Turning from a Newbie to a Real Trader: The Best Pretender Wins!
Turning from a Newbie to a Real Trader!
To become a pro trader you need to act like one! Learn the habits of real traders and pretend to be one yourself and eventually you too will reach lofty success.
How do we make the transition from being a newbie to pro trader? We all have to start somewhere and for most people it all starts with correct education and a demo account to trade on. What follows is a period of trial and error, testing strategies and making plenty of mistakes. From here on, two branches of traders emerge; the first ones will spend most of their time searching for holy grails and foolproof strategies but the second branch decides to learn from actual pro traders. It is needless to say which group of traders that will have the higher chance of success. The story below is about how I made the transition from newbie to pro!
The Best Pretender Wins!
Figuring out the best way of approaching this transition can be very challenging for a beginner. In the beginning we are all just like a piece of blank paper, ‘tabula rasa’ as they say in Latin, an empty tablet. Meaning that our knowledge comes from experience in life, because we are all “empty” when we are born. However, to get experienced, the right experience, can be a difficult task.
“Winners are not afraid of losing. But losers are. Failure is part of the process of success. People who avoid failure also avoid success.” – Robert T. Kiyosaki
When I started trading I was totally lost, I made lots of mistakes and just had to stop trading for a period to think about what to do. Soon I realized I needed a plan and came up with an idea! I thought; why not do exactly what the pro traders do? In fact, from now on, I’m going to pretend I know what I’m doing and fake it till I make it! So I made the following list based on what I knew I needed to learn based on the common suggestions of pro traders:
– Trading Psychology
– Working Strategy
– Keeping Diary
– Learning Fundamentals
– Money-management
I know the first two on the list are harder to achieve than it may sound but hey, I was just going to pretend, right? I’m sure now you are curious about if and how this pretending game actually helped me. Well, I had a plan, a master plan! First I needed to put together a strategy that I was comfortable with and learn to avoid big news that could affect the assets I wanted to trade. Then I could start sharing information about my trades in my public diary. In order to make the diary look good I had to have money-management so I could give a great impression and show that I was in control of my account. Without the proper mindset, the focus to “fake it till I make it”, I couldn’t have good money-management. In order to look like a pro trader I had to act like a pro trader. Acting like a pro led me to successes that I was able to learn from, and losses as well. The point is that losses were because I deviated from my plan, I did something that the pros did not and so I learned from it.
As you might have noticed by now, one thing led to another like a row of dominos. Understanding the effect of fundamentals helped improve my trading, having a strategy allowed me to keep a diary, the diary forced me to have a decent money-management and made me follow my own rules which in turn required the right mindset. You could say that each step in the list was linked to the next one and they were all linked to each other! When the time was right and a signal developed, I was able to knock down the dominos letting them fall into a pattern of success.
Remember the song “The Great Pretender” by the band “The Platters”?
“Oh-oh, yes I’m the great pretender
Pretending that I’m doing well
My need is such I pretend too much
I’m lonely but no one can tell…”
So there I was, pretending I was doing well. To be honest it was pretty hard in the beginning to keep up with the act but soon the steps in the list above became habits. With this routine I gained experience from my mistakes and the patterns of success became ingrained. My diary helped me avoid repeating the same mistakes and my strategy evolved. As my win-rate increased and my mistakes decreased in numbers I knew I had evolved and the realization was mind bending. I had stepped into the pro zone!
You can do the exact same things as I did; pick a strategy with simple rules, create a diary in the CommuniTraders forum, keep an eye on the news and don’t risk too much of your account balance. Just pretend you are a pro and this process will give you the framework in which to gain experience and hone the skills you need. The trading psychology itself is a byproduct of the mistakes you make and the things that you learn when you play the pretending game!
Let’s Put on an Act!
I hope I‘ve been able to get my point across. Find out the habits of successful pro traders and copy them. Pretend you are the binary options millionaire you want to be and live by the rules other successful traders live by. Design a plan and don’t forget to ask others for help. Don’t let mistakes and drawbacks discourage you, learn from them like a pro would! Creating a working strategy will take you some time, the only way to make your strategy work is trial and error. Pretending to be a pro will help you find the right path and learn the right habits, and help you to limit your mistakes. If you want a holy grail this is it, practicing and copying professional routines until you become a professional out of habit. There you have it, my complete recipe. It’s time you put on an act and became the next great pro trader.