Will I ever be a successful trader?
This is a burning question that every new trader whispers quietly to themselves but avoids answering. But it is one that you should confront.
I think that we avoid honest thought on this question because we all know that we won’t like the answer.
Will you succeed as a trader?
Probably not.
It is highly unlikely that you will survive your first 5 years.
You don’t like hearing that, do you.
Becoming a successful trader takes a long time. Almost all new traders fail.
If you want to survive your first 5 years then you need to be honest about about your expectations and your fear of failure. You need to align your actions with the reality of what you are trying to accomplish.
So let’s look at some of the fears that we have around being new to trading.
What if I do all this study and work and it all ends up being a waste of time?
What if I don’t make money?
Will I make a fool of myself?
These fears are not unreasonable for newer traders to have. We all have had to face these types of doubts. It assumes that you won’t be enough. What you need to remember is that the vast majority of people, who are now successful, where once no better than you are right now. They were able to face their fears and still make the commitment to the process.
At this moment:
You don’t have the evidence to have confidence.
You don’t see the people around you doing it. – friends, colleagues etc. (social proof)
You don’t have the experience.
You have every reason to doubt yourself.
But you must remember, You are doing what only a select few chose to do in their lives. You are stepping outside of the social norm to pursue a vocation that very few would dare to do. They seek comfort and security of the familiar path. There are very few social signals out there for you to lean on. To become a trader you become an outlier.
So, given that the probabilities, the evidence and your experience is not in your favour. What can you do to improve the likelihood that you succeed as a trader. Well the most important thing you can do is have the right expectations. Stop assuming that you are going to be an exception to the rule. Take the position that it will likely take you 5 years to find your footing. Expect to fail a lot along the way and size your trades to preserve your capital.
Too many try and rush the process. Too many try and cheat the process. In doing this they fail to give themselves the time to do deep study. They are so busy trying to find tips, tricks and shortcuts that they don’t have the time or the focus to do it right. This is the mindset of the 3 minute generation. They don’t want to know a subject they just want fast food answers.
If you want to succeed you must respect the time and effort it will take to learn. In the end it is not about the first 5 years. It is about all of the years that follow that.
You must simply do enough real homework and gain enough real experience to make it fundamentally unreasonable for you to fail. Success comes from the work you put in.
Progress and success are stacked in layers. And it starts with doing the grunt work first. Find any setup and backtest it, learn about trading psychology and how to frame probabilities.
There is no mystical luck fairy that comes to you in your dreams to grant you success. Do the work and you will have the success. Successful outcomes will likely be small at first. But continued work will allow you to compound your successes. The result on my first price profile research returned me about 15%. But then I layered my success with improvements that could only have come from my previous work. The longer I studied charts the more intuitive I became.
How many books have you read on trading. How many hours have you put into your own research. Or did you decide to spend that time watching tv or scrolling socials. The great secret of successful people is that they do the work and they don’t make excuses. You only see the success.
People want wealth for the freedom of choice that it brings but spend their available time making low leverage choices. Like watching tv when they should be working.
While it is reasonable to have doubts you should also consider where you will be in 5 years if you don’t change how you spend your time now. Would being in the same position you are in now be considered a successful outcome? Are you satisfied with your life staying the same?
I want to take you on a little perspective experiment. How much do you think average successful traders make. Let’s say its $100k a year. While it may take a few years to build your skill, I want you to realise that every year that you fail to actualise your goals it is costing you $100k a year.
Every year that you don’t have the answer is costing you money, freedom, self determination.
Trading can’t really be taught. It can only be learned. You gain learning through experience. Just like a pool player or a musician. You can know all the rules but only you can develop sufficient skill.
I always remember an important exercise I learned about dealing with doubt and uncertainty around outcomes. Ask yourself, What if the worst happens? What will that look like? Then you ask, How can I mitigate that outcome. What steps will I take in response to that outcome?
When you take the 30,00 foot view of trading success, or for that matter most other pursuits, it comes down to your perspective and experience. Both of which are entirely in your control. With the right perspective a street bum can become a millionaire. And experience will help shape your perspective. Every trade teaches you something that you can take to the next.
By confronting the doubts you can create a framework to put those doubts into perspective. If you don’t then they will come up at the worst times in your trading to taunt you.
Every day you should be working on building the proof that you can succeed.
Don’t have the confidence – Try things until it becomes more familiar.
No social proof – Join communities with others that are doing it.
No experience – Take small trades and see what goes wrong and right.
Don’t let fear stop you from trying. Too often we raise deliberately self defeating questions and use them as excuses not to try. The ”I’m not sure” type of questions. We have no intention of trying to answer the question because they are rhetorical in nature. They are just intended to stop us from challenging ourselves.
We use these questions to keep things the same. People fear success. It means that things will have to change and while we claim to like the idea of success we actually prefer to maintain a state of comfort and familiarity.
Will you succeed as a trader?
Probably not.
Because you won’t make the honest commitment to practice over the long term.
Because you will likely give into your fears and doubts.
Because some shiny new thing will take away your focus.
Because you don’t really want to change.