TRADETHINK ARTICLES

A Traders Commitment

January 4, 2008

By Chris Morse

Commitment: To devote oneself to a pursuit or endeavor.

Trading involves many types of commitments and various sacrifices. To attain trading at the top of one’s game can indeed be a big commitment. A few of the important commitments essential to success in trading are investments of one’s time and their emotional dedication to trading successfully. Having financial strength is important though in and of itself is not enough without your personal time and dedication.

It can take hundreds or thousands of hours, years and even decades to find the summit of one’s trading ability.

Not all of us have the time available to be self directed career traders. It is important to be able to distinguish whether or not you have what it takes to be a successful trader completely on your own merit. Being a successful trader does not necessarily mean that you have to call all the shots correctly. Many if not most successful traders are actually successful investors.

One of the first stories I learned at a very young age early in my career. There are two types of people in the markets. There are people with the ideas (analyst) and there are the people that execute (traders) the ideas or trades. Rarely comes along that very special individual that possesses both qualities. What is important is not necessary to posses both qualities as an investor. Rather and more important is to distinguish which one you are. You can be a great shot caller. But, without the ability to pull the trigger you will go nowhere. There are some that love to gun sling. However a lack of discipline will keep them from the essential follow through to stick with the important trades when required.

How to tell which type of trader you are is not always easy. It can take years to follow your ideas and realize that while you are often in sync with the markets your ability to execute is not there. Or you may be one who strategizes and invest many times of money and effort only to find your strategies are not successful in the markets.

Many traders or investors need to come to a point of self awareness. To realize it is time to look for help in trading is not a defeat. A saying I will always remember “If you are not good at investing your money find someone who is”. Most successful traders are indeed successful investors.

There are many trading or investment vehicles available. There CTA’s (commodity trading advisors), CPO’s (commodity pool operators) and system developers all available to assist an investor. To be successful you will need to be able to distinguish who can provide you with the best trading assistance for your individual financial situation.

There are many ranking systems offered to the investing public such as Barclay’s or Autumn Gold. These services will rank CTA’s and CPO’s. There are system developers that will let you evaluate their trading system performance such as Trade Think. What is most important is to find real time trading results and experience of the advisor or system developer. It is good to get as much free and informational content before investing. CTA’s and CPO’s will be able to show you disclosure documents. A trading system developer needs to show you system results. Trade Think is a well established system that has a real track record showing over a 100% return for 2007 by one of their auto-trade brokers.

It is important to know which financial category of investors you fit into. CTA’s will typically require $50,000 to $100,000 or more of investment capital. A CPO will often require up to $1,000,000 or more for the best of the best and you may need to also be an accredited investor (you have a high net worth).

Most investors do not have the financial requirements to start with a CPO. However you may get lucky and find a CPO who is also a CTA and system developer. This way you can grow into being a larger investor. One such system developer is Chris Morse of Trade Think. Trade Think offers for free an evaluation of their trading systems to help educate investors and traders. You can work with a portfolio system from a system developer for as little as $30,000 or more. A system developer will request much less money than a CPO or CTA. If you are trading with only a few thousand dollars or anything less than $20,000 it is highly recommended to keep learning and to wait until you have the right amount of money to invest wisely.

You will spend a great deal of time and effort to become a successful trader or investor. Many of you have already made a considerable investment of you time, dedication and finances. It is important that you continue you commitment in your search for excellence. Do not be afraid to do whatever is necessary to become successful. Most of you will realize the importance of getting experienced help when required.

About the Author

Chris Morse is the Developer of the TradeThink trading system. He has been involved in the development of trading strategies for nearly ten years. Mr. Morse developed a very robust system which is now in private use at one of the largest FCM's and has earned sizable returns for the last 3 years. Mr. Morse now focuses his time exclusively on developing and managing his systems.