The Principles of Successful Trading
Over many years of trading, I’ve found certain principles to be true.
Understanding and using basic principles provides an anchor of sanity when
trading in a crazy world. Whenever I find myself under stress, questioning my
judgment or my ability to trade successfully, I pull out these basic trading
principles and review them.
Don’t Try to Predict the Future
I used to think that there were experts and geniuses out there who knew what was
going to happen in the markets. I thought that these traders and market gurus
were successful because they had figured out how to predict the markets. Of
course, the obvious question is that if they were such good traders, and if they
knew where the market was going, why were they teaching trading techniques,
selling strategies and indicators, and writing newsletters? Why weren’t they rich?
Why weren’t they flying to the seminars on their Lear Jets?
NO ONE KNOWS WHERE THE MARKET IS GOING
It took me a long time to figure out that no one really understands why the market
does what it does or where it’s going. It’s a delusion to think that you or any one
else can know where the market is going.
I have sat through hundreds of hours of seminars in which the presenter made it
seem as if he or she had some secret method of divining where the markets were going. Either they were deluded or they were putting us on. I have seen many
complex Fibonacci measuring methods for determining how high or low the
market would move, how much a market would retrace its latest big move, and
when to buy or sell based on this analysis. None has ever made consistent money
for me.
NO ONE KNOWS WHEN THE MARKET WILL MOVE
It also has taken me a long time to understand that no one knows when the
market will move. There are many individuals who write newsletters and/or
books, or teach seminars, who will tell you that they know when the market will
move.
Most Elliott Wave practitioners, cycle experts, or Fibonacci time traders will try to
predict when the market will move, presumably in the direction they have also
predicted. I personally have not been able to figure out how to know when the
market is going to move. And you know what? When I tried to predict, I was
usually wrong, and I invariably missed the big move I was anticipating, because “it
wasn’t time.”
It was when I finally concluded that I would never be able to predict when the
market will move that I started to be more successful in my trading. My
frustration level declined dramatically, and I was at peace knowing that it was OK
not to be able to predict or understand the markets.