The Way To Trade

The Way To Trade cuts to the essentials. I might summarize these essentials as follows:

You may think that the market exists somewhere out there.
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How you think of the market is unique and exists only in your head. To win you have to ensure that your version of the market is "useful" and then make use of it.


You may think you see your version of the market clearly.
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What you see is shrouded within an emotional whirlwind. The whirlwind may get a lot faster when you have a trading position in place.


You may think that trading is an easy function involving buying low and selling high.
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In fact trading is not difficult, although nor is it easy, but the emotional problems we bring with us to the market mean that few win.

These three statements summarize what you are getting into.

In normal walks of life these sort of things either do not happen or we soon learn to stay away. The market is different. It does not do the same things all the time.

So one day a particular tactic will work, the next day it won't. Compare this with a normal everyday function like walking down the street. If you walk into a lamp post, you soon learn that you need to walk round them.

But in the market-place, the lamp posts keeps moving as you approach them, you can never be sure that you can get round them.

Can You Do Anything About It?
But what you can do is develop the mental discipline so that even when you do bump into them it's OK.

Apart from the analysis technique you should use, you also have to learn trading skills, which ultimately are about 95% of this game. This takes time.

Do not expect to be an instant success at trading, you have to learn this business as you do any other. Whilst you do so you have a simple task and this is the first secret of trading.

Like all great secrets it is well known, because that is the best way to keep something a secret, make everyone think it is not a secret at all. But this is where most traders fall down, this is where they knock themselves out of the game.