Trading
Markets

Hedge Your Life

Trading is one of the top skills you need to protect your buying power against inflation and upheaval.

Inflection Finding

Active traders can’t help but to notice trends and turning points across industries, informing other choices.

Opportunity Cost

If you aren’t trading, you’re missing “easy” opportunities for your wealth to grow.  Eventually, that may cost you.

You want to become a trader, huh?

Like most things, the only way to reach mastery is consistent practice.

So:

Just get started.

I recommend getting some skin in the game early.  Sure, you can start with “paper trading” if you’d like.  But for me, that was never interesting enough.  I simply won’t pay attention to the markets if I don’t have anything on the line.

The thrill of “victory.”

The agony of “defeat.”

These are the things that keep me invested in learning.

And yet, these same emotions have caused the downfall of many a budding trader.  Trading is all about good decision making.  First, you need a good trading plan.  Second, you need to stick to it.  That can be hard to do when you miss a winning trade or take a couple losses in a row.

It’s ironic because the markets are fueled by emotion.

Yes.  Economic forces do play a role.

However, prices tend to change based on public perception of these economic forces.

Good traders capitalize off this market sentiment.

But they don’t let themselves get wrapped up in it.

Instead, they focus on playing the probabilities.

It’s not about predicting the future.  The are no crystal balls in trading.

(No Miss Cleo stuff!)

Good trading is about creating contingencies, then executing your plan based on what the market does.  That’s true no matter what you’re trading or how you’re trading it.

There are innumerable things to trade and nearly as many strategies.

Instead of frying your brain trying to figure out which way to go, just get your hands dirty.

Once you’ve got skin in the game (and a commitment to learning), then you can figure out the details.  Don’t look for a super-secret-magic-bullet-get-rich-quick plan.  Instead, learn risk management and probabilities.  Then your trades will come to you.

Now, that’s not to say I don’t have a rule of thumb or two.

For example:

• Don’t risk more money than you can risk to lose
• Don’t begin with short-term time frames
• Don’t enter trades without clear entries and exits

These are basic trading clichés.  But that doesn’t mean they aren’t useful.  And in truth, you could easily find many more.

Eventually though, you’ll have to work out other questions yourself…

Like:

• Which trading strategies suit you best?
• Which timeframes suit you best?
• Which trading platforms suit you best?
• Which risk management strategies suit you best?

Perhaps the least important of these is, “Which assets and/or commodities suit you best?” 

No matter what you trade, the principles remain largely the same.  BTC.  Forex.  Stocks.  Precious metals.  It doesn’t really matter.  The prices for each may move a little differently but you shouldn’t treat them much differently.

The key is to find a combination that works for you and stick to it.

Which brings us to the last last point.  Trading is a high-stress career choice.  If you choose to do it for a living you’ll need things like Discipline, Grit, and Mental Toughness.  It demands similar High Performance traits to Entrepreneurship.  And this makes sense, because it has a similar ability to have a “life changing” effect on you.

My Trading Posts