A fisherman and a professional trader has much in common. Both of them must be proficient enough to feel the sea or the market. You can easily learn many things about the trading from a pro fisherman.
There is a lot you can learn from a fisherman that can help you in improving your trading skills that lead towards a successful series of earning.
For example; A greedy wish to ace the specialty, getting more skills and knowledge, the wish to do anything it takes to succeed, continuously learning, and the sky is the limit from there. In both professions, a person has to be patient, disciplined and passionate. These three things are important for every fisherman and trader.
Learn the market like a fisherman learns the water…
The first thing you have to learn from a pro fisherman is to see the market like a fisherman sees the water. The fishermen first see the condition of water carefully before they put their cast into the water. If they would not perform this step, then they could not catch fishes.
Both business and personal fishermen use their vast knowledge of when and where to go fishing to improve their catches. They take into account numerous factors including tidal currents, cooling and warming trends, predicting tides, how much light of the sun has covered an area of water suddenly, weather patterns, tidal flows, storm patterns, the depth at which the fishes are easy to set up, etc. Therefore, you can easily notice that numerous variables move into the pro fishing functions.
As a trader, you have to comprehend that how to read and see the market just the way a fisherman reads and sees the water. You have to comprehend the market’s flow and ebb before you move to put your money into it. You have to study and do research about the market. You have to read the previous page to get to know about the current one.
Thus, learn as much as you can and become the master of trading like a fisherman is an expert in understanding and checking out various variables that have an impact on the water conditions to entice the fishes.
Pro fisherman is a ‘sniper’…
The pro fisherman is similar to a sniper present in the army. The pro fishermen do not move on a continuous basis as it would cost them more time, fuel and more bait. They have a strategic plan according to which they do fishing, read the weather and water. It gives them an edge. Similarly, the traders have to make a strategic plan according to which they have to do trading, read the market and its flow.
A pro fisherman is well-educated as well as well-prepared on every variable of fishing. The knowledge and skills create a gut feel for fishing which you can call the sixth sense. It allows them to know where and when to go fishing. In the same way, the traders have to learn and put their knowledge into practice to develop a gut feel for trading that can make them successful.
Patience is key in fishing and trading…
If you’ve ever gone fishing, you know it requires a lot of patience. However, unlike trading, you are basically forced to be patient in fishing. In trading, you can just set up a trade up and enter it for no reason other than you want to risk some money, this will of course destroy your trading account but you can do it if you want to.
A successful fisherman will remain in his pre-planned high-probability fishing spot for as long as he deems necessary. He will not give up after 20 minutes with on bites, he will persist and wait patiently, perhaps re-casting, but not moving areas frequently. Similarly, as a trader you may have to wait days or even weeks for a high-probability trade setup to come along, before you should put your bait or money into the ‘water’ to try and catch a big move in the market.
Patience is truly what separates successful traders from the masses of ‘sheep’ who lose their money.
You need the mindset of a winner
Another thing that winners have — and this might be the most important trait they carry — is the ability to put their mistakes and shortcomings out of the picture. They don’t blame anyone or anything for their mistakes or problems. They never make excuses, and they don’t forget. They just move forward.
It’s like they can flip a toggle switch in their mind that allows them to turn those bad days into a non-issue. The past is just that, nothing more. It has no effect on the future. The next cast is a new opportunity and so is the next day. They don’t say they’ll make a clean break. They make a clean break.
Now, the above quote is obviously discussing the mindset needed to win at professional bass fishing. But, this is basically the same mindset you need to win at professional trading. You have to move forward and not dwell on bad days, or losing trades. You are going to have losing trades, but if you let them stew in your mind and take over your thinking, you will end up losing even more money as a result.
Just as a fisherman has to accept bad days with little or no good catches are part of his gig, so you have to accept that there will be many slow days in trading where there either are no good trades to take or you get a loss instead of a winner. How you handle these situations and if you can move forward without being bogged down by them, will significantly influence your long-term trading results.
Conclusion
If you’re out fishing and you immediately dump all your bait into the water once you get out on your boat, how are you going to catch the big prize fish? Well, you aren’t, of course! When you’re trading, if you immediately go and risk way too much, and lose a large portion of your risk capital, how are you going to stick around long enough to catch some big trades? You won’t! A fisherman needs to manage his bait properly just like a professional trader manages his bankroll properly. You must not over-trade or over-leverage just like you must not waste your bait if you’re a pro fishermen.
A good fisherman is nothing if not prepared. He must learn to cast his line in the right places, first and foremost. Eventually, being well-prepared and well-educated on all the various variables of fishing, will result in developing successful fishing skills that put a fisherman into the upper-echelon of fishing professionals. Ultimately, what this does is develop a gut feel for fishing; a sort of ‘sixth sense’ that allows these fishermen to instantly recognize where and when to fish. Similarly, after learning how to trade and putting that knowledge to practice, you will develop deep trading skill that ultimately results in a refined gut trading feel that will put you in the top 10% of traders who are successful.
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This article was originally written by Nial Fuller.
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