Qualities of All Great Traders

Introduction

It is important to understand, and if possible, emulate the qualities that most top traders/investors have, to profit from the stock market! Many of these qualities can be developed if there is a willingness to succeed. With a commitment to improvement in oneself, and adhering to certain business stratagems, profiting from the stock market, in which ever form you feel comfortable in, is feasible.

While there are many, many traits that are noticeable in top traders, this article concentrates on only four of major importance.

1: Personal Responsibility

This is probably the most important trait that all top traders have (or top people in any field) is the ability to assume total responsibility for what happens to them. And for top traders and investors, this means that they assume total responsibility for their investments results.

This means that if you lose money it’s not the market’s fault, it’s not your advisor’s fault, it’s not your system’s fault, or the fault of anything else. Instead, it is a direct result of what you did. When you assume this attitude, you can learn directly from your mistakes and trading becomes a major learning curve, setting a scenario which allows for constant improvement. When you don’t assume this attitude, then you get to repeat your mistakes over and over again because you believe that you were a victim of some external forces.

Therefore, it becomes quite obvious that the ability to learn from your mistakes is much more sensible and profitable then the tendency to repeat mistakes over and over again.
Trait 2: Commitment

Becoming a successful investor/trader requires hard work. You must get to know yourself intimately because you are the source of your trading performance. You must develop a business plan to guide your trading. You must develop and test three or four strategies that fit within the big picture (as you see it) and then become part of your business plan. You must do your homework constantly. You must set routines and follow certain disciplines during the day on a constant basis. And all of this requires a lot of time and energy — and it is only the people who are really committed who will put in the work necessary to become successful.

Trait 3: Mental State Control

There are many tasks to be adhered to when trading but the key to following those tasks is mental state control.

Each task requires a particular mental state in order to execute it properly and you must have the skill to step into that state and perform the task.

There are many required some of which are — daily self-analysis, daily mental rehearsal, developing a low-risk idea, following the lead, taking action, monitoring, terminate bad positions, taking profits, daily debriefing, periodic review, etc.

For example — one of the tasks of trading is the action step of terminating or taking profits. The mental state required is 100% commitment to action. There is no thinking involved, just 100% action. You should already know what to do when you get this signal because you’ve already developed a system that works. Thus, your job is simply to act. Think about when the tiger starts to leap on the antelope. He doesn’t suddenly think to himself, “Is this a good idea?” If he did that, he’d probably miss the antelope and break his back. No, his mental state is 100% commitment. Well, each essential task of trading requires a particular mental state and you must have the ability to step into that state.

Trait 4: Top-Down Discipline

In developing this sort of discipline, you must go through the following steps:

• Write out your dream life. What would you like to be, do, see, experience, and have in your lifetime in order for it to be ideal? Write this out completely.

• Write down the purpose behind that dream life. Write down your mission, your purpose and all of the whys behind that dream life. This step helps you get excited about achieving it.

• Write down your goals for the next year.

• Write down the purpose for each goal.

• Write down a series of action steps for each goal.

• And each action step (if it takes longer than a week for you to finish) could be considered another goal with a purpose behind it and a series of action steps behind that.

The net result of following these steps is that you develop a top-down discipline that helps you develop commitment and achieve almost anything you set your mind to achieving.

Conclusion

Now let’s look at what we have in these four qualities: –

• First you have a top down discipline that really helps you achieve almost anything you set your mind to achieving.

• Next you have the ability to get yourself into the appropriate mental state to do whatever you need to do with excellence.

• Third, you have the commitment to see your goals through to the finish.

• And lastly, but remember this was mentioned first — you believe that you are personally responsible for what happens to you – which means that you can learn from your mistakes.

Therefore, with the right type of mind-set and with these four traits, you could achieve peak performance as a trader/investor or almost anything else you set your mind to doing!