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BOOK YOUR FREE STRATEGY SESSION NOW >>Is trading something that anyone can do? Or have you ever thought that maybe it takes a special kind of person to really succeed as a trader?
Throughout our years of training, we’ve had the chance to meet thousands of students—each with their own unique personalities, backgrounds, and life stories.
Every single one of them has taught us something valuable, helping us pinpoint a set of common traits shared by those who succeed in trading.
Curious to find out what these traits are and whether you have them too?
Then you won’t want to miss this video! Here’s what you’ll learn:
-Which professional backgrounds tend to excel in trading
-The essential traits of successful traders and how they think and act
-The mindset and risk approach of top-performing traders
See if you match the profile of a successful trader! And even if you find that you’re missing a trait or two, don’t worry—with some effort, you can develop them too!
Enjoy the video! 😉
What Makes a Successful Trader?
Hi, from Andrea Unger.
What are the common traits of a successful trader? Well, obviously, I can only refer to my experience, not just my personal experience, but my experience with the students of the Unger Academy. We have thousands of students from all over the world.
And Francesco Placci and I often work together to define who is the winner of the Trader of the Month contest. And analyzing the traits of the different winners over time, we arrived at a point where we found out that there are some common traits, kust to identify a sort of a profile, profiling the successful trader, or at least the systematic trader.
What Traits Do Successful Traders Share?
Who is this guy? First of all, there are two categories of workers and students, let's say. One is entrepreneurs. We found many entrepreneurs in this category. Why? Most probably we understood that normally who is running a business is accustomed to analyzing and planning. Planning whatever has an impact on their decisions. I mean, every decision has an outcome, and normally an entrepreneur is there to analyze: “Doing A I cause B. Doing C I cause D”. So, he is always trying to make decision based on analysis and a plan, what happens if blah, blah, blah.
This is something that obviously in trading is very important, because I also said that to plan is of top importance in trading, and in this case, even more because you see that planning things properly, you have an edge over those who try to react only. If you are ready, you need to react, but maybe you have already in mind what kind of reaction to put in place.
Why a Scientific Mindset Matters
Another category of students, in this case, I mean, what I got in terms of degree, is engineers. Now, "I'm not an engineer, I'm lost!” No! But why engineers? I noticed this more than once, and I believe that engineers can excel in trading not because they learn things in engineering and so they apply these to trading. Absolutely not. Because if that were the truth, a baker would say, "Oh, I'm lost. I will never have those skills." Now, the baker is a great job, I like bread. And he has all the possibilities to be a successful trader, not even being an engineer.
The point about engineers is that they have a sort of a scientific mindset. They are born with this, or they develop this mindset during their learning path. They develop it, it was not part of the material they had to study, but the way they had to approach all the tasks and problems they were facing, developed this scientific mindset, which is —we already spoke about that in another previous comment from min— is the way to face problems in a schematic way. Trying to go from A to B, step by step, analysing every single outcome. You do not just try to find a solution, putting so many things in place. No, you go and you do things one after the other, just seeing the impact of each of these. The scientific mindset is to put order in the chaos of a problem. Engineers are very very good at this.
And this is something that obviously helps enormously in trading as well because we have problems in trading. If we face the challenges that we have, especially in automated trading, where there are also problems of debugging, maybe when something is going wrong, facing it with a scientific mindset helps. The good news is that anybody can develop this mindset by being aware of what to focus on. This is more or less in terms of picture, big picture.
A Key Ingredient: Ongoing Education
And then going into what they do, these winners or runner up in the contest, we noticed that they are all serious students. How, incredible! I mean, they all, first of all, passionate about what they were learning, and they were trying to learn as much as possible from what we were delivering in our training path. They were really getting and then applying the knowledge in a very, very clean way. So, they were not just sort of a talented genius putting things in. No, they were trying to work in an ordered way, in ordered and systematic way, which is great because I believe that when you do things in an ordered way, you have things under control. And they showed this.
Why Curiosity is Key for Top Traders
They were serious students. Serious, but also curious. Another trait: curiosity. What does this mean? These people obviously took whatever they had to take out of the path. They tried to digest it and then to put it at work. But they did not stop there. They were trying to look further. They were trying to gather new ideas, to get new ideas, to look for new things. Based on the knowledge they just acquainted, they just wanted to go further.
