What’s your trading mindset? While there are certain given rules you need to follow to be successful as a day trader, it’s the not so obvious ones that will be your downfall. These subtle and easy to overlook traits, such as your trading mindset will make or break you as a trader.
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What’s Your Trading Mindset?
Don’t feel bad as many, if not all, are born without the skills less to succeed in trading the stock market. The successful trader will identify where they have shortfalls and will work on improving these personality characteristics.
With this in mind, we’ll discuss six mindset traits that I think are crucial for your success as a trader. As you’re getting your trading mindset together, four tips all new traders should follow can help you navigate.
Discipline
One of the benefits and downfalls I suppose, of day trading, is the sheer number of trading set up’s available. Even if you could take a trade, doesn’t mean you should.
While the number of potential trades in a single day can number in the thousands or more, not every one of these potential trades should or could be taken. So, what is the solution? For starters, having a strategy or a trading plan which clearly outlines when you’ll enter and exit the trade.
Setting a strategy and sticking to it requires discipline. The patient trader will not be distracted by elements that are outside the personal trading strategy.
Think of it as having a bad case of shiny object syndrome. Just because some “guru” is shouting out that they are going long in Facebook, doesn’t mean you should.
You have no idea what their trading plan entails, or better yet, their risk tolerance. Thus, having discipline means you stick to your strategy. What works for her might not work for you.
Patience
Closely related to point number one above. Jumping into a trade too soon, or exiting it to quickly can mean the difference between success and failure in your trading experience.
Patience and discipline are related, as the trader must know how to wait for the right moment before taking a trade. It takes patience to wait for the right entry and exit points.
New traders often tend to rush their actions and end up struggling to meet their goals. If it means sitting on your hands, so you don’t get trigger happy, by all means, sit on them.
As the wise traders at Bullish Bear’s say, “Patience equals profits.” Make sure to check out our blog on volume price analysis.
Flexibility Is a Good Trading Mindset
Even if you have traded for years, every trading day is different from others. As a novice, this can be problematic if you’re trigger happy to enter the market, relying only on a textbook example of a selected strategy. This may have been me once.
Nevertheless, in some markets, some trading strategies just don’t work. One example I can think of off the top of my head is attempting to trade a reversal in a trending market.
If you’ve tried it, you know that it just doesn’t work. And this could be due to numerous variables like volatility, the strength of a trend, or a range size.
Let’s be clear; successful traders operate with a trading strategy. But some market conditions require more adaptability than their original plan would call for.
The experienced trader with the correct trading mindset learns to look at daily market conditions before entering a trade.
Being Thick-Skinned
If there is one certainty in the market, it’s the inevitability of unsuccessful trades. It’s essential to recognize that not every trade will be a home run.
When you’re at the bottom of the 9th, with two strikes against you, your mental attitude is important. Are you going to break under pressure?
More importantly, how are you going to react when you strike out? Are you going to quit when things don’t go your way? I sure hope not.
If you lose your focus after a losing trade, you may become disheartened and make wrong decisions, making matters worse. Follow your trading rules.
The ability to move on after a loss, or a series of losses is the takeaway here. Sometimes, being tough mentally means determining that you should not trade for a while.
I’d be remiss not to mention that most traders will inevitably encounter a string of losses at some point.
As a matter of fact, most market professionals recognize that their success depends on winning slightly more than they lose. Trading is a percentage game; you don’t have to win 100% of your trades.
Self-Reliance
Most novice traders will rely on instructions and tips from outside sources. These resources may include reading, watching videos or finding a mentor like Bullish Bears to help you understand the market.
After a time, though, a sense of independence and self-reliance must be developed. You must learn to identify when to place a trade and when to exit the trade.
Without a sense of independence, weak-willed traders may spend a great deal of time looking for one mentor or one strategy to be the magic route to riches.
When we place too much dependence on others’ skills or knowledge, it is a recipe for failure. Independence and self-reliance means taking responsibility for your actions and your own decisions in the market.
Aside from that, becoming independent means developing a trading mindset and style which takes your own strengths into consideration.
Read our blog on the fear index explained. It may help you become self reliant.
Forward Thinking
Constant monitoring of the market and how it moves is another key to your success. Just as in a chess game, moves are plotted well ahead of the actual move.
Stock prices are constantly moving, and your response (future plan) must also be continually evolving. The key elements of an entry point, stop loss, target price, and management of the position’s trade and size are all part of a successful strategy under various conditions.
At any point in your trading day, you should be thinking about how you will react under different scenarios. Writing down aspects of your trading strategy is one way to do this.
If you know what your plans are under various conditions, you won’t lose a trade because you weren’t sure what action to take under a particular set of market conditions.
Advance planning means you can respond quickly when you need to. Potentially calamitous events can put a real damper on your trading success, which is why forward-thinking is so important.
Keep practicing advanced viewpoints until they become second nature. In plain terms, plan for the worst and hope for the best.
Final Thoughts
I’m fairly confident that most individuals who go into day trading are not born with the proper trading mindset, and that’s ok! It is more likely that the individual will count only a few and must be able to dedicate themselves to work hard to achieve the others.
Day trading is difficult, but it is not impossible. The good news is that it is possible to learn to obtain the missing traits. Day traders depend on a pattern of identifying the missing qualities and working to offset them with strengths.
You can begin the process by doing an honest and comprehensive inventory. You will need to identify those strengths and weaknesses which affect the way you trade.
Looking at each of the personality traits above will lead you in a path of self-discovery, which will benefit your day trading experience.
