I have been fortunate to have worked with some brilliant and successful trades and also with many failure traders. Failure traders fail not because of lack of intelligence, hard work, discipline.....etc even they have all these...they also have strong will to succeed . Then why do they fail ??
I find that if I have to list down 2-3 important points which separate successful traders from the traders who could not succeed, I will list them as :
1) Successful traders have inherent sense of Reward/risk so they wait patiently for a trading set up which gives them a good R/R trade. There is no point taking a trade with 10 points risk unless the set up is such that you are reasonably sure of making 15,20 or 30 points profits...if you feel that the trade does not have that potential, they pass the trade...
2) All successful traders have what is called " controlled aggression" Some traders are aggressive everyday in all situations and some are controlled ( meaning scared) in all situations. But successful ones become very aggressive when they see opportunity...else they are controlled.
3) All successful traders can sense when the trade is not going as per the plan and they get out not waiting for stops to hit. They are always in control of the trade and not the other way round.
Thought of listing them down as we are going to start a new year soon so that it can help some new traders to cut on learning path.
Smart_trade