A trader discusses personal lessons: successful trading requires waiting for market opportunities rather than forcing trades; traders should define their strategies and accept that some days present no opportunities, making it acceptable to stay in cash. The speaker recounts past mistakes of overtrading due to time spent at the computer.
Over the few years, I've learned that you have to focus on finding opportunities in the market, and the market is a place that does not give you an opportunity every single day. Once I was able to develop and understand that, I was able to approach each and every single trading day according to what the market presented. Now, the market will present different opportunities based on your game plan, based on your viewpoint of the market, and based on how you trade. So you have to identify the way you trade, what your strategies are, and then with that strategy or strategies, you need to approach the market with the ideology that, hey, the market may or may not present me an opportunity today, and if it doesn't, it's okay to stay cash. My problem was, initially, I'm spending four hours in front of my computer, five hours in front of my computer. I have to put on a trade, I have to buy something, I have to sell something, and that would lead, you know, me to having terrible trades or me losing money and having trades that I had no business in taking.
