Why trading is one of the most challenging professions to succeed in (2024)

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Honing Your Craft as a Tradesmith

Open a dictionary to the word “Trade,” and you’ll find two distinct definitions. The first is trade as the action of buying or selling goods and services, while the second defines trade as a skilled profession, typically one requiring manual skills or special training. It is no coincidence that we in the trading industry refer to ourselves as traders.

First and foremost, trading is a profession based on skill. Like all other skills, trading prowess is something to be acquired through training, coaching, and strong dedication. There are techniques to learn, practice, and master.

But simply mastering these techniques will not bring success alone. Trading is not a profession in which you can imitate the successful actions of others and expect to be equally or even partially successful yourself. In this sense, a trader is comparable to a professional athlete.

Trade Like a Professional Athlete

Take a tennis player, for example. Through intense drills, scenario studies, and coaching lessons, tennis players hone their craft through hard work and skill development. They learn how to toss a ball, hit a forehand, predict an opponent’s move, and so on. A good coach will drill them into these skills and provide insight and feedback when and where it’s needed.

This is the same with a great trader. A prodigious trader will study the market, drill through and create action plans for all possible market scenarios, and perfect their trading style in simulations and real-time trading events. But like a tennis player, there is one major intangible that a coach and constant study and practice cannot account for. This wild card is the self and how each individual personality translates what they learn into tangible action on the court or in the market.

Personal Approach to Trading

For all of the knowledge, a coach or mentor can bestow, it ultimately falls on the person receiving the information to know how to fully translate and utilize it. Simply, how does one combine technical know-how with the emotional and personal aspects of the mind? The answer to this question begins with understanding that your personality has its own unique footprint. This uniqueness means that however you see the abstraction of the marketplace, someone else, looking at the same thing, will see something different. The differences may be minor, but they will be different nonetheless.

Seeing scenarios differently also means that you will react differently. So, whatever tools and skills you learned in your tradings lead up to becoming a trader, you must now apply and use these things in a way that is in harmony with your personality and unique style. This is why playing with the same technique or by the same guidelines as someone else will bring about different outcomes. In addition, different personalities experience and apply their own intuitive action plans based on what and how they experience events. This is why it is imperative that, in addition to everything you learn, you create a custom-tailored action plan suited to your specific strengths and weaknesses.

In order to do this, and only after you’ve learned the techniques, you need to practice as many scenarios under varying conditions as possible to learn how your personality copes with all of these different event sequences. Learn and study your unique responses to stressors and unforeseen market movements.

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Why trading is one of the most challenging professions to succeed in (1)

Synergizing the Experience

For a trader to be successful, all of the different elements comprised in the preparation must come together with real-time trading skills.

The first ingredient to success is being an analyst. Look at the noisy, abstract presentation of the market, and based on this, create a roadmap of what exactly you’d like to do. Map out where you’ll want to take a risk, where you’ll look to avoid risk, etc.

The second component is your role as the actual trader. While it might seem like it’s an extension of the analyst piece, it’s actually a different and separate task that requires other qualities. Only in the rarest and best traders do these two sides flawlessly complement each other. For most traders, one skill outshines the other.

What It Means to Be in the Trading Profession

Being a trader means you have to deal with the actual experience, which is different from your role as the analyst,, which deals with abstract ideas from a scene. The trader experiences things that are emotional,, and to deal with this right, and you need to know yourself incredibly well and to know the specific effects certain events will have on you. This establishes your strengths and weaknesses, which will help you craft your personal plans.

For example, the market,, while not in a trend,, can be deceiving because the movement of price is in ranging motions before decisions are made to break levels and continue trends. Holding positions while it’s up and down can be tiring,, and you need to be strong and convinced by your analysis. You never know if it’s going to break for you or against you. How you are able to hold depends on your personality. How strong can you hold against the market’s tricks on you? The answer comes from knowing yourself as best as possible.

Your Trading Personality

Another thing to be aware of is your personality class. For example, are you an aggressive trader, or are you intuitive? Maybe you are analytical or perhaps methodical? Each type dictates different approaches to how you execute decisions after analyses are made.

An aggressive trader will act fast. An intuitive trader will trust their gut more and use less reason. An analytical trader is more trusting in what they see and what the market tells them, while a methodical trader creates a set of rules and tools that will indicate combinations, which in turn gives them a rule guide to act on.

