Make no mistake:
We all dive into the markets to make money, to be part of the 5% of winning traders who take from the 95% of losing traders the money they leave on the table through lack of preparation, ignorance, weak psychology, lack of risk management, no edge or for many other reasons...
And yet to be successful in trading, you shouldn't aim to make money. Why?
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“To be successful in trading, you shouldn't aim to make money."
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To answer this question, let's first ask the question of whether a lawyer, a doctor or an accountant thinks about making money when they represent their client's interests in a plea, establish a diagnosis for a patient or audit a company’s financial statements.
No, they are working towards a defined goal for which they are paid and they know they will continue to be paid if and only if they work professionally and consistently.
Why should it be any different with trading?
Indeed, the possibility of winning or losing money almost instantaneously or watching your trading account moving up and down in real time encourage you to think about what you can do with this « easy »money.
However, thinking that way usually leads to take very bad decisions: increasing you position size, shifting a stop in the wrong direction, taking a profit too soon, revenge trading to breakeven and so on...
All those wrong actions have their meaning. They are in sync with our irrational expectations and with our incapacity to accept that the outcome of each trade is unknown.
On the contrary if you focus on the process and respect it every single day, you will take full responsibility for everything that can happen to you and to your account.
Then you will honor all your entry and exit signals, and you will accept losses as an inherent component to any good trading system, especially yours.
If you have faith in your edge, if you are not obsessed with the end, i.e. making money but in the process, you will respect your whole trading system every day, and the profits will appear as a natural by-product of your work as a professional trader.
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