Let’s get to the meat of trading successfully right away.

The truth is, there are no easy paths, no quick successes to trading. There are dozens of gurus selling snake oil trading systems on the net. There is even an entire website that sells nothing but cheap $50-200 strategies. If these were such good strategies, why would someone sell them for $50?

You see, trading successfully is more than just opening a brokerage account, funding it with $5,000, and then “trading” live. The key to being a consistent trader is understandting that you know you don’t know. All ego aside, once you realize you know you don’t know, you are on the path to becoming a consistent trader.

In order to trade successfully, there are two important things you need to know. First, you need to know how the market trades. What is the Market’s underlying behavior? What time of day is best for trading? Who trades at that time? What kind of profit target you can expect? What kind of stop loss you need to trade with?

The second concept you need to know, and probably more important than the first, you need to know yourself. You need to understand your own underlying characteristics when you are trading. See, trading is a mental game. Everyone who plays this game must learn to overcome their own personal “psychology”, their own fears and their own greed.

Overcoming the first concept is probably easier than overcoming the second. Purchasing some fundamental education on Market behavior, hard work, and trading live will help you control your first obstacle. Overcoming the second thing, well that’s a different story. But coming to grips with the fact that you know you don’t know, that kind of puts you on the faster track to controling your own psychology.

Just why is knowing that you don’t know important? Think about this. Someone who goes to concerts is not a piano player. He would be ill advised to charge for a concert. The same thing applies to a trader. Funding an account doesn’t make you a trader.

One of the important differences between novice traders and professionals is that the professional knows he does not know. Trading with his own money has taught him well that there are things about trading even professionals can never know, (probably because they are just not knowable). The pro will know that he has to do research all the time, always learning more about the Market’s characteristics, etc.

At best, it is difficult to predict Market trends. If you watch any of the business news channels, you will see so many pundits explaining what they know, explaining where the Market is going. Of course, these are the same gurus who said that the Market crash in 2008 could never happen. They were buying when the Market was just beginning to tank, and they continued to buy in disbelief. Trading is not a business of predictions. Trading is the business of high probabilities, based upon real experience, research, and human reaction. The only trading secret that you can trust is knowing that you don’t know what the Market will do. That makes you a better trader because chances are, you will be more cautious. You will have designed a conservative emergency plan just in case the Market turns against your trade. The one thing you can know for sure is that some day, you will have trades that go against you.

Knowing you don’t know is not detrimental to your success as a trader, it’s quite helpful.

Barbara Cohen has been a professional day trader for over 10 years. She has trained hundreds of students in trading futures with Shadowtraders trading systems. As the CIO, Barbara moderates Shadowtraders daily online trading chat room. Before you purchase any trading education, make sure you attend Shadowtraders Monday Night Webinar, and hosted by Barbara Cohen

When studying futures stock market trading curbs, it`s a well-known saying that `traders should have a healthy fear of the market`. It seems like a perfectly reasonable assumption to make. The market is volatile, and each trade you make is to some extent unpredictable. But, it`s one thing to learn to accept the risk of the market, and another entirely to be afraid of it.

Ninety-five percent of the futures stock market trading curbs errors you are probably going to make, those errors which will cause you to consistently lose money, will be due to your attitudes your fear about being wrong. Fears of losing money, of missing out on profitable trades, or of leaving money on the table will cloud your thinking when you are trading. Your fears can cause you to act in such a way that what you are afraid will happen. If you`re afraid of being wrong, your fear will influence your perceptions of market information in a way that will cause you to do something that ends up making you wrong.

When you are afraid of something happening, all other possible outcomes cease to exist. You can`t perceive the other possibilities, or act on them properly if you do recognize them, because your fear paralyzes you. Physically, fear causes people to freeze or to run. Mentally, it causes them to narrow their attention to the object of their fear. This means that thoughts about other positive stock market trading curbs outcomes, as well as other information from the market, are barred from your mind. You can`t think about all the rational things you have learned about the market until the event is over and you are no longer afraid. Then you will think to yourself, `I knew that. Why did not I think of it then?` or, `Why could not I act on it then?`

It`s not easy to understand that the source of these problems is usually our own attitudes. Many of the thinking patterns that adversely affect our stock market trading curbs are a natural result of the ways in which we were brought up to see the world. These thought patterns are so deeply ingrained that it rarely occurs to traders that the source of their trading difficulties is internal, and derived from their state of mind. It can seem more natural to see the source of a problem as external, in the market. This happens because it feels like the market is causing pain, frustration, and dissatisfaction. Most traders do not want to be concerned with such abstract considerations as considering how their thoughts influence their trades, but understanding how beliefs, attitudes, and perception effect your futures stock market trading curbs are as fundamental as learning how to serve is in tennis.

