5 Things You’ll Learn Becoming a Successful Trader

Everyone knows the main reward of becoming a successful trader is money. But you will be rewarded with a lot more than just money if you become a successful trader, in fact, money is arguably the least valuable reward you will receive from achieving consistent success in the markets.

The most valuable rewards of becoming a successful trader are the less tangible ones; self-discovery, self-improvement, true personal freedom and the real meaning behind virtues like patience and discipline. These are the things that will stick with you forever and that will improve and enhance your life as well as your relationships with other people, much more so than just money alone can…

1. What freedom actually feels like

In my opinion, the single biggest reward of being a successful trader is obtaining true personal freedom from jobs and the 9 to 5 rat race. Trading provides you with the tools and the ability to escape what I call modern-day ‘slavery’.

It won’t be easy, it may not happen at all for you, but for me, I am extremely happy that by learning to trade, we can potentially earn our own freedom and escape the ‘matrix’ that is working constantly. Like it or not, in today’s society, the game is money, and you either play the game or you live a mediocre existence, at best. I was never the type of person to settle for that or to just accept I had to spend my whole life working for some company and give them the best years of my life in return for money, and far less than what I was actually worth.

So, for me, learning what true freedom feels like is the greatest reward of becoming a successful trader. All the money in the world doesn’t mean a thing if you don’t have any time to enjoy it, and trading the way that I do; swing trading with a focus on higher time frames and a ‘set and forget’ approach, allows me to have and enjoy the most valuable commodity; time.

2. How to evaluate the risk vs. reward of anything

If you make it to the point of being a consistently successful trader, you will also most certainly be a master of determining the risk to reward of any situation, service or product. The mindset of a successful trader is one that is constantly gauging risk and simultaneously figuring out what the potential reward might be, to ultimately make a decision. This of course is necessary for trading, but it’s also a great skill to be able to employ in just about any other situation in your life.

For example, let’s say you need to get a different car. If you are thinking about the purchase from the mindset of a trader, you will carefully consider the risk vs. reward of buying a new car or buying a used car. Through that process, you will probably come to the conclusion that the risk of losing approximately 11% of a new car’s value as soon as you drive it off the lot, is probably not worth the reward of having the car when you can probably find the same car a little used and effectively get a 11% discount on it. Not everyone thinks like this about every situation, but successful trading will ingrain this type of thinking into you, and that’s almost always a very good thing.

3. The true value and meaning of patience and discipline

Everyone knows that patience and discipline are very important and valuable virtues, but few people truly understand just how powerful they can be like a successful trader does. The only way to get to the point where you are making money in the markets over a period of months, is by being consistently patient and disciplined.

This all might sound cliché to you at this point, but that’s only because it’s so true; patience and discipline will make you money faster than anything else when it comes to trading. I’ve written numerous articles explaining why this is true, so I won’t get into all of the details in today’s lesson. But, you should realize that one of the greatest things you will learn by becoming a successful trader, is what patience and discipline actually means and how valuable they are. After all, to become a successful trader, you must learn to be patient and disciplined in the face of constant temptations (to over-trade and to over-leverage), and not many people can do that consistently.

Successful trading will teach you how to control yourself in tempting situations by being focused on the long-term reward rather than what ‘feels’ good ‘right now’.

4. How to grow and improve as a person

The process of becoming a successful trader and the things you have to accept and change inside of yourself to become one, will ultimately lead to you become a better version of yourself. You will not find a lazy, messy, impatient and undisciplined person who is also a successful trader; that person does not exist. The end result, or perhaps the ‘side-effects’ of becoming a successful trader, are that you have true freedom, you have mastered your own mind, you understand the potential risk reward of any situation you may find yourself in and perhaps most importantly, you’ve become a better version of yourself.

5. The power of simplicity

Finally, perhaps the most life-changing thing that I learned becoming a successful trader, is the power of simplicity in not just trading, but all areas of my life. My discovery that simple was better when it came to my trading, was probably thee turning point in my trading career and as a result, in my life. Once I began to see the power of simplicity in trading, I started to apply that same philosophy to other areas of my life as well, where I also got rewarding results. I actually have written an entire article on this called the minimalistic trading approach, if you haven’t read it yet, you should.

The key take away from today’s lesson is that in order to become a successful trader, you need to develop and consistently implement the type of habits and processes that will not only make you money in the market, but will also make you become the best possible version of yourself.