The closely intertwined combination of personality, skill, intuition, and emotion is what makes being a trader such a finely tuned profession. The trade smith brings its unique DNA into the arena and plays off their particular strengths and weaknesses. No two traders are alike, and only each individual trader can determine the proper ways and plans to trade to maximize their skill set.

The Trading Profession – Bottom Line

Trading is a profession based on skill, and it can be required through training, coaching, and strong dedication.

A disciplined trader will study the market, create action plans for all possible market scenarios, and perfect their trading style in simulations and real-time trading events. With the individual personality, he will translate his trading skills into tangible action in the market.

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Why trading is one of the most challenging professions to succeed in (2024)

FAQs

Why trading is one of the most challenging professions to succeed in? ›

Trading is one of the few careers where you can actually lose money – a lot of money. You may work hard to double your account in a few months only to lose all of those gains in a single day. You may also go through periods where you just can't seem to make any money.

Why is trading the most difficult? ›

believing the myth that success in trading lies in having a very good strategy. analysis paralysis. fear of missing out (FOMO) greed - where you want more than what the market has already given and end up losing the profits.

Is trading one of the hardest skills to learn? ›

Trading is one of the hardest skills to learn, but also one of the most rewarding. It's important to be honest with those who want to embark on this career path by informing them that learning how to trade isn't a sprint...it's a marathon.

Why is it difficult to make money from trading? ›

Why Is It Difficult to Make Money Consistently From Day Trading? Doing so requires combining many skills and attributes—knowledge, experience, discipline, mental fortitude, and trading acumen. It's not always easy for beginners to carry out basic strategies like cutting losses or letting profits run.

Why do so many people fail at trading? ›

Not having and not following a trading plan is a big reason most traders fail. People without a plan are making an assumption that they are smarter than people who do this for a living, and therefore they don't need to prepare, plan, or practice.

What is the hardest part of trading? ›

The most challenging aspect of trading is gaining the qualitative skills. Those that come from experience or time spent in the markets.

What is the most challenging trade? ›

Electrical. Electrical is the most difficult trade to master according to both contractors and consumers, according to the CraftJack survey. I-TAP, an electrical training program, reports that the most physically involved parts of the job are lifting sections of electrical conduit and pulling lots of cable.

Why is trade so hard? ›

The steep learning curve, combined with the need for discipline, consistent strategy, and the ability to handle losses, makes day trading a hard thing to succeed at.

Why I am not successful in trading? ›

Poor Risk and Money Management: Traders should put as much focus on risk management as they do on developing strategy. Some naive individuals will trade without protection and abstain from using stop losses and similar tactics in fear of being stopped out too early.

Why is trading so stressful? ›

Trading can be a highly stressful profession due to the inherent risks, volatility, and uncertainty of the financial markets. It requires concentration, focus, and alertness. But without a sound mind and body, it will be extremely difficult to do any of these things.

What makes trade more difficult? ›

The most common barrier to trade is a tariff–a tax on imports. Tariffs raise the price of imported goods relative to domestic goods (good produced at home). Another common barrier to trade is a government subsidy to a particular domestic industry. Subsidies make those goods cheaper to produce than in foreign markets.

Why do 90% of traders fail? ›

Most traders fail because they do not invest enough time and effort in learning about the markets and trading strategies. They enter the market without a proper plan or strategy, which leads them to make poor decisions and lose money. Another reason why traders lose money is because of emotional decisions.

Why do 99% people fail in trading? ›

Why do most day traders fail? The reason why 90% of retail traders fail is that they ALL think, trade, and gamble the same way. It is a harsh statistic but is very very true. Not many retail traders last longer than 6 months as they do not understand this game at all.

Why 99% of traders fail? ›

Poor Risk and Money Management: Traders should put as much focus on risk management as they do on developing strategy. Some naive individuals will trade without protection and abstain from using stop losses and similar tactics in fear of being stopped out too early.

What is the 3-5-7 rule in trading? ›

A risk management principle known as the “3-5-7” rule in trading advises diversifying one's financial holdings to reduce risk. The 3% rule states that you should never risk more than 3% of your whole trading capital on a single deal.

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