Trading as a lifestyle
I had an interesting argument with one of the participants recently trader forum. The essence of it was the question whether it is possible for an experienced professional trader to combine maximum concentration and calmness in the market and a stormy emotional temperament in communication with colleagues or friends? To be honest, our dialog came to a certain deadlock and ended, in fact, with nothing, but still I would like to share my impression with you.
So, who would you call a professional trader? In principle, the answer is pretty obvious: it is a speculator whose main activity and source of income is a stock trading. This is a person who, making transactions on the world exchanges, knows that each of his wrong decision is fraught with the loss of his own money, often a lot of money, and you can recover this blunder only by getting a profit in the next transactions. You must agree that this is not a burden for people with a weak spirit.
Studying the technical or fundamental picture of the instrument you have chosen to trade, or searching for a currency pair, stock or futuresThe following is not all that is required: the calculation of probable exits from an open position, both with profit and with loss; the correct management of deposit interest when opening a position; monitoring the world situation and market behavior in order to adjust your trading strategy in time. a professional trader does on a daily basis.
Let's add to this the support of already open positions. If the deal is profitable, then variations of "hold", "add", "take part of the profit", "close completely" are possible. And here, in order to do the right thing, without losing too much and taking the maximum profit, the trader actually needs to do all the same work as when opening a position. If the made decision turned out to be wrong and the market went in the wrong direction, then negative emotions are added to the work of evaluating the situation and searching for options to get out of it with the least losses: It is difficult even for a professional to remain blind to losses.
And let's not forget that a trader has absolutely no one to blame for his misfortunes but himself - he has no boss, no stupid employee, no greedy business partner, etc. Except for a broker or dealer to blame for a losing deal, but the decision to choose this company again lies on the shoulders of our pro.
To summarize and in answer to the question that was asked at the beginning of the article, I note that if, after reading these words, you still call yourself "professional trader" and you happen to give an emotional slack (and more often than not it will be negative), have the courage to reflect on three things:
- You may be tired from the exertion and your body needs to rest;
- Maybe you've taken on too heavy a burden, and it's worth unloading yourself a little by changing activities;
- or are you not yet a professional Traderwhich means that some aspects of your business need to be fine-tuned.