Trade like a Pro – 8 STEP CHECKLIST TO DETERMINE IF YOU’RE TREATING TRADING LIKE A BUSINESS

Trade like a pro

How can you make sure you trade like the professionals? One of the best ways is to make sure you treat your trading like a business. You need to be sure that when you are trading you are trading; it is not for fun or speculation, but to make money.

We have some tips and ideas to help you make that a reality.

1. CREATE A MISSION STATEMENT FOR YOURSELF

You have seen mission statements hanging up on the walls of businesses before. You may or may not have ever thought about creating one for yourself, but you ought to do this right away if you want to be taken seriously when trading.

Your mission statement orients everything that you do in the trading space around specific goals that you have for your trading. If you can follow your own rules for the road, then you should be in great shape to trade successfully and develop your own brand of trading that allows you to be profitable going forward.

2. HAVE A BUSINESS PLAN

Business plans can and should be used by individuals as much as anyone else. When you have a business plan, you know where you will allocate resources, and you know how to set up each trading day with the final goal of profitability always in mind.

You should be thinking about these things anyway since you want to be the kind of person who works towards establishing a successful and long-term plan to be profitable in the markets. If your business plan makes sense, it should be a guiding light for you even when things get tough in the markets at times.

Thus, you need to do everything in your power to create a business plan that you can live with, and one that will work successfully for you. Make sure you let others know what your plan is so they can hold you accountable for it.

3. FUND YOUR BUSINESS

One of the biggest reasons why companies often don’t work out is because they are underfunded. You always need enough capital to keep your business running no matter what else is going on.

Thus, you should keep a steady bankroll in your account that you can deploy as necessary to take care of the various aspects of your business that mean the most to you.

You should never find yourself in a spot where a few bad trades put you completely without capital to carry on.

4. FIND YOUR EDGE

You shouldn’t be trading in the markets on the hope that you will be successful. You should have some legitimate reason to believe that you will be successful.

This means that you need to find the edge that you bring to the markets when you trade. Is there something about your strategy or the way you allocate funds to your trading that puts yourself ahead of the competition? If so, then you have found your edge.

5. MAINTAIN YOUR DAILY ROUTINE

Structured scheduling of your daily activities is a great way to keep yourself sane and to make sure you are fully prepared to handle any challenges that are thrown your way.

Thus, you should take time now to lay out a schedule that you know you can live with.

For example, you might consider taking up the following habits to make sure you don’t fall behind:

• Wake up at the same time each day.
• Schedule a daily workout.
• Make sure you get fresh air from time to time, and take your breaks.

You need to keep your mind and body sharp if you are to have a successful day of trading.

6. THINK ABOUT YOUR COSTS

Don’t forget to pay attention to your costs when you are trading. It is easy to think only of the money that can be gained, but don’t forget what you can lose in the market as well. There is every chance in the world that your costs will overwhelm your profits if you do not pay close attention to them and manage them.

7. UNDERSTAND THAT LOSSES WILL HAPPEN

There isn’t a trader alive who hasn’t suffered losses in their portfolio at certain points. You should take your losses in stride and understand that they are just part of doing business.

You want to minimize them of course, but you can let yourself get carried away with guilt and blame if you start to think of every losing trade as a personal failing. That is just not the case, and you shouldn’t let losses get you too upset.

They are going to happen, but you can make sure you have taken steps to keep them to a bare minimum, so they don’t cause too much havoc on your carefully laid plans.

8. WORK ON CONSTANTLY IMPROVING YOUR BUSINESS

One of the best ways to improve your business is to make sure you are constantly working on it. This means that you try to learn new things every day and try to take something away from your trading session each and every time.

If you do that, then you are going to put yourself in a great position to improve your odds of a successful trading session each and every time.

Constant improvement like this is highly rewarding.