I’m often asked by people contemplating getting into trading or starting trading or maybe struggling a little bit with success.
‘Is it possible in the early days and even in the first year or so, to be profitable in trading!’ Click ABOVE TO READ MORE….
I’m often asked by people contemplating getting into trading or starting trading or maybe struggling a little bit with success.
‘Is it possible in the early days and even in the first year or so, to be profitable in trading!’
Or
‘How long does it take to be profitable’….
Questions like that.
And the first thing I say is, Hell YES
Because it is.
But one thing that there is a misconception of …
Trading is not an overnight success.
The laws of compounding apply trading and by compounding’s very nature….means that progress is slow.
In fact, there is not an awful lot in life that appears to be an overnight success.
You might’ve experienced someone or something being an overnight success.
But what is missed is, and this is the beauty of compounding, what is missed is all the work that has been done in the background for the weeks, the months, the years before it.
And then it pops, and there’s tremendous success.
And that’s where the term comes from, an overnight success, because it appears to be an overnight success.
In actual fact, and what it has taken, is diligent work for the previous weeks, months, years, to lead to the success!
That has compounded over time to lead to what we see as the overnight success.
Same applies to trading, it’s no different.
It’s the small things done consistently over time that has the biggest impact.
The way in which your trading account compounds is directly related to how your behaviour compounds or how you’re executing your trading journey, is the very same.
It compounds to the same effect.
The more consistently you do those small things over time, the more you will be rewarded and the more you will experience that ‘overnight success’.
But when you think about it, you’ve actually been working towards it for years before.
And that’s the beauty of compounding because you think it’s the small things done consistently, you’re making no progress, nothing changing, nothing happening.
But it’s all happening in the underbelly, so to speak, and then all of a sudden it pops.
The same with your compounding.
For example, you’ve got a penny and then the next day it’s 2p and then it’s 4p, 8p, 16p and so on.
The same with the magic penny, the fairy tale of the magic penny that doubles every day.
It’s not until you get to day 30 or thereabouts that the compounding starts to take it to a whole new level.
It’s the very same thing with trading.
That’s where the overnight success concept comes from.
So no, trading is not an overnight success.
But here’s the thing.
Avoid the two biggest mistakes that traders make and you will achieve your goal and you will achieve your goal way sooner than you would even think you do.
And those two biggest mistakes are one, having the need for instance success.
I talk about this in many different ways.
So when I say instant success, I’m talking about instantly mastering trading, instantly getting your monthly targets, instantly winning all your trades.
That’s not going to happen, okay?
So, lose the attachment to instant success and instant results.
That’s a start.
Because if you’ve got that attachment to instant results, that means you’re going to be trading for immediate gratification, you’re not going to be trading for the long run.
You’re not going to be trading as part of a plan over the next few years, I suggest to my clients in the Tribe of Traders, we work to a five year plan, you’re looking for instant results.
There is no place for immediate gratification in trading – that is a killer to success in trading – same as in any form of wealth building.
The need for immediate gratification is an indication that you will not do what it takes to sustain what is needed in trading – and will not embrace the support and challenge that is inevitable.
Instead you will be consistently derailed looking for the next shiny object – running from strategy to strategy in pursuit of only success..
Which is impossible.
You can not separate the inseparable – you can not have achievement without failure, gain without loss….
You can not trade with losing trades – it is part of the whole – and the sooner you as a trader embrace losing trades – and stop fearing them the sooner your focus will be on what it takes to trade successfully.
In doing so, your trade selection will ensure that you will have more winning trades than losing trades.
Also if you’ve extended your time horizon to take that your trading journey will be five years, then you’re not looking for instant results, you know your results will be in five years.
So it’s very different mindset that engages a different thought process and a different way of trading.
So, that’s the biggest mistake that the majority of traders make, is they want instant results.
Gauge your results on the whole, so have a plan.
What is your target?
What do you want to achieve?
Over how many years?
In the Tribe of Traders we go through a program to get clarity on what the ‘number’ is we want to achieve.
It’s a number that stems from each individuals own unique circumstances and is a realistic – albeit potentially life changing number – once achieved.
Every part of our body can relate to that number, it’s not a fantasy number.
It’s not too high, it’s not too low. It’s just exactly what we need at that point.
It’s a number that works for each traders lifestyle, for their objectives that each one of us has in our trading and wants to achieve from our trading.
And then we put a timeline of five years.
The second mistake, and this is the biggest mistake that traders make. I would say just about close on 100% of traders make this mistake when they get into trading.
And also for years when they are trading, sometimes it can take years for people to realize that this is the biggest mistake, they believe that success in trading is about trading, and it’s not.
Success in trading is about mindset. It’s all mindset.
