Balance will heal you in bad weeks and months and will help you take strategic decisions when the opportunity comes.

These are just a piece of “wisdom” or “advice” that should be taken into consideration when you are starting or even moving through your trading career. The earlier you think of these concepts and start applying them, the better trader and human you become. We all have goals to achieve, we all have bills to pay, we all have 24 hours a day and we live once so lets make this journey a truly joyful one.

Always yours,

— @Trader521 —

I would like to present myself as Trader521. I will use this nickname for the purpose of confidentiality and explain you a little bit of my trading concepts. First of all trading is not easy, but is should not be hard. When it comes to placing trades, its all about mathematics, probability, risk and reward. Over years of trial and failure, the wisdom of the trading game finally touched me with its magic hand. I know lots of you are struggling with your strategies, indicators, fundamentals and other factors that you might think are very important in trading. Ill say two basic concepts that should be at the base of your trading:

1. Psychology (this is something that can make the best trader in the world lost tons of money in a short period of time – recommended read is Mark Douglas – Disciplined Trader and Trading in the Zone).
2. Math (knowing your probability of a profitable trade, make sure you have a decent risk reward when it comes to taking profits, I am looking for at least 5 to 1 Reward to Risk).

These two factors will make pretty much any strategy work. This is the bread and butter of every successful trader even if he or she does not realize that.

Over the next blog posts I will develop these concepts more detailed and show you what to look for when placing a trade, executing a setup, setting up the sizing of the trade, manage it and taking profits on the way.

I hope you are all well and are ready to start your next and last step in becoming a profitable, highly effective trader.

I would like to thank you for your time in reading this post.

— Trader 521 —