The Trend Following Bible: How Professional Traders Compound Wealth and Manage Risk

CHAPTER 9

The Trend Follower Mindset

There's more to trading than just having a strategy.

There are countless trading strategies for you to choose from. The most important aspect of a trading strategy is that it matches your personality and risk thresholds. You can find hundreds of books with different trading strategies, along with countless websites that offer trading strategies for free. In trading magazines as well as websites that list trading system results, they all seem to highlight “the trading strategy of the month.”

If it were as simple as buying one of these systems, you would have retirement in a box.

With all of these trading strategies available, why isn't everyone rich?

The sad reality is that most traders fail. There are estimates that only 3–5 percent of all traders are successful over time.

The problem is that strategies do NOT make a good trader.

There's more to trading than just having a strategy. Only time, knowledge, experience, and guidance can make you the trader you want to be.

You are your biggest enemy because of your emotions, fear, and greed!

In order to develop the right mindset, you need to know what to expect when trading. Many traders mistakenly believe that trading will result in a consistently rising account balance, like having an ATM in their office. But you already know that losses are a part of our business as traders. There will be some days and weeks when your trading exceeds your expectations, but more likely there will be periods when ...