All about investment

by Ryan Lee Daniels

Do you find yourself wanting to be a successful trader immediately? Are you envious of how some traders you know seem to be making money week in and week out? Do you get frustrated with yourself at your seeming inability to consistently pull profits from the markets?

When you see how some traders can be consistently successful, you know that it can be done. The challenge that you face then is how you can be consistently profitable as well. And even if you were given the methodology, you may be uncertain at your personal ability to accomplish consistent trading profitability.

What you probably don't fully realize is that any consistently successful and profitable trader took time to get to where they are. They went through the ups and downs, took their beatings from the markets time and again, learnt about themselves and the markets, picked themselves up and licked their wounds before carrying on. And eventually, they reached their level of trading skills that they have today.

To realize this is what most traders go through before they accomplish their consistent profitability can be quite daunting, and seemingly impossible for the "normal" category of people. But when you realize that what you are going through is very likely the same journey they took, it helps to know that you're on the path towards trading success.

Why Consistent Trading Improvement As The Goal?

To learn about the markets takes time. It takes time because the markets go through various phases which don't happen all at the same time. The markets go through bullish up trends, bearish down trends, consolidating phases, and volatile jerky movements. And in between these phases, they exhibit trends of varying speed and strength.

To fully master the markets, experience in the various market phases are required. And not only experience, but various skills are required to navigate successfully in each market phase. Which, of course, takes practice.

Rather than jumping in, and trying to learn everything all at once, it is far more conducive and useful to pick a few strategies for specific market conditions and master them first. Pick a strategy, identify the optimal market conditions for trading it, and then trade only this strategy when the optimal market condition comes along.

By doing this, it helps build confidence and your skill in trading. As you start to experience trading success, you master this particular trading strategy. Instead of trying to be the master of everything at once and ending up a jack of all trades, pick one or two strategies so that you can become a master of at least one.

Mastery of Specific Trading Strategies

There's value in taking it slow to learning how to trade. When you master one particular trading strategy, you build your confidence in being able to trade a specific market condition. Even if you are not able to trade all market conditions well, you have built that confidence and ability to trade that one specific market condition.

Even if market conditions change and your currently available trading strategy no longer becomes relevant in that new market phase, you know that if market conditions were ever to return (which it will, eventually) you would be able to trade profitably again.

The key to mastering the markets then lies in learning new trading strategies and skills for different market conditions. And that's why it's important for you to reach mastery of the first one.

If a trader attempts to learn everything at the same time, all they will get is a confusing jumble of information and concepts that apply to trading at different times. By gaining mastery of one specific strategy first, the trader can then move on to the next with the knowledge, experience and confidence that mastery is possible.

Long Term Benefits

When you are able to master one, you build the confidence that you will be able to master the next. And when you master two, your ability and confidence to master the third grows. Over a period of time, you might start setting more challenging goals, and your ability to handle stress which comes with changing market conditions starts to grow.

When you begin your trading day, you can start with using the trading methods that you have already mastered, which helps to build your confidence for the rest of the trading day. And if you have identified and taken your quota of successful trades for the day, it's easier to handle the rest of the trading day even if market conditions were to change.

When you set consistent trading improvement as your goal, the more mastery and trading success you are likely to achieve, and the more trading profits you will make in the long run.

About the Author
Ryan Lee Daniels runs a website dedicated to Forex Trading Education
source:www.goarticles.com