Independence Day! -Continued --- IFCN Wk 30 - Sat-

To be among the best and succeed at trading:

ONE-----You have to have financial resources to be able to start trading.  That 's the easy part.  You can always get money.  The toughest resources to obtain are those that enable you know for certain there is opportunity in a certain marketplace.  Not everyone can remain committed to trading markets for long periods of time.  If you expect to succeed you will have to be involved for a long enough period to have a reasonable likelihood of success.

No different than expecting to make money in real-estate. Which might be a better option for you. Prices are cheap right now, and no one else wants to buy! Just writing this makes me want to start picking up some more property.

TWO-----You can't expect to succeed just trading on your gut instincts.  If that worked....  

It just doesn't.  So you will need strategies that you can articulate, which have a definable edge and a reason why they will work.

That being said: at the same time you also need to be able to adapt quickly.  Things can change quickly, positions need protection and sometimes the greatest opportunities are in your current profitable trades, when something unusual has happened to benefit your position.  Your greatest edge as a trader is in your correct understanding of HOW and WHEN to be adaptable.

THREE-----You need great sources of information.  People that you can rely on.  People who will keep you informed about things going down in the financial world before they hit the wires.  When I started, that was nearly impossible to come by.  Now that I have been useful to many in the industry, I get calls about "the other shoe falling before the first one hits the ground."

FOUR-----Simple complexity.

There needs to be harmony in the manner you apply your edge. You have to personally determine a strategy to balance your capital and your trading potentials. Your trading methods have to be based on pure concepts yet integrate into your composite capital management so you get the bills paid on time. Even if you don't have a winning year. Which can happen even if you did nothing wrong and probably did a whole lot of better than most would have, but you still had a loss.

I was so impressed with the ability of Jack to perform as well as he did considering the grief he was going through at home. If the spouse is on board with your trading, GREAT! If not, you will have difficulty maintaining the mental edge to compete with those who have fixed that aspect of their life.  Trading is a more a mental game than anything.  You can not trade conflicted.  If you have someone fatiguing your mind while you are trying to trade, you will lose in more ways than just the money.  The financial losses can be devasting in that frame of mind.

Knowledge and experience matters.

Whether you're a trader, a cabinet maker or golf pro, it is very difficult to obtain professional results without hanging out with professionals and getting a quality education.  If you don't obtain them somewhere, you might be able to learn all by yourself.  It's possible, but the markets will bet against you all the way.

This weekend, think it over.  

See if there might be some better solution for your independence than taking up trading.   Like a position in sales or a side business.   Maybe real-estate.  It's cheap now.  (I know that I mentioned that earlier!)

If you decide to un-subscribe from the newsletter, I'll be happy to oblige.  I'd rather you declare your independence doing what you can do best.  

Joel Rensink
www.infiniteyield.com

PS: To receive the FREE! trading rules for the Infiniteyield Forex Challenge ($499 value) and the semi-monthly newsletter about this challenge, send an email to: newsletter@infiniteyield.com and tell me to which address you would like it sent. Please do not use AOL, Hotmail or Yahoo addresses. Nothing personal, but they've been known to filter out more good mail than actual spam. Try a Gmail address. It's free, simple and perfect for traders!