Being Patient Pays

Lately I’ve been hearing from a lot of traders who are frustrated that the market is not giving them a lot of opportunities.  Frustrated because they aren’t seeing big winning trades or huge gains in their account balance.  Too many people come to trading with the expectation that it will be like winning the lottery, that we can just quickly put on a trade and make a ton of money. But trading isn’t like that. Being a trader means committing to be in it for the long-term.  Through the ups and the downs.  Trading can make you very wealthy but it is definitely not a “get rich quick” scheme.  It requires us to show up every day, to continue to work on becoming better.  To be patient and wait for the setups that give us the best edge, and to execute those setups consistently when they do show up. The markets job is to create trading opportunities for us … but that doesn’t mean that it will be consistent in how often it shows us the setups we want.  Some weeks there will be many, other weeks there may not be many. Our job as traders is to balance our desire to make a lot of money with the exact same amount of patience.  I know that being patient can be hard, but it truly will reward you in trading because it makes sure you are ready to take the great setups when they do appear.  And they will appear.