You could say that understanding and controlling your perceptions of market information is important only to the extent that you want to achieve consistent results. You don`t have to know anything about yourself or the markets to make a winning trade, just as you don`t have to know the proper way to swing a tennis racket or golf club in order to hit a good shot occasionally. The first time you played golf, for instance, you might have hit several good shots throughout your round, even though you hadn`t learned any particular technique. But your score was still probably well over 100 for 18 holes. Obviously, to improve your overall score, you needed to learn technique. The same is true for developing good stock market trading curbs in your trading.

Traders need technique to achieve consistent results. If a trader isn`t aware of, or doesn`t understand, how their beliefs and attitudes affect their perception of market information, it seems as if it is the market`s behaviour that is causing the lack of consistency. As a result of this perception, it stands to reason that the best way to avoid losses and achieve consistent profits is to learn more about the markets.

This bit of logic is a trap that almost all traders fall into at some point. Unfortunately, this approach doesn`t work. The market simply offers too many variables to consider, and these variable often conflict. Furthermore, there are no limits to the market`s behavior. It can do anything at any time. In fact, since every person who trades is a market variable, it can be said that any single trader can cause virtually anything to happen.

That means no matter how much you learn about the market`s behavior, and no matter how brilliant an analyst you become, you will never learn enough to anticipate every possible way the market can move. If you are afraid of being wrong or losing money, you will never learn enough to compensate for the negative effects these fears will have on your ability to be objective and to act without hesitation. You can`t be confident in the face of constant uncertainty by acquiring information. The hard, cold reality of stock market trading curbs is that every trade has an uncertain outcome. Unless you learn to completely accept the possibility of an uncertain outcome, you will try, either consciously or unconsciously, to avoid any possibility you consider painful. In the process, you will subject yourself to any number of costly self-generated errors.

You can get over the bad futures stock market trading curbs by accepting the risk, and moving beyond your fears, you can greatly increase your ability to be a consistently profitable trader. This requires self-knowledge and discipline, but the rewards that can be attained on the market more than make the effort worthwhile.

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You may be having great success with your short term trading portfolio and have become comfortable with investment strategies. Now you may wonder if you should apply your successful methods to your superannuation fund. Can you treat your super fund and your trading fund the same? What about calculating stops?

Actually those two types of funds are totally different from each other. They represent different aspects of investment trading. One difference is usually the amount of money in the funds. Your super fund probably is much larger than your trading fund. The purpose of the funds is also different.

My investment trading fund, as much as I don’t want to, I could afford to lose it tomorrow. It wouldn’t ruin me. The last thing I want to do is lose all the money in my super fund. I am so conservative and so defensive and thinking much longer term in my super fund than I am in my day to day trading fund. So completely different purposes and to me they require completely different approaches. The size of a trading fund does affect your whole approach to trading. Whilst all the same rules of effective trading apply, most notable nipping losses in the bud and letting your profits run; you have adapt the way in which you apply those rules for maximum benefits and profits.

Your super fund should be allowed to grow over the years so when you are allowed to cash in on it, you will have a nice sum available to provide financial security.

As far as setting your stops goes, you want to nip your losses in the bud and let your profits run no matter what you are trading, but when it comes to your superfund, the way you handle your stops is going to be very different. One method does not work for both types of investing.

Another thing to consider is the method of calculation; would you use the same method on your super fund as you would on your CFD trading fund? You know the width would be different, but what about the method, is it the same?

Again, the two accounts are handled differently. Short term trading does well using a technical stop but you should use a volatility base for your super fund. They need different methods for both to be profitable. It is important you do not lock into a single method of investing. You need to be adaptable in order to maximize profits and meet your individual goals.

Find out more about Trading Psychology. Visit www.freetradingsystems.org today.