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.
Futures trading is not suitable for everyone and past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results