Most of you Wont Make It

Reading Time - 6 Minutes 

Most of you won’t make it as a trader. That is the cold hard truth of it. Maybe not what you want to hear from a blog post, true. But by getting down to the root of it and blowing away all the shiny shit that so often wraps around the trading community disguised as bunting, it may just harden the resolve of some of you that can make it in this industry.

Trading has a huge failure rate amongst retail traders. It is unlike other careers in that you can’t hide in the background and get by doing the bare minimum as some low-level employee. As soon as you start falling into that trap, the market will instantly beat you over the head, remove the wallet from your pocket and take everything that you have.

A lot of people (I include myself in this category when I first got started), don’t even know that they fit the bill of the person looking to do the absolute minimum. They come at it with good intentions, but they look for the easy road, the simple ‘secret’ that will help them become a trader, the ‘fast-track’ method that means they can leave their job in a few months and be making serious income. The market welcomes them with open arms. The embrace quickly becomes a suffocating crush that saps the life out of you.

But it won’t necessarily do it in a way that makes it obvious to you. Oh no, trading has a way of toying with you, keeping you on the wrong path, and it is only as you watch your last pound drain from your account that you get the hint that something isn’t right. Because people looking for fast cash can have it with trading, and many of them do… but it is only ever possible in the short term. A small account can grow by a thousand percent and people can see huge amounts of money coming at them. But it is not sustainable. The bad habits that are there –

Overtrading

Bad money management

Emotional Trading

- and eventually they catch up with you and bye-bye goes the account. The problem with it working in this way is that now those traders have had a taste of the fast cash. They want it back. They don’t want to make a slow crawl up the mountain when they have already seen the helicopter that can get them up there. And so they rinse and repeat, over and over again, their nerves being torn to pieces as they grow to hate trading and sitting at the computer without even realising it. They don't seem to remeber that the helicopter in fact crashed into the mountain, destroying itself and everything on board.

Let me hit you right in the gut with some of the hard truths from possible fast-track ideas:

Buy a Course 

This in no way means you are going to be a successful trader. I don’t give a damn what people tell you, or that the course page says you will be financially free in a few months. It isn’t true. That is simply appealing to the part of you deep down that wants it to happen quickly.

I see people charging astronomical amounts for courses. I got an email recently from someone who said a company had offered him a course for $4,000. For that kind of money, I would want to be in a classroom for intensive training face-to-face for at least a fortnight! And even then they would have to drag me and my suitcase out of there at the end of it, because I would want to live in the office for a further month!

A course, if it is a good one (and there is a LOT of garbage out there), can act like a set of rails. Instead of wandering around aimlessly, jumping between multiple methods and half-researched plans you spent a night developing, a good course can position your wheels on the rails and keep you moving in the right direction. It can give support when you struggle and the teacher offer guidance when you find yourself hitting roadblocks.

But it WILL still take blood, sweat and tears. You won’t be able to make progress unless you fully commit and show a determination like you wouldn’t believe. And it will take you AT LEAST one year, and more than likely two years or more before that consistency comes.

Join a Live Room 

‘Hey, maybe I can just let someone else do it since it’s so hard!’  

Let me ask a very simple question here – Do you know one single person who has left their job because they found a live room that makes them consistent money? I don’t mean the people in the testimonials, I mean one person YOU know? What about this one – would you EVER leave a career to rely on someone you don’t know to make you money?

I can guarantee the answer to both is 'no'.

I would say a live room can be beneficial if you are also learning alongside it. However even then I would say I am stretching. Because you never learn to work through the emotional side of trading if you are just relying on someone else to do it.

I have been in live rooms where the results in no way match what the trader ‘made’ at the end of the month. I have seen losses explained away and mysteriously disappear. And the worst are pump-and-dump traders and rooms. Those guys lead their students to the slaughter and get fat off of all the meat.

Even if you find one that profits… you’re back to the main question – are you going to rely on this stranger to look after you for the rest of your life?

You absolutely must develop the ability to be self-sufficient.

But Look How Much He Made 

My teacher just made X amount of money, surely I can do the same if I just follow what he says?

Lewis Hamilton can get himself around a track pretty quickly. Do you think if he sends you a PDF explaining what he does to go that fast, you would be able to go out, jump in a car and do the same?

Of course you wouldn’t. You get to watch him on TV every week, doing exactly what he does. And you still can't go out and expect to get anywhere near to him!

It would take you lots of time and practice until you developed the experience to even attempt to get close to what he was doing. No matter how much information you have at your fingertips, the brain can only learn so fast. You absolutely need to be willing to put the work in.

This blog post may come across as negative, but truly that isn’t my intention. Instead I am looking to put out the cold hard facts of trading for those who are interested in pursuing it. I don’t think wrapping people in cotton wool is at all helpful in life, and with trading it is likely to lead them to untold hardship.

But there are those of you out there who want it enough. You’re hungry, driven and determined. You are willing to put in the work and will go to any length to achieve your goals.

It is to you I am speaking. The rest probably stopped reading as soon as I said it would take them two years to achieve it. Fight off the urge to follow the lazy part of your brain. Understand what you need to do and the commitment it is going to take.

Keep working, improving and correcting any mistakes or bad habits that appear.

Become one of the ten percent who turn the charts into something you can sit and watch each day with a coffee in your hand, wearing your warmest hoodie at your desk while everyone else is stuck in gridlock traffic on their commute.

I hope you’ve all had a great trading week!

James Orr