We go to school, gain an education, become employed or start our own business. We learn what we need to know to be successful, but nothing in our education or work experience provides the comprehensive knowledge or psychological control necessary for success as a trader. Unfortunately, it's human nature to assume that, if we succeed in one area, we will automatically succeed in another. Most people who enter the market with the idea of becoming traders have a feeling of invincibility, superiority and no clue of what they are about to experience. The dream of quick money and financial success can very quickly become a living nightmare.

A consistently successful trader, however, knows his or her success is found in coupling the best in professional training and education with the best in technology.

What Successful Traders Know
Most new traders have the wrong focus. When they fail to meet the goal, they begin to push their trading beyond their true ability and skill. The result is a series of losing trades that could have been avoided if they had maintained the correct focus.

Your focus and the measure of your success should be based on following the trading plan not on the money. If you follow the plan each day, you are a winner. Focusing on the money, on the other hand, leads to emotional decisions, and emotional decisions lead to uncontrolled losses.

Successful traders make decisions based on fact and analysis. They only make trades that have a high probability of working out. This means that successful traders make fewer trades and do not trade everyday. They look for strong trending market days and trade stocks that trend with that market.

Many traders are addicted to the action; success has little to do with their true reason for trading. These individuals are not traders; they are gamblers. Action addicts will lose as many times as necessary just for the adrenaline rush to win once while most successful traders make no more than 3 to 5 high probability trades per day.

It has been my experience that, if a trader makes more than 18 trades a day, he or she, in all probability, is a gambler, not a trader. Successful traders know that every day is NOT a high probability trading day and over-trading can be hazardous to your wealth.

About the Training and Education
At Tradingschool.com, we teach our students how to quantify trades based on probability profitability and how to select the 3 highest probability trades with a reward-to-risk ratio of 2.5 or greater. The screening process they learn looks for and selects the maximum momentum acceleration points on a given security. Out of a database of 500 stocks, our traders select the 3 highest probability profitability trades for the following day. Ninety-five percent of their success is due to the work done the night or day before the trade occurs.

Tradingschool.com is a true trading school where professional traders come to improve their skill and learn the tricks of the trade. Success in trading is most of all a mastery of one's self. Trading is not the get-rich, quick-and-easy road to riches that some people think it is. It requires a commitment of time and money and a willingness to work very hard.

About the Technology
The eSignal suite of products makes the process of quantifying and selecting high probability profitability trades much easier. These products were designed for the serious trader, who knows that success is directly proportional to the amount of work you will do that no one else will. In trading, to do this work, you need professional tools, not toys.

eSignal has a variety of charting features. So, for example, you can look at an historical chart to determine the overall trend of a specific issue and even compare it against other issues in the same sector, as well as other market indices, using the symbol overlay feature.

Once you've narrowed down your selection of symbols, you can use eSignal's intraday charting, which now includes up to 120+ days of intraday data (and extended intraday of up to 12+ years available), to help you narrow the field even further using eSignal's analytics.

The Last Word
When you have the capital and begin to trade, never forget that, once you enter a trade, you are no longer a day trader. Instead, you are a risk manager. Remember two things: Trade only high probability trades, and every day is not a high probability trading day.

Robert Deel is a trading strategist and the author of Trading the Plan and The Strategic Electronic Day Trader. He is the president of Tradingschool.com, an independent educational company. Tradingschool.com trains the day trader, short-term term trader and aggressive investors.

Tradingschool.com
email: info@tradingschool.com