Patience is a common trait among successful traders.  Unfortunately, patience isn't inherent in many of us.  My belief though is that patience can be separated into two worlds for traders.  The first world consists of the patience you exhibit in your non-trading life.  I'll be the first to admit that I absolutely hate to wait in lines.  I don't discriminate against particular lines like waiting in line at the supermarket or waiting in line at the DMV to renew my driver's license.  I hate all lines.  The second world consists of the patience you display when trading.  Here is where I show very good patience with intermittent lapses.  What I'm trying to stress here is that just because you don't have patience in the first world doesn't mean you won't have it in the second.  I don't believe they are conditional of one another.  So don't assume that your won't be a patient trader if you have no patience outside of trading.

With experience, you can learn tricks that will help you develop more patience.  For me, I just stopped watching charts.  I'll scan them in the beginning of the day but I don't have the desire or time to watch every tick.  I also stopped letting myself be influenced by what others were saying.  Every month I'll hear everyone talking about trading the NFP report and every month I'll ignore it.  Just because everyone is talking about trading it doesn't mean you have to. Other things you can do and think are increasing your preferred time-frame (ie: from 30-minute to hourly) and knowing that there will be more plenty more trading opportunities in the future if you miss a trade.   Your trading patience doesn't have to emulate your non-trading patience.  It may take some time to separate the two but you can do it.  

Read or add comments about this item.

No. 1 :

I definitely agree with what you said about patience. One way to have patience in the trading world is to have and follow very strict rules. My rules help me and cause me to have patience..........if I break my rules, I usually end up in a losing trade. When I follow my rules, the odds of having a positive trade go up considerably.

Submitted by Forex Trader • 2008-04-14 18:56:02

Please keep your comments brief and on topic, and remember that this is not a discussion thread.
Name :		Website :
Title :
Comment(s) :
Verify :		There are how many letters in the word SPAM ?