To start I wanted to tell you something you will probably find very contradictory : Not everyone can be successful in automated trading. Of course, you may think I am totally wrong because you just need a profitable system, a person to plug it in and then the system does all the work, right ? Well, it is definitely not that simple. First of all, automated trading is not free from psychological effects as it is usually portrayed by most EA sellers (more on this within my ebook) and second, a person not only needs to have a profitable trading system, the person needs to know it is profitable and the person needs to be able to trade it. As I have said before many times, the market protects itself from everyone making profit from automated trading by making long term profitable automated systems extremely hard to trade, as the turtle trading systems, most people would never trade the long term profitable systems even if they were given to them for free.
So what characteristics does a person need to succeed in automated trading ? From my experience and the characteristics I have seen on the people who have managed to trade these systems consistently, I could tell you at least the things they have in common :
- They are willing to learn. This means that they are able to grasp new concepts, take in and find new knowledge.
- They are willing to accept reality. They are all glad to forget the unrealistic profit targets offered by most EA sellers out there and make peace with what is realistically achievable with automated trading solutions. The more you cling to the huge (50,100 even 1000%) monthly returns offered by EA sellers the more time it will take you to be profitable with automated trading.
- They do the work. These people are looking to become dedicated to automated trading, they are not looking for a “set and forget ATM” or some other get rich quick scheme. These people take automated trading as if it was a job.
- They are not stubborn. This is a very bad quality, specially because most stubborn people end up paying for their unwillingness to learn by losing large amounts of equity. They are too ways to learn, listen to the people who know or learn it the hard way, sadly most people have to learn things the hard way and few of them survive it.
- They do not have huge egos. I have found that people who feel that a 3 month losing period makes them feel like failures tend to fail in automated trading. People who are able to accept that loses are common and necessary in trading always have the fastest way towards profitable automated trading.
