Before I start, let me introduce myself and how I got here. My name is Carol & I am from this beautiful city called Singapore. Yes, it is that place that you are not allowed to eat chewing gums & get fine for almost everything. It is $300 for littering, $300 for being caught not wearing a mask and even when you urinate in elevators. Singapore is also a clean & safe and an advanced city with a great night skyline.
I took my degree in business management & started to do marketing/web development projects in my final year of school. Shortly after, I started the company officially at 21 years old with not much money and no customer base. To find clients in the beginning, I go to Google and email every info & general email I can find and put them into an excel sheet. After collating a few hundred of them, I started to email them one by one in hopes to get a few replies.
Those times taught me how to have tenacity & because I don’t have a budget, to begin with, I tried everything possible. Sometimes when you do not have a boss, there are no limits and you can try anything. So to cut the long story short, we managed to slowly get clients from individual entrepreneurs to banks, government and fortune 500 companies.
3 Important Lessons I learned that helped me with my trading career
1) Don’t run AWAY from your problems,
Run TOWARDS your problem.
In my experience when talking to people & traders all over the world, I see many people joining in good months where the market is directional and people quitting in bad months. When they start to have a drawdown of their account, you will start to see traders disappearing. While it is easier to walk away at the difficult moments, the struggling moment, the dread of trading starts to come on. They start to feel that they need to learn “another strategy”, join “another community”, get a better “set up” and find the holy grail of trading.
There is however no holy grail in trading, no scanner, no strategy or no sure-way to win. Definitely not by copying alerts.
The way to run TOWARDS your problem is to go to the root issue. Find out exactly why you are on a losing streak and what can you doing about it. If you repeat the same old process again & expecting a different result is insanity as quoted by Albert Einstein.
Some of the potential issues:
- Risk Management
- Entries & Exits
- Finding the right plays
- Having an effective daily process & repeating it
- Reviewing the losing trades/types of trades etc
My biggest issue has been risk management and going too big size on one trade which often cost my account significantly when it was reversed. What I did was to come out with a plan of the right scaling and sizing and follow them closely & in this way, I managed to have small losers and big winners. It was definitely difficult in the beginning but over time it gets easier. The start of change is to know where the problem is so you can get to the root issue and not try to improve on the surface.
2) Growth comes OVER TIME not OVERNIGHT
One of the most important things I tell new traders is to give yourself time to fail. Don’t expect consistency in weeks or even in the first few months. Many people said they understand the concept but they trade like they need to retire tomorrow.
Stacking the gain is much better than one big home run gain. If you compound 10% on 100 trades starting with $100, you will end up with 1.37m at the end of it.
Don’t compare people’s year 3 to your month 3 & everyone learns at a different pace. For me, the moment everything clicked, I took months to get to where I am. Trading consistency is never a destination but a constant journey and striving to be better.
3) We are not defined by our losses
I have lost a lot of money & it took me many years to save up without really buying any big-ticket items that I could easily buy only to lose it to the market. It was definitely a very humbling moment for me and to take a step back and replanned by steps.
I took a few months away from trading and came back taking countless courses from many different types of traders. The defining moments was the one on one mentorship that brought me to the next level. Sometimes it was the ah-ha moment, while others times the moment come after putting in the hours to know what works and what does not.
80% of the traders don’t make it past 2 years. This means that good traders are not made overnight, they give it time to improve, to fail and to find consistency. There is a time and season for everything. Just like a pregnant mother who is giving birth, you cannot “rush” the process just because you are excited to see the baby or by giving the baby a lot of nutrients. You need to give it TIME to grow through the different stages.
In conclusion, 2020 have not been the easiest year in all aspect but it is a year of perspectives. Even though it has not been easy but the year is almost coming to an end and you made it this far! All love to everyone who hasn’t been feeling the best, know that you are ENOUGH and may the worst be over and the best is to come.
All love & respect,
Carol
@tradelikerocket