You might feel like a rookie trader like myself is the last person that should be giving anybody else advice about trading. Even so, I will say this because it's true. Sometimes you can even learn from those who are doing it wrong. Probably the most important thing I learned last year is that your trading style MUST fit your personality. You can have a great trading plan and strategy, but if you can't make it work, it means nothing. I know a trader that is very successful. I mean making four or five figure sums per trade! This trader is very conservative and only looks for setups that he feels have an extremely high chance of working out. He often moves his stop to break even after 20 or 30 pips and advises to trade very infrequently. Once a week is all you need he says. He obviously makes it worse. If he's making four or 5 figures a trade and doing that week in week out then how can anyone argue with that method? This guy has been trading for about 40 years! He's got so much experience and he can make more in one week than I can in two years! I gotta follow his way and copy him to get success, right. You can't! Here's the thing. Somebody else could take that exact same trading style and find a way to lose money. Someone like me.
I tried it for months with only moderate success. It was frustrating, it was discouraging and at times I just felt like giving up. Nothing wrong with the trading style, but it's just not me. I could not cope with the pressure of having to stay patient and look for the perfect setup. If I only made one or two trades a week, then I HAD to make those trades profitable. If I didn't make profit on them...............oh man. What a huge psychological blow that was. Even if I did make profit, it was usually small profit. Not even half of my risk. Part of the reason it was so tough is that I have a small trading account. But it's also because I have a different mindset.
See, I would rather take 5 or 6 trades a week and win only 50% of them. As long as my wins are two or three times bigger than my losses, than I've made money. Good money. I hate chart watching. I just set and forget. I tried to watch the charts and just ended up messing around with my trades all the time. Moving stop losses every 5 minutes, changing my profit target, and just generally trading like a punk. A clown that doesn't have a clue what he's doing. Now I don't watch the charts. Once I set my trade I just forget about it for a few hours. If I win that's great. If I lose, that still hurts but nowhere near as bad as before. I know a 2:1 or a 3:1 is just around the corner. This style of trading suits me perfectly. Going to stick with it and see where I am at the end of the year.
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