THE 10 RULES OF SUCCESSFUL TRADERS

Trading the markets can be one of the most difficult disciplines to master and the reason for this is that there are really not very many rules to trading. Other than the exchange rules which govern trading times and other such things, in the trading environment traders can do whatever they like. If you think about it, you can go long or short, stay in the trade for 10 minutes or 10 years. The only real rules that apply to your trading are the rules that you create and enforce on yourself.

Discussing the many thousands of different rules and strategies that people have come up with is not really the aim of this post, but rather to focus on 10 guidelines, or lifestyle rules that successful traders live by - as identified by Mike Bellafiore.

These are:

1. Successful traders have meaningful attachments or some other source of motivation and happiness outside of the financial markets.

 

2. Successful traders are proactive, they know what they need to learn and they know what they need to do in order to execute. Being active alone is not sufficient.

 

3. Successful traders tend to be process driven, they develop and refine routines that turn good trading behaviors into habits and execute these routines habitually.

 

4. Successful traders have a unique signature, they have an edge that they execute consistently and improve constantly.

 

5. Successful traders treat every trade as a learning opportunity, especially losing trades.

 

6. Successful traders identify their A+ setups, best products, and optimal timeframes that are most intuitive for them and work to maximize their production in those ideas

 

7. Successful traders avoid thinking in dollar terms, they standardize in terms of percentages to measure performance as well as put on risk.

 

8. Successful traders have a sniper mentality, they are prepared to wait for as long as it takes and ready to pull the trigger when a valuable targets appear in their scope.

 

9. Successful traders have a comprehensive set of measurable and challenging yet realistic goals, they regularly evaluate their progress and always ask what they need to do to make further progress towards their goals.

 

10. Successful traders use all their resources to improve, particularly other traders.

We hope that you find these useful and in some way applicable to your own trading style. Stick to the rules above and the rules of your particular or individual strategy and we are sure that you will have another successful year of trading.