What distinguishes a profitable trader from an amateur?
In addition to the tools of the trade, mental skills and personality play a crucial role in trading success in the financial markets.
Successful traders have impeccable mental strength compared to other traders. A significant part of your mental strength is based on what kind of personality you possess. If you are aware of your personality and work on it, it will have a positive impact on your trading performance.
With people, there are many shades of gray. No person is completely good or bad or completely positive or negative. It is your responsibility to identify your personality traits and how those traits affect your daily trading decisions.
Let's talk about two personality traits that are very important for trading: being intuitive and being analytical.
Traders with intuitive personalities make their trading decisions based on their intuition. This may be because they are naturally intuitive, or because they develop this intuition over time.
A trader with an "analytical" personality is just the opposite. He pays attention to historical data and solid evidence to support his trading decisions.
The balance between these two personalities is what makes a near-perfect trader.
If you're intuitive only because you're too lazy to do accurate analysis, you'll fail. On the other hand, if you are extremely data-oriented and wait for the perfect trading setup, you will never be able to trade, because perfection is an illusion in trading.
If you balance these two personalities by doing the necessary analysis and then placing your trades based on your intuition, you may suddenly get great results.
Although most personality traits are formed from birth, it is not impossible to acquire new ones.
Try to find out what personality traits great traders have (The Market Wizards books). Try to practice building these traits in yourself so that you can eventually become a holistic trader.