I recently did a talk at the DO LECTURES in Wales, one of the other speakers there was Charlie Engle an ultra marathon runner and a little while ago he ran two marathons a day for three months – every single day…
Two marathons a day and he’s about to embark on another epic, expedition.
It’s a mind blowing expedition. But what I heard him say was ‘It’s 90% mindset and 10% in the mind’
BOOM!
Like anything…..
DECIDE with 100% certainty – with your heart mind and soul
– and you can achieve ANYTHING!
True success comes from actions driven from the soul.
And that’s the same with trading.
It’s massively dependent on mindset and driven by mindset.
Trading is not about just placing trades.
I always say successful trading is about trading in a certain way, it’s not
just about placing trades.
And that certain way is from mastering the mindset.
What I call the 80/20 rule of trading, where 80 is the mindset, and that needs to be your first and foremost area of concentration.
That’s where 80 plus percent of your energy needs to go in the beginning.
This is not taught in the industry.
This is a failure in the industry in my opinion…
This is what sets up new traders for failure…
It’s a crying shame and needs to STOP!
It makes me furious to see the focus all being on strategy, chart reading, indicators, technical or fundamental analysis… that’s secondary…
No amount of mastery in those areas alone will give a trader sustainable success in trading and wealth building – END OF STORY!
There are a few that pay lip service to the need to master mindset.
They’ll recommend a book or two to read…and that’s great!
But the truth is it’s way more than that.
It’s takes than that.
It takes serious mastery of self.
Knowing yourself, knowing what your beliefs are, where those beliefs come from, how they support you or how they don’t support you, and if they don’t support you, how you change them, how you reframe them.
Then there’s your relationship with money, so many people have issues with money.
If you’ve got issues with money and you’re trading, you’ve got an uphill battle.
That’s all part of mindset.
What is your relationship with money?
You need to have a very strong relationship with money and wealth and a high level of self-worth, in terms of how you feel that you deserve wealth.
In order to ensure sustainable success in your trading.
So as I said, I’ll go right back to the beginning. I’m often asked,
‘Is it possible to be profitable in trading?’ Or
’Can people make a living on trading’
‘Why is trading so hard?’
‘Why do people find it so hard to be profitable in trading’
‘Is trading just a get rich quick scheme?’
For me, I do see it as getting rich quick because it can be.
Think about it….
What you can build in five years..
You can take a pot of money and compound it to something mind blowing in five years.
To me, that’s get rich quick.
But that’s a process…
It’s HARD work…
In order to ensure success in that process, you need to ensure that you do not fall for the two biggest mistakes in the industry.
And one is having a never ending seeking or desire for instant results, because that doesn’t happen.
That means you’ve got a shrunken time horizon, means you’re not looking at it in terms of the whole five year plan.
And the other one is, you’re ignoring mindset.
The other thing, if you’re trading, the impact that having a mentor or somebody that holds you accountable for the trades that you take, I cannot tell you how powerful that is.
And I know this for a fact because working with our clients in the Tribe of Traders, we have this program called the Tech Intensive, where I’m actually analysing each of their trades every two weeks and giving them feedback on their trades.
I can see the difference in the trades that the traders are taking.
They are mindful, they know I’m going to be assessing their trading.
They know I’m going to be giving them feedback on their trades.
So they are making sure that each and every trade they take, they’re following the best practice.
They’re making sure they’re trade ready, they’re making sure that they are following what I call the Genius Trading Model.
And that it’s coming from a mindset of trading as a business, being a money manager and mastering one strategy that time.
And I can see the difference in their trading and I can see almost every one of them are profitable in that process.
It is a remarkable process so if you haven’t got somebody who is holding you accountable – I STRONGLY suggest you get someone …
Because trading brings up so much, it brings up a temptation to gamble, temptation to hope trade, to revenge trade.
But this is real money we’re dealing with.
You can’t afford to have that tendency because that means you’re not having mastery of mindset.
You just can’t afford to do that.
So have a mentor, have an accountability.
Somebody that you respect, somebody that you admire in trading, to keep you on the straight and narrow, so to speak. I’ve seen the phenomenal benefits of this for traders.
I can see it in the Tribe of Traders.
I can see the impact that it’s having. It is huge.
It’s a huge, huge incentive to stay focused on the long-term journey for their success..
Our Trading Club is a phenomenal form of mentorship…with daily access to coaches, and monthly accountability and so much more..
If you’re a trader and you’re trading and you’re just battling with getting to where you would love to get, I would suggest that you make sure you’re not making those two biggest mistakes.
The other thing I would suggest, you come and join us in the Tribe of Traders, it’s a phenomenal community – a group of traders committed to their journey of financial independence with empathy for those on the same journey.
You will never experience a community like this in trading – anywhere!
