4 Harsh Truths of Trading

While trading can be the most financially rewarding career it can also be the most crippling. Let's discuss a few different realities most traders face along their journey and what some struggle to overcome.

Most of the traders I met and spoken with entered trading thinking they would get more time, more money and an easier life. However, the reality for more traders is actually MORE stress, anxiety and a roller-coaster of emotional highs and lows.

Here's the deal- there are 4 harsh truths every trader must accept in order to make it.

The sooner you accept these, the easier it will become. You'll be able to ride the waves that naturally occur when entering the live market, especially the 4 challenges of trading.

1. It's hard and it gets hard before it gets easier.

• If you expect the road to be bumpy, then you don't feel the bumps as much. If you expect the road to be perfectly smooth, you'll feel every little bump. So as soon as you accept that trading is hard, it actually gets easier. Give yourself room to make learn and make mistakes. Understand that time is your best friend-- learn with purpose and go easy on yourself.

2. Nobody's coming to save you.

• You're in the driver seat here. You're responsible for everything- time management, studying, analysis, execution, trade management, emotional control, etc. While your mentors can give you a lot of the answers they can't make you do the work and they can't hold your hand through your trading day. It's a heavily solo game and realizing it's ALL up to you will allow you to put all of your energy into making your trading work. Be actionable and do the hard work.

3. Big wins are awesome, but don't hold your breath.

• Don't chase big wins. While they are often available - the average trader has a hard time holding through unfavorable price action resulting in poorly executed trade management. How often have you had a nice zone you thought to TP at but allowed price to pullback too far for comfort, close for a few % less than desirable.. just for price to run back in your direction for bigger profits? Slow growth is good growth. As soon as you accept that incremental progress is all that's required, you start to see your equity curve grow. (And they are easier to achieve)

4. Just because it didn't work today, doesn't mean it doesn't work.

• Too often will an inexperienced trader falter on their edge when the market produces a poor trading day or week. When there is an inherent lack of confidence in a traders skillset- they will often revert to adjusting their edge rather than letting their probabilities play out. Have you thought that, maybe, this weeks price action is just unfavorable? And that's why you feel confused? You might feel like you don't know what you're doing or the market is confusing, but in reality- the market may just be providing poor trading conditions. Have faith in the work you put in. Only you know deep down if the REAL issue is that you didn't put enough work in.

Trading isn't easy but its well worth the effort. Thanks for joining me for this Mid Session chat- See you next time.

-BW

While you wait for the next issue, check out some of my previous posts here:

I'm the leading advocate for journaling your trades

Every other day you're going to hear me talk about journaling your trades. It's a massive pain in the ass- especially if you tend to overtrade.. I get it. But I can't stress how important it is to track your metrics.

Every successful entrepreneur monitors their KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) -- These are the metrics that tell you whether you are profitable or not and what areas you need to improve in. I've built a hefty Notion template to help you journal your trades. Track your KPIs as well as your daily, weekly, monthly, annual performance. I've also included an End Of Day Markup tool to help you define your edge or keep your edge sharp, if you've already got on. Grab it below. For reading this far and trusting me with your time I'm taking 20% off.

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