For example, one student applied the Unger Method to spread trading. I mean, he created a synthetic instrument with buy and sell. And then he applied the Unger Method on this. This is, I do not say crazy, because I did it as well, but it is not in the path. So, he had a great fantasy and curiosity because he wanted to look further. He wanted to go beyond. He said, "okay, fine, I like this, I love this. What’s next?" And he went out there looking for it. He was not waiting for us to give it. He went out and looked for it because he wanted to know this.
And doing so, obviously, these guys are normally ready in front of challenging problems or things that can happen. The unexpected, okay, it's expected, but if you are curious and fast in thinking, you might find a solution. I got great help with this when participating in the World Cup trading Championship because, as I said, I had to be fast in reacting to things and also right in reacting. I got helped when I developed there and then used it in my personal day-by-day trading. But these guys, with curiosity, had a great great help.
Male, men, not because men are better than women. It's just a question of numbers. There are so many men. But the trader of the year was a woman, a brilliant woman, an engineer, but a woman.
Balancing Tolerance and Risk Management
Then, another trait they had in common is, I don’t mean how risky they were working, they all had a reasonable risk, which is obviously fine. Not too low, not too high. But they were able to identify their risk tolerance in a good way, which I was not, for example, because in 2009, I said that I had the conviction that I could stand easily a 25% drawdown, and all of a sudden I had some losses and I really felt bad. What is going on here? I had a look into the numbers, and I was at 11%, so I thought I could be brave enough to face 25%, and with 11%, I was already dead.
I was not good at that. These guys were all good at that. They were able to properly evaluate their risk tolerance and therefore to build a proper plan in terms of risk management where they could cope with. This is very important because I don't say they never panic, but obviously, they face the problems and losses in trading in a different way, with a different attitude. This is, in my opinion, really important. If you are able to keep calm when everything goes crazy, you have an edge. These guys showed that for sure. And these guys had also, thanks to curiosity, the proper way to face the challenges and to adapt to changing conditions in a fast way, which is another important trait.
Defining the Ideal Trader Profile
So now, I mean, these are all characteristics that some people come with, of course, they are lucky, but some other people develop through experience of life. Developing these kinds of skills with experiences is obviously good because you digest it better, you make it yours in a better way. But it is also bad because normally the experiences you go through are bad, and so you suffer from something.
Knowing the traits of a successful trader is useful. It is a useful thing because you can focus on that. You can think, am I good at these things or am I bad? Do I suck at this or what? Would I be a good entrepreneur? If you are not, would I be a good entrepreneur? Do I plan things? Not always. Maybe I should try to focus on that a bit more. Do I have a scientific mindset? Do I face problems step-by-step? Not always. Focus on that. All this helps in trading. Am I a disciplined student? Did I study properly everything? Did I apply the knowledge in the best way? Yes. No, I was lazy. You can obviously improve yourself.
So, I mean, you are not lost if you are not with the traits I just mentioned. You have an incredible opportunity to developing the weakness areas to become your strength areas, knowing in what direction to go.
This is it. I hope it helps, and I hope you will all be the next successful traders in Unger Academy so that I can pick new traits based on your personal psychology mindset, and skills.
Ciao, from Andrea Unger.
We'll help you map out a plan to fix the problems in your trading and get you to the next level. Answer a few questions on our application and then choose a time that works for you.
BOOK YOUR FREE STRATEGY SESSION NOW >>Andrea Unger here and I help retail traders to improve their trading, scientifically. I went from being a cog in the machine in a multinational company to the only 4-Time World Trading Champion in a little more than 10 years.
I've been a professional trader since 2001 and in 2008 I became World Champion using just 4 automated trading systems.
In 2015 I founded Unger Academy, where I teach my method of developing effecting trading strategies: a scientific, replicable and universal method, based on numbers and statistics, not hunches, which led me and my students to become Champions again and again.
Now I'm here to help you learn how to develop your own strategies, autonomously. This channel will help you improve your trading, know the markets better, and apply the scientific method to financial markets.
Becoming a trader is harder than you think, but if you have passion, will, and sufficient capital, you'll learn how to code and develop effective strategies, manage risk, and diversify a portfolio of trading systems to greatly improve your chances of becoming successful.
