Trading without a system, is like trying to fly without generating lift.
You will remain airborne until the distance of the square between you and earth reaches zero. Precisely at D = 0, you join the growing number of former traders who are now merely a statistical certainty.
But, it does not have to be that way. Johnston01, is right about one thing: "Never give up!!!" That is - if you are sincere about ever making it in this business. There are ways, methods and means by which you can convert yourself into a successful long-term trader. But, the said reality is that you will not find those pathways on most so-called trading communities today.
Back when I was learning to trade, there were online sites where people actually engaged in "community" as opposed to giving it mere lip service. Places where people actually helped each other by sharing ideas about things that worked and did not work. I spent years in that kind of community, until the Neo-Trading Communities took over.
Those are in the vast majority of online trading forums in existence today and precious little learning and growing will ever take place in those hallways, because they are perpetually monitored by people who don't have a solitary clue about anything related to real trading. They are naysayers of the highest order and you cannot anything of value from a naysayer.
Try to remain positive and focused. You need to:
1) Learn how to develop your own technical tools for trading
2) Have a real reason for being in the business in the first place
3) Come up with a target number that you want to shoot for - your own personal economic number
4) Learn how to research/study/analysis raw market data in search of patterns that repeat
5) Learn how to build rules (logical algorithms) around repeating patterns
6) Learn how to integrate repeating patterns with each other to create pattern synergy
7) Learn how to build a Money Management philosophy that is tied directly to your trading results
8) Learn how to use Excel - it will pay dividends in your research and tools building down the road
9) Learn the development rules and limitations of automated trading and use optimized Bots
10) Become your own best adviser - become the expert in your own trading business
11) Get in touch with your own personal psychology and how it might interfere with your business as a trader
12) Get used to be consistent and reliable - most human beings are neither
The stakes?
- Your very success in this business - that's all.
