Trading is actually the easiest thing in the world. Think about it… you sit at your computer, read a bunch of stuff and talk smack with your buddies all day. Then something happens and you press the button on your mouse a whole bunch of times. You do the lighting fast ‘double-mouse-click-to-keyboard-enter-enter’ combination a few times, and then bam! You’re back to talking smack with your buddies, except now you have a whole bunch of extra money in your account.
Sure, there are challenges…
Yes, there are some immense psychological challenges to overcome, an absolute mountain of base knowledge that you need to learn in order to even understand half the things that you read. And then there’s an even bigger mountain of more complex stuff that you need learn so that you can understand the other half of the things that you read.
You need capital, a crazy amount of self awareness and self control, probably a mentor, pure grit and determination to see out the difficult times. I should add, that you also need a good sense of humour (to laugh at your own misfortunes from time to time, because hey, what else can you do, right?). But other than that, it’s really easy.
In the zone
It sounds as if I am making a joke, and in part I am (because trading is not easy), but in part I am also not. There are days when trading is literally the easiest thing that you can do. You feel the market, you’re in the flow, and you’re able to take trades without much thought or hesitation. It all just seems to work. Those days that you are really in the zone, on those days, trading is the easiest job on the entire planet.
I think that over time, as you become more experienced and more skilled at your chosen trading style, the easy days come more often and the good runs last longer. This doesn’t mean that the bad times never come back, they most certainly do. But you become better at handling them and the negative impact on your mental state doesn’t last as long. You are soon able to get back in the zone and get to the easy task of just following the market.
Also, as time goes by, you get better at preparing for opportunities, so acting on them becomes easier.
I’ve cracked my head open on how difficult trading is so many times. But every now and then I need to remind myself that sometimes it can be pretty easy. My job is just to make sure that I stay in the right state of mind for it to be easy.
Happy trading!
And really, think happy things while trading 🙂
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