Learn Not To Trade

I used to be a day trader for two years. Two years experience taught me very important things that may become the key to your successful tradings. And I deeply believe this one is a very important key and reason why lot of day traders failed.

Learn how to stay at the sideways....

Seemed easy but hard to do, especially if your income solely depends on your trading profit. As futures trader, we may stay not to trade for days, even weeks. Just stay at sideline. How convenient...this is true. For example price didn't move much if there will be big economy news or meeting coming. Price may stall 2-3 days before the big day. So why you wanna trade the obvious whipsawed price? Better just go to the beach and enjoy the vacation...But No!..we continue to trade because if we don't trade then we don't make money. Maybe your subconscious mind told you to take action, waiting make you look like a worthless lazy being. Then you get this brilliant idea to trade this whipsawed for the sake of trading. 

Professional trader only trade when there are trades, no need to attend every day, interpret all ticks coming, up and down, hoping become the master of tick reading. Some traders have dreams to mastering one type maybe S&P, Dow, and believe that's their ATM. Every single day try to crack the ATM, instead the opposite happens.

Honestly this is the worst finding..dull market is not suitable for trading, especially day trading. Few traders realize it. You can make more money just trading 3 months in a year than trading full 12 months. That is the fact, been there.

How is the solution? Create a filter to identify to trade or not. This is the key. You can use the volatility index, important release news, or ticker speed, volumes, anything that suits you.Before I used a surging fast volume to identify the good to trade or not. But too bad that my price feed service is bad so sometimes give wrong signal. Or you can use incoming news and see if result worth moving the price. And then stick with it..If there is no trade for two weeks, stick with it. Easy to say, difficult to do.