This is the eleventh and final installment of the On Professionalism thread series.
The previous installment thread can be found here:
Points not Dollars, and Non-Monetary Trading Goals
The index and first installment can be found here:
On Professionalism
Friendly Strangers
There's no free candy; that white, unmarked, van with the friendly stranger offering you free sweetness is only going to result in pain.
Put simply, no one wakes up in the morning and says aloud "I'm going to make someone else rich today!"
Online forums are great for sharing ideas, building out systems and bouncing ideas around, but do not get in the habit of letting others think for you.
This relates back to the quirky games our brain plays on us. We are wired to be tribal, communal, and think as a group. It feels more comfortable doing something if others are doing it too, but as most of our parents would say as we grew up "if everyone was jumping off a bridge would you do it too?"
Think for yourself, and if you're tempted to shadow trade someone since they posted a new shiny screenshot of a 1 hour EUR/USD chart with an entry order in their online journal or website, just stop following them.
Do take advice from people who are interested in teaching you 'how' to trade, not 'what/when' to trade. Many people teach others as a way to horn in on their own skills (myself included,) but you seldom will see these types just giving out trading calls unless there's some catch.
Never pay for a signal service unless the service includes detailed training on how to trade their system by yourself. If you are just trading other people's signals without learning how to analyse the market on your own, you aren't really a trader, you're just indirectly letting someone else trade your money and paying for the privilege of it. This is not the way to become an independent professional.
Conclusion - Putting it all together!
Remember how I asked you to stop trading in an earlier installment?
If you've read this far, congratulations!
I'd like you to start practicing what I've suggested if you haven't already, and see if it improves your trading over the coming months. Really give it a shot. I'm not suggesting anything risky here, so there's only an upside if this works for you.
Take a few days to work on your body, your mind, and your diet. Write your thoughts down in your journal. And when you feel at ease, put on your first trade as a renewed and refreshed individual on their way to becoming a professional.
If you notice, I didn't give you some "fool-proof" system or plan to follow to be a professional. There's no one-sized-fits all method of becoming consistently profitable. You are going to have to find the right system that fits your unique personality. All this installment series is about is providing you with some common skills and the base foundation behind building good habits and managing some of the natural ways we humans goof up.. the rest is up to you to work out for yourself, after all, I don't think I've ever met two professional traders who are exactly the same.
And of course: GOOD LUCK!
This concludes the thread series. I hope you enjoyed it.
Please feel free to comment in any of the threads if you have any questions about that thread's content.
The previous installment thread can be found here:
Points not Dollars, and Non-Monetary Trading Goals
The index and first installment can be found here:
On Professionalism
Friendly Strangers
There's no free candy; that white, unmarked, van with the friendly stranger offering you free sweetness is only going to result in pain.
Put simply, no one wakes up in the morning and says aloud "I'm going to make someone else rich today!"
Online forums are great for sharing ideas, building out systems and bouncing ideas around, but do not get in the habit of letting others think for you.
This relates back to the quirky games our brain plays on us. We are wired to be tribal, communal, and think as a group. It feels more comfortable doing something if others are doing it too, but as most of our parents would say as we grew up "if everyone was jumping off a bridge would you do it too?"
Think for yourself, and if you're tempted to shadow trade someone since they posted a new shiny screenshot of a 1 hour EUR/USD chart with an entry order in their online journal or website, just stop following them.
Do take advice from people who are interested in teaching you 'how' to trade, not 'what/when' to trade. Many people teach others as a way to horn in on their own skills (myself included,) but you seldom will see these types just giving out trading calls unless there's some catch.
Never pay for a signal service unless the service includes detailed training on how to trade their system by yourself. If you are just trading other people's signals without learning how to analyse the market on your own, you aren't really a trader, you're just indirectly letting someone else trade your money and paying for the privilege of it. This is not the way to become an independent professional.
Conclusion - Putting it all together!
Remember how I asked you to stop trading in an earlier installment?
If you've read this far, congratulations!
I'd like you to start practicing what I've suggested if you haven't already, and see if it improves your trading over the coming months. Really give it a shot. I'm not suggesting anything risky here, so there's only an upside if this works for you.
Take a few days to work on your body, your mind, and your diet. Write your thoughts down in your journal. And when you feel at ease, put on your first trade as a renewed and refreshed individual on their way to becoming a professional.
If you notice, I didn't give you some "fool-proof" system or plan to follow to be a professional. There's no one-sized-fits all method of becoming consistently profitable. You are going to have to find the right system that fits your unique personality. All this installment series is about is providing you with some common skills and the base foundation behind building good habits and managing some of the natural ways we humans goof up.. the rest is up to you to work out for yourself, after all, I don't think I've ever met two professional traders who are exactly the same.
And of course: GOOD LUCK!
This concludes the thread series. I hope you enjoyed it.
Please feel free to comment in any of the threads if you have any questions about that thread's content.
