Are You and Your Trading Systems Ready for Success?

If you plan on working with a day trading system, determining whether or not you’re ready to make the leap involves some serious introspection. When you learn day trading, it’s easy to get it into your head that what you’re preparing for are exciting days in the stock market. 

The reality of working as a trader is a bit different from this. You need to prepare yourself to do some hard work. It’s easy to be ready to handle the good times, but a good trader is passionate about the challenges as well.

Learning Curve for Trading Systems

As you start to look for day trading systems that work for you, be prepared for a lot of testing and due diligence. Remember that testing is an opportunity to learn the tools you will need to hone your craft. Once you are successful, it’s dangerously easy to forget all the hard work you put in and think the success you now enjoy only came from using the best trading systems and methods possible. Just as not learning from your trading systems research is dangerous, so too is forgetting all the personal effort leading to your success.

Be prepared to take an objective look at your trading systems and methods and to thoroughly critique them over a realistic trading period. Quality software is the basic necessity. However, the “tool” that can always be tweaked and improved upon is yourself.  All that said don’t be too harsh on yourself. And, even when you are doing very well, some of that success could be due to dumb luck rather than to any particular skill on your part. Instead of being dejected about failures and developing delusions of grandeur because of your successes, be prepared to have a level head and to make honest assessments of both.

Trading Systems and Psychological Resilience

Even the best trading software in the world and a robust set of skills cannot guarantee success. Part of what makes a trader successful is the fact that they are resilient. Being resilient is not the same as being arrogant. Being arrogant means believing you can and will succeed no matter what the situation. Being resilient means, even in the face of a terrible day or a string of bad days, you know you can succeed. 

The right psychology is a big part of trading. If you are willing to work hard to learn and you are prepared to pick yourself up and keep going when things go wrong, then you’ll be ready for the “exciting” world of day trading.