With the Internet making so much information available to us these days, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the wealth of knowledge at our fingertips.
When you seek advice on trading, do you ever get contradicting answers? “Do this,” say some. “Do that,” say the others. It’s like having a million voices shouting at you all at the same time, so you sometimes end up being even more confused.
On the Internet, it’s easy to get answers but it’s very hard to get the right ones.
So who exactly should you listen to?
The answer to this question is actually quite obvious. I’ll give you a moment to think about it…
Done?
As I have said in many of my past articles, the number one voice that you should listen to is your own. This applies to each and every trader, not only to the experts.
It is of utmost importance that whatever advice you listen to fits well with your personality. You know yourself best, and you know which strategies work for you and which don’t. You may adopt another trader’s profitable trading strategy, but if it doesn’t jive with your personality, it’s likely that you won’t get the best results.
This is why you should at least have an idea of what kind of trader you are. If this is still an issue, you can head on over to the Trading Tips.
Listening to yourself isn’t enough
There’s a reason why books about the life and careers of top traders (such as Market Wizards) are so popular. More than being an interesting read, these books can teach you a lot about the habits and strategies of top traders.
Studying and following successful traders helps speed up your forex education greatly as it enables you to learn from the experiences of others. Reading about their journeys to success will help you avoid their mistakes and pick up some personal tips and tricks along the way.
You’ll be surprised how much you can accelerate your learning process from following successful traders. Some of the things you’ll learn from successful traders could take you years to pick up on your own.
Most importantly, studying a winning trader will give insight into his/her thinking. It will help you THINK and PROCESS information like them, which will help you develop the proper trading mindset.
How to study successful traders
One way you can study successful traders is by reading books that have been written by or about them.
Pipcrawler, together with some of our visitor , has come up with a very good list of books that are highly recommended. There you’ll find books written by prominent traders, covering everything from risk management to technical analysis.
You can also make it a habit to follow your favorite traders’ blogs and/or forum threads. Our forums section, for example, has many full-time traders who are actually profitable AND are willing to share their approaches and share their two cents when asked.
Now, before you set out to study successful traders, I’d like to give you all a final word of caution: there are many scammers out there who pose as successful traders in hopes of tricking people out of their money.
Make sure you do a background check on those traders that you follow, and follow them for a long while before applying their teachings or advice, so that you don’t end up wasting your time and money on a phony, or worse – walking into a scam trap.
