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“It takes a lot of showing up for you to be lucky” – Krista van Heerden, former CEO at Just One Lap, podcaster and all-round nice person.

As a trader, this is a concept you need to familiarise yourself with as we often hear overnight success takes 10 years.

When placing a trade, you have no clue whether that particular trade will be a winner or a loser. You don’t need a ‘skill’ to determine whether a trade will be a winner or a loser. All you have to know is your trading system’s probabilistic edge over a series of trades. Unfortunately this a concept most traders battle with. Either they have no understanding of thinking in probabilities, or they are in a state of euphoria after a couple of consecutive wins. Or they are on tilt from trying to make up for losses.

Remember, every trade has one of five possible outcomes:

• Big winner
• Small winner
• Break-even
• Small loser
• Big loser

Your job as a trader is to ensure that you limit the possible outcomes to exclude a big loser. All my big losers came as a result of euphoria. When you step into that state, your mind tells you to bet big because “you know this trade will be a winner, otherwise you wouldn’t be placing the trade”. I can assure you it’s not true and not worth the trouble.

This is just as true when it comes to winners.  You can never possibly know if this trade will be the big winner. However, you have to place the trade to find out – it takes showing up consistently to find big winners. Missing big winners is just as problematic as taking big losses. This typically occurs when a trader is trigger-shy after a run of losing trades. You have to take every trade to find that big winner.

Even with a “high probability” that has, for example, a 70% hit rate, you still need to live through the 30% miss. The distribution between hits and misses is random. There is no way of telling how three in 10 will be spread out or if they’ll come at you back-to-back. Even when you miss three in a row, it doesn’t mean the next one is the one out of seven. It could be part of the six in 20 (still 30% miss). You have to take the all trades to find out.

Small winners and small losers are the more likely to occur. This is especially true for trend traders because markets generally spend more time in ranges than in trends. There’s no amount of technical analysis that can guarantee a break-out to a trend. You will often find yourself in “fake trends” that end quickly either in a small loss or a small win. How small is small?  How big is big? It depends on the risk management strategy.

It takes having capital in your account to show up for every potential trend. If you bet the farm every time you show up, it won’t take many consecutive losses to wipe your account or for you to lose your confidence and become gun shy. You might not be around for the big winner. Betting a small percentage of your kitty gives a bigger chance to show up for the big winner that comes from time to time. And gives you the best chance of keeping your confidence after a run of losing trades.

To me, the discipline to show up and execute each trade that shows up is possibly the most important skill to master to be consistently profitable. I have to show up on time for each trade that fits my criteria. If I show up enough times, that “lucky trade” will find me.

Traders share a peculiar characteristic: they’re fiercely competitive, but only with themselves. In practice this means that they see every outcome as an opportunity to learn, and they’re brutally honest about both their failures and successes. This also means that they’re hungry for knowledge. They don’t sleep easy with unanswered questions. And they’re seldom satisfied with just one answer.

Njabulo Nsibande is a founder of Village Trader, and Sakha Ingcebo investment club. His interest in trading began in 2016, alongside a rash of Instagram ‘fx traders’…

Find him on Twitter: @njabulo_goje.