ESSENTIAL QUALIFICATIONS OF A TRADER
PATIENCE
Patience is a virtue, especially in the stock market. Acquire it if you can. You must have patience to wait for the right opportunity to come, and not be overanxious and get in too soon. Once you buy or sell a stock and it starts moving in your favor, you must have patience to hold it until there is a good reason or sufficient cause for closing the trade.
Never close a trade just because you have a profit; do not become impatient and get out for no real reason. Every act, either in opening or closing a trade, must have a sound basic cause behind it. Hopes and fears must be eliminated. There is no use selling a stock because you fear it is going down, nor buying it because you hope it is going up. Look at your charts and see which way the trend points and follow it. If no definite trend is shown, use your patience and wait.
NERVE
Nerve is just as essential as patience; in fact, nerve is the equal of capital. Looking backward brings nothing but regrets. I always believe in facing the future with nerve and hope. But let the nerve and the hope be based on some sound principle that will prevent costly mistakes of the past. During my career I have seen many traders who had made one mistake after another and suffered severe losses, and still had some capital to work with but when an opportunity appeared, they lacked the nerve to act. In cases of this kind, the nerve would have been more valuable than capital.
KNOWLEDGE
Experience is the only school to learn in and the burnt child is the one who knows the pain from having put his fingers in the fire. Mistakes are all right and hard to avoid. They are good for us, because if we profit by them, they prove valuable. But it is wrong to make the same mistake the second time. Therefore, use every mistake as a stepping stone to progress; analyze each mistake you make and the cause of every loss, in order to avoid repeating the same error in future. With each experience , good or bad, accumulate knowledge, and after all, knowledge is the greatest power of all, for capital will always come to knowledge.
HEALTH AND REST
Good health is essential to success in any line. It is one of the great assets for success in the speculative market. At least twice a year a man should close up all of his trades, get entirely out of the market, and go away for a vacation or stay away from the market and rest up. Let your mind rest and your judgment get clear. The man who continually sticks to any business too long without a rest or change gets his judgment warped. He gets in a rut and sees things from a one-sided point of view. When you are in the market on either side, it is but human nature for you to hope that it will go your way, and you, therefore, give greater weight to any event that seems to indicate a favorable move to your side. When you are out of the market, you are able to see things as they really are, and judge the market without a distorted view, with hope and fear eliminated. Traders, who are continually in the market day in and day out and never allow any time to elapse between trades, sooner or later lose all their money. I know one trader who follows scientific forecasting and makes a success. He never makes more than five or six trades in the year. If he buys stocks during the winter or early spring for a rise, and the advance materializes as he expected, he sells out and takes his profits. Then he leaves the market alone, sometimes for several months. In the summer, if he sees indications of a bull or a hear market starting, he gets in again, and if the market moves his way, he may follow it up and pyramid for several months. When he gets an indication that the end is near, he closes up his trades, takes his profits, and like the wild geese, wends his way to the sunny South. He makes a specialty of trading in certain favorite stocks. He studies them closely and watches for certain signs that he considers almost infallible. When these signs come, he acts. He does not hurry until the time comes, but when it does, then there is no hesitation -- he buys or sells. He keeps cool, calm and collected, and waits for the time to open or close a trade. Another thing he never does is to expect any fixed amount of profits or set any specific time for getting out. I have often seen him make a trade and it would go against him. He would get out and say, “Well, I guess I’ll go back to my office and watch them for a while.” Sometimes it would be days or weeks before he made another trade, but when he did, it was based on some good sound reason, and 90 percent of the time the second trade proved a winner. But suppose he had held the first trade he made and hoped it would move his way. His judgment, being biased, would have become more unreliable all the time. There is nothing like being out of the market and looking them over from an impartial viewpoint. When there is no definite trend, stay out, watch and wait, and your patience will be rewarded.
Patience is a virtue, especially in the stock market. Acquire it if you can. You must have patience to wait for the right opportunity to come, and not be overanxious and get in too soon. Once you buy or sell a stock and it starts moving in your favor, you must have patience to hold it until there is a good reason or sufficient cause for closing the trade.
Never close a trade just because you have a profit; do not become impatient and get out for no real reason. Every act, either in opening or closing a trade, must have a sound basic cause behind it. Hopes and fears must be eliminated. There is no use selling a stock because you fear it is going down, nor buying it because you hope it is going up. Look at your charts and see which way the trend points and follow it. If no definite trend is shown, use your patience and wait.
NERVE
Nerve is just as essential as patience; in fact, nerve is the equal of capital. Looking backward brings nothing but regrets. I always believe in facing the future with nerve and hope. But let the nerve and the hope be based on some sound principle that will prevent costly mistakes of the past. During my career I have seen many traders who had made one mistake after another and suffered severe losses, and still had some capital to work with but when an opportunity appeared, they lacked the nerve to act. In cases of this kind, the nerve would have been more valuable than capital.
KNOWLEDGE
Experience is the only school to learn in and the burnt child is the one who knows the pain from having put his fingers in the fire. Mistakes are all right and hard to avoid. They are good for us, because if we profit by them, they prove valuable. But it is wrong to make the same mistake the second time. Therefore, use every mistake as a stepping stone to progress; analyze each mistake you make and the cause of every loss, in order to avoid repeating the same error in future. With each experience , good or bad, accumulate knowledge, and after all, knowledge is the greatest power of all, for capital will always come to knowledge.
HEALTH AND REST
Good health is essential to success in any line. It is one of the great assets for success in the speculative market. At least twice a year a man should close up all of his trades, get entirely out of the market, and go away for a vacation or stay away from the market and rest up. Let your mind rest and your judgment get clear. The man who continually sticks to any business too long without a rest or change gets his judgment warped. He gets in a rut and sees things from a one-sided point of view. When you are in the market on either side, it is but human nature for you to hope that it will go your way, and you, therefore, give greater weight to any event that seems to indicate a favorable move to your side. When you are out of the market, you are able to see things as they really are, and judge the market without a distorted view, with hope and fear eliminated. Traders, who are continually in the market day in and day out and never allow any time to elapse between trades, sooner or later lose all their money. I know one trader who follows scientific forecasting and makes a success. He never makes more than five or six trades in the year. If he buys stocks during the winter or early spring for a rise, and the advance materializes as he expected, he sells out and takes his profits. Then he leaves the market alone, sometimes for several months. In the summer, if he sees indications of a bull or a hear market starting, he gets in again, and if the market moves his way, he may follow it up and pyramid for several months. When he gets an indication that the end is near, he closes up his trades, takes his profits, and like the wild geese, wends his way to the sunny South. He makes a specialty of trading in certain favorite stocks. He studies them closely and watches for certain signs that he considers almost infallible. When these signs come, he acts. He does not hurry until the time comes, but when it does, then there is no hesitation -- he buys or sells. He keeps cool, calm and collected, and waits for the time to open or close a trade. Another thing he never does is to expect any fixed amount of profits or set any specific time for getting out. I have often seen him make a trade and it would go against him. He would get out and say, “Well, I guess I’ll go back to my office and watch them for a while.” Sometimes it would be days or weeks before he made another trade, but when he did, it was based on some good sound reason, and 90 percent of the time the second trade proved a winner. But suppose he had held the first trade he made and hoped it would move his way. His judgment, being biased, would have become more unreliable all the time. There is nothing like being out of the market and looking them over from an impartial viewpoint. When there is no definite trend, stay out, watch and wait, and your patience will be rewarded.
