Every style has its advantages and disadvantages, its risks and rewards, but most important is that style must match trader. If you jump into trading believing that just because someone else can do it this way, then so can you – you may be in for a very painful surprise.

Never trade someone else’s plan. Never trade someone else’s style. You absolutely must know your own temperament well enough to determine what you will trade, and exactly how you will trade it. Your money management rules, your tolerance for losses, i.e. costs, , your willingness to change trade if your market opinion is proven wrong – these are true secrets to trading that separate novice from veteran. With these in place, emotions can be reduced if not eliminated.

After all, which would put you most at ease? Driving through an unfamiliar city alone with no guidance, driving with a map, or driving with a full color street-level-detail GPS navigation system?

I’ll take GPS, thank you.

So before you place your first, or next, trade, consider following:

a. Do you understand what you are trading and why?

b. Do you know what you will do given any of possible outcomes?

c. Are you ready and willing to admit you were wrong about trade, and if so what will you do about it and when?

d. Are you comfortable with thought of losing money you are putting into trade, and will your trading account survive to trade another day if you do?

These are all part of what you need to have in your plan. I urge you to have considered them thoroughly before risking slightest amount of money in a real trade.

Emotions – “You can’t trade with ‘em, and you must trade without ‘em.”