In this article, we’re going to talk about these seven characteristics of consistently profitable traders meaning traders that have that equity curve that most of us are looking to achieve where it’s very smooth from lower left to upper right while minimizing the draw downs and maximizing the returns.
First Characteristic
The top most characteristic of a most profitable trader is discipline. In order to become consistent in your trading you need to have a very disciplined approach. You are supposed to have a set of rules and follow them religiously. Do not just jump in and not follow those rules. You have to have the discipline to follow the rules and stick to the plan.
Second Characteristic
The second characteristic most profitable trader is consistency in trades. This is one of the biggest characteristics that most people even don’t think of. In order to be consistently profitable, we have to consistently be taking the same types of Trades. So if we’re not consistently taking the same types of trades we can’t expect to have consistent results and this is going to tie back into having a trading plan and having a disciplined trading approach.
Third Characteristic
The third characteristic of most profitable trader is going to be a rules-based trading approach so you never go into the trading day with an approach by experimenting this thing or that strategy. The trading is not for experimenting. You should have a set of rules that you follow and stick to those rules wait for the market to bring the setups that work out and have a higher percentage of probability of being successful.
Fourth Characteristic
The fourth characteristic of most profitable trader is patience. Look, 90% of time you’re trading you’re not actually in the market you’re waiting for the market to give you the setup and then you jump in. So, you have to be very patient and waiting for those steps to present themselves and don’t go forcing trades not following your playing and forcing trades just because you want to be participating in the price action of the market.
Fifth Characteristic
The fifth characteristic of a consistently profitable trader is forward thinking meaning when we come in on the day and we place a trade we have to have thought out the potential outcome of that trade so it’s kind of like where you’re thinking two or three moves ahead of your opponent. When you’re trading you want to be thinking two or three moves ahead of the market if X happens then we would expect Y to happen afterwards.
Sixth Characteristic
The sixth characteristic of a consistently profitable trader is maintaining a good reward risk ratio across the board. So, a consistently profitable trader will maintain good reward risk ratios what this means is their average winner will be several times larger than their average loss and one of the big misconceptions that people have about trading is that you have to come in you have to be right about your trade sixty seventy percent of time to be a profitable or a consistently profitable trader and that is just not true.
The more important ratio is not the win ratio but it’s actually a reward risk ratio for example if you have a two-to-one reward risk ratio so on average you make two times what you lose on your average loss when you’re winning trade then you can be correct 34% of the time statistically speaking and still being that profitable trader so that reward risk ratio is much more important than percent profitable.
Seventh Characteristic
The seventh characteristic of most profitable trader is going to be no blow-up days. It happens over and over and over again and one bad day of a trader and he’ll blow up and lose all of their games that they’ve made over the past X number of weeks or months or even years. you have to control your losses you have to control how much you will give back before you say okay it’s a bad day I’ll come back and trade another day. Remember, no trader out there makes money 100 percent of time. Everybody’s going to have a down day that’s all right but what’s not okay to do is to have a huge down day that blow up all of your previous gains.
