What Makes Traders Succesful In Online Stock Trading

Make no mistake about it, there are several different strategies and techniques that can be applied to make money in the markets with online stock trading. Although they may have different strategies, successful traders do share many things in common even if how they get their results varies. Too often, newbie traders are so

focused on the strategy, that they think it’s the end all be all, but that’s simply not true.

First, successful traders have a plan. They’ll go into a trade measuring what their potential profit and losses might be, before they place the trade. This includes their decision on how they will enter the trade, they might go all in or scale into the position. But the most important takeaway is they have a plan.

Second, they have the discipline to stick with their plan. The discipline comes from repetition, studying similar setups, or even backtesting and forward testing. They have studied past trades and identified what has worked, what currently works and what is not working at the moment. In other words, they are prepared.

If you’re unsure of your strategy, don’t have an outline of your exit, you’re more likely to make emotional decisions when things don’t workout your way. You might panic and not capitalize, or even worse, end up doing something dumb and losing money online stock trading.

Successful traders do not take losing personal. Again, they look at the markets in probabilities. Basically, they’re looking for high probability setups. If it doesn’t work out, they’ll access their trading plan and see if there is anything they could have done differently. But just because a trade doesn’t work out, it doesn’t mean they will stop trading the strategy if they believe it’s still effective. Sometimes unexplainable things do happen in the market, and that is something you have to learn to be OK with.

With that said, they focus on their strengths first and work on their weaknesses second. For example, Nike first came out as a shoe company that focused on runners. After they built that side of the business up, they moved onto creating sneakers for other sports. Eventually they expanded to apparel and a ton of products.

That is a solid approach to becoming a successful trader with online stock trading. Develop one or two bread and butter trades and then try to expand to other strategies. Don’t try to do everything at once. Also, don’t get frustrated if you can’t make money trading a certain way, maybe that doesn’t fit your personality or risk tolerance.

Successful traders spend a lot of time reviewing their performance, journaling and searching for methods to improve. Their goal is to scale up their operation to the highest level it can reach. They take a business approach to trading and focus on risk vs. reward. A special emphasis is placed on risk management. What good is your online stock trading if you win 5 straight trades and let one wipe all those gains away?

As you can see, risk management is extremely important. Some traders in online stock trading can trade the similar strategy, but one can have superior results based on how they manage risk, control their emotions, and execute the game plan.

It’s not always about your strategy, it’s sometimes more about the intangibles that will make you into a successful trader in online stock trading.