Why Is It So Hard To Become A Successful Trader?

Here are the reasons why it is so hard to become a successful trader

Author
Recent Posts

I opened my Betfair account on 22nd April 2003. I was one of the first subscribers to BetTrader and was a founding partner of JuiceStorm.com on 17th February 2007.

The JuiceStorm team built TradeHost for profitable automated trading and betting on Betfair in the UK, IE, AU and US horse racing markets. TradeHost Lite started in 2013 and is free forever.

Latest posts by Man of Mystery (see all)

Betfair Momentum Traders Crashing A Price Will Cause Other Horses To Drift - April 23, 2024
Only losers average losers? But Is Averaging Down Bad For Betfair? - April 23, 2024
Trading Betfair Price Action With A Little Help - April 21, 2024

Trading is tough.

For centuries, schools have been structured in basically the same way. You go to school and you are forced to learn everything that your teachers teach you, regardless if you are interested in those subjects, or not.

It seems logical and everyone else seems to believe it, so we blindly go along with it.

Teachers and parents often talk about people who are successful and attribute that success to things like having good grades, going to the right school or being in the right profession.

So we learn that if we want to have the things we desire in life, we need to follow one of these pre-determined tracks.

Therein lies one of the biggest reasons why it is so hard to become a successful trader.

For example, let’s say that you want to own a big 5-bedroom house and drive a M3 BMW. So you look around and a lot of the people you see with a nice house and that car, are lawyers.

So you set your mind on becoming a lawyer.

However, many times, we forget to ask ourselves two important questions along the way:

Would I enjoy being a lawyer for the rest of my life?

Is there another (more enjoyable) way to get that house and that car?

You can probably relate to this, in one form or another. You have probably worked a job for 5 years (or more) before you realised that it sucks.

But you followed the formula, how could you have gone so wrong? Well, because you ignored the means and only focused on the ends.

How This Applies to Trading

When we want to learn to trade, most of us follow the same logic that we have been taught in school. We look for the first successful Betfair trader we can find.

Once we find this trader, we set our mind to learning his or her trading method because we have been taught to emulate success, without regard for how we get to that success.

This is one of the biggest reasons why aspiring traders fail to become consistently profitable.

To find the solution to this problem, we have to rewire our thinking…

The You-Centric Education Model

What if you could do it over and your formal education started with YOU? What if your junior school teachers took into account your interests, learning style and innate abilities…then taught you accordingly?

Your life would probably be totally different right now.

Even if you don’t believe that this method would have worked out for the better, humour me for a minute.

Let’s flip the traditional education system on its head and take a look at what could happen if your schooling focused on you first.

For starters, if you only studied the things that interested you, school would have probably been a lot more fun. You would have wanted to go to school, instead of ditching class to go to the movies.

When we enjoy something, we also tend to become experts at it. I was an expert in the hundreds of French ways you could cook potatoes. Yes, seriously! And I knew every French name for every dish. When you were a kid, were you an expert at something like dinosaurs…or cars?

I would venture to guess that the answer is probably yes. You were an expert because you genuinely loved that topic.

For example, I was an also an expert at cricket. I was terrible playing it, but I loved watching it and knew almost everything about the game.

You are probably an expert at something right now, simply because you enjoy it.

So if you were brought up to enjoy what you are doing, then you would probably be really good at it and figured out a way to get that big house and that nice car with those skills.

Even if you didn’t figure out a way to make a lot of money, you would be one hell of a lot happier!

How This Applies to Trading

Alright, now let’s look at this education model in the trading world.

What if you first figure out where your trading interests and abilities lie, then pick the trading methods that are best suited to your individual personality and lifestyle? Well, for starters, you will be working with your strengths, instead of against them.

Then trading also becomes more enjoyable and dare I say it…*gasp*…even fun.

Conclusion

Even though your miseducation is not your fault, you are 100% responsible for what happens next. Especially now that you now know how to fix it. What do you think? Are you willing to try?