What Makes an Expert Forex Trader

While I’m not avid reader of Brett Steenbarger’s blog, I found his post titled, What Makes an Expert? Three Surprising Research Conclusions very interesting.  There were several conclusions made by the researcher regarding expertise (referenced from http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson/ericsson.exp.perf.html) 

1. Measures of general basic capacities do not predict success in a domain. No general superiority was found in speed, memory, or intelligence of the expert.
2. The superior performance of experts is often very domain specific and transfer outside their narrow area of expertise is surprisingly limited.  In other words, just because a trader excels in futures trading doesn’t necessarily mean he/she will excel in forex trading.
3. Systematic differences between experts and less proficient individuals nearly always reflect attributes acquired by the experts during their lengthy training.

This flies in the face of those who may believe that expert traders are born with the qualities that make them experts.  It also gives me the impression that with a lot of deliberate practice, anyone can be an expert in their field of study.   Steenbarger believes a structured curriculum can progress a novice to exhibiting competent expertise.  

You can’t go to college to get a degree in Forex trading so where do you go to get a structured curriculum? I don’t know? I’ve been trading for about three years now but I don’t have any formal training.  I’ve read a lot of books, studied a lot of charts, managed a plethora of trades, read a lot of blogs, and listened to a lot of so-called experts.  I think that with discipline and self-motivation, it may be possible to structure your own curriculum.  It may take longer than formal training and may require a lot of trial and error but it may be possible.  On the flip side, maybe formal training is necessary to narrow the gap between novice and expert.  

I feel a lot closer to becoming an expert trader than I did last year but by no means am I anywhere near an expert.  I guess the best way to know if I’ve become an expert is if I can consistently be profitable. 

The questions I pose to you are, do you feel like you need a structured curriculum to become an expert trader and what attributes do you think you need to be considered an expert trader? 

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