A beginning trader starts with eagerness and passion and focuses on winning. The beginner's great fear is to miss opportunity and so the beginner overtrades and eventually takes significant losses. Many traders never move beyond this stage.
With experience, the beginning trader recognizes that the goal is not simply making money, but making more money on winning trades than losing ones. Instead of focusing solely on winning, the more experienced trader also focuses on not losing and containing risk. The goal is thus consistency of trading and profitability and, above all, staying in the game. This is when the beginning trader becomes a good trader.
Now, however, the good trader faces a new stage of development: growing that consistency of trading. The good trader grows laterally, expanding their expertise and skills and finding a broader range of opportunity. The good trader also develops depth in their trading, finding superior ways to manage positions and their ever-evolving risk/reward. The good trader becomes a great trader by exercising skills and experience in different market environments and finding a balance between assertively seeking opportunity and mindfully managing risk.
Good traders become better and better at playing the game. Great traders find new and promising games to play.
I recently spent an intensive period of time studying the stock market on a daily basis from 2014 to present. I tracked cycles in a new way and explored ways of taking best advantage of phases of those cycles. Instead of regularity of time, I looked for regularity of structure in defining the cycles. That has led to new trade ideas. Early days, early days. But we always have the power to innovate and develop what is good into what is great.
Further Reading:
Trading Psychology 2.0 and the role of creativity in our development as traders
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