by guest contributor Jennifer Gorton from Forex Traders

Many individuals are lured into the world of trading due to apparent possibility of easy money. However, every new trader quickly comes to the startling revelation that there is no such thing as easy money in financial markets. Profiting consistently as a trader is difficult. Industry legend says that 90%-95% of day-traders lose most or of all of their capital. Investors who hold trades for a longer period of time tend to perform better, but the majority still loses money over the long term. It’s not easy! But there are certain truths that, when followed, tend to increase the probability of trading success drastically. Let’s examine a few.

Seek to Build A Skill Set, Not To Make Money

The lure of easy and quick money that often draws new traders must be discarded from one’s psychological approach to the market. Instead of focusing on making money, if a trader or investor shifts focus to developing the skill set necessary for success in the financial markets, the money will take care of itself. It takes hard work, discipline, and passion to develop the proper skill that is required of a successful trader. Have a long-term goal in mind. Be committed to developing your knowledge of the market you want to trade, and the profits will take care of themselves over time.

Trading Is A Profession, Treat It As Such

Trading is a profession similar to that of a physician, engineer, or architect. You cannot go to a weekend seminar and become a successful doctor, and similarly one cannot attend a weekend investing seminar and expect to be a consistently profitable trader from day one. Trading must be treated as a profession. A professional in any field has an initial period of education where they are first immersed in a wealth of new information that prepares them for success as a content-area expert. Then, after the initial period of education, they begin to practice. And finally, after a period of practice, they begin to work as a professional in their given field of expertise. Treat trading as a business and a profession. Analyze every trade you take. What did you do right? What did you do wrong? Similar to how a business continually assesses its operation and business strategy, you want to continually assess and review your trade ideas and results in order to fully optimize your trading strategy for maximum profitability.

Mental Capital Is Even More Important Than Financial Capital

Much focus in trading books and educational materials is on money management and how to protect one’s capital. That is, of course, one of the most important aspects of trading and investing, and it demands attention. However, since those discussions are prevalent everywhere, we will instead focus on the importance of mental capital, since this is a less-discussed, but perhaps even more important issue. Mental capital refers to the psychological strength and confidence of a trader. If this is lost, a trader is ruined. Thus, it is absolutely essential that mental capital be protected at all costs.

The connection between mental and financial capital is very close. When a trader suffers a drawdown in his or her account, instantly his or her mental capital will take a hit. If the drawdown is too big, it will be enough to completely drain the trader of mental capital, and this is the point where most traders quite and give up trading and investing. Thus, a trader must answer the question of how he or she can protect mental capital at all costs. The answer to that question is to trade very conservatively. If extremely small positions are taken relative to account size, a loss is never going to threaten a trader’s mental capital. In fact, it is essential that new traders trade with a position size that enables them to be completely emotionally detached from the trade. If a stop loss is hit and a trade realizes a full loss, it must be a dollar amount that will not damage the traders psyche.

This is how one protects one’s mental capital. Then, as confidence and consistency build, a trader can begin to increase the amount of risk on each trade. Taking too much risk per trade is one of the most common pitfalls of a new Forex trader. Every trader’s risk profile is different, but it is a good idea for a new trader to never risk more than 1% on a trade. This will allow complete emotional detachment from each trade, and it will help build confidence and consistency over time.

2009-07-05 issue:

A bond is a guaranteed financial loss. How the heck this is "safe" escapes me.

Why is a bond a guaranteed financial loss? A bond is not equity, it's debt. It creates no value. For that reason, it can never return enough to outpace inflation. While "investing" in a bond is safer than hoarding Federal Reserve Notes (the cotton "dollar bills" that people erroneously refer to as "paper money") and much safer than making an equity "investment" (stock) in something you know little about, it's not safe.

Stocks are safe, only if you understand what you are buying. Since stock is an equity (ownership) investment, it holds the potential to outpace inflation. You have to remember that you are buying ownership in an income-producing asset. You need to evaluate that asset before buying, and you need to understand the risks of ownership.

Unless you understand the products, management, market, and competitive environment of the company you are buying stock in, you are merely gambling. Since most people lack the education, information resources, time, and perseverance to understand these things, most people should not buy individual stocks. Mutual funds, yes--but only if you understand the management and the fund philosophy. If you are merely chasing returns, you are gambling.

What else can you do? Some obvious investments include:

• Invest in training and education so you qualify for higher income (proven: this works).
• Invest in your health, so you don't have disease accommodation bills (what we call "healthcare" bills).
• Invest in your mind by reading books, so you have brainpower, attention span, and knowledge.

Most people don't think of those three things as investment, but they should. Most people think in terms of buying something. OK, so let's go there.

In 1983, I read a book that profoundly influenced my thinking on investing. It talked about buying things on sale, and stocking up when you do. This was something my parents did, and though I didn't think of that in terms of investing, I followed this pattern more or less. However, you can manage this kind of buying in a way that vastly outstrips the "return" the average investor gets on "investment."

The key isn't to buy things just because they are on sale. Do that, and you merely accumulate clutter. The key is to buy things you'd use anyhow. For example, there's a sale on motor oil, 10% off. Buy the oil. If you use it 6 months later, you've made a 20% annual profit.

Inflation may not stay within reasonable bounds. So even if you were able to buy everything with, say, an annual profit of 20% you could still lose wealth at an alarming rate. Of course, your 20% return is much better than the 5% return someone else is making via a financial investment.

Most people will not do the math on investing. If they buy a case of oil and look at it six months later, they see a case of oil. There is no broker's statement showing they made 20% on it. So they don't understand that they made that kind of return on the investment. Plus, they are going to use the oil and then it's gone so all they see is that they spent money on oil.

If you think about it, this example is actually a leveraged investment. It's money you were going to spend (not have) anyhow, and so you make 20% on someone else's money but do so with real goods. Pretty hard to lose in that scenario.

I think the basic problem is people want to see something on paper showing their "profits" but don't understand that paper profits aren't real profits. They are just paper profits.

Let's look even closer at this, now. You don't pay income tax on the 20% return on that oil, but you will pay income tax on that 5% paper profit. Not only that, the IRS can seize your accounts (paper profit storage) with no warning or justification, but they aren't going to come to your house for that case of oil.

Does the word "duh" start coming to mind?

Investing isn't something you spend your money on. Investing is a strategy for how you spend your money. And your time.

2012-01-01 issue:

People talk about how the USA federal government "borrows" money. That's a misuse of terminology. The reality is the federal govt taxes us in an amount equal to the amount it spends. When it "borrows" from the Federal Reserve, the FR simply creates the money out of thin air. This inflates the money supply by the amount allegedly "borrowed." Because inflation means each existing dollar is worth that much less, the effect is a "taking" from existing dollar holders. In other words, it's a tax.

But the FR doesn't simply create this counterfeit money that causes us financial loss. It then records its theft as OUR debt on ITS books! Not only are we taxed (by inflation), we are also saddled with debt--that's two entries on the same side of the ledger instead of one on each side. Talk about cooking the books!

The way the FR does this, it's like the creep who stole your stereo invoices you for the value of what he took! Only in this case, there's much, much more money involved.

This scam is fundamentally different from the way borrowing works. Borrowing puts equal amounts on opposite sides of the ledger, not two entries on the debit side.

Rather than call it borrowing, we should call it debt-added taxation. Make a point of correcting the sycophants who refer to this robbery as "borrowing," because it's nothing of the sort and not nearly as benign.

Stimulating in the Economy

Now that we are clear on federal "borrowing," we can understand why even more federal debt-added taxation doesn't "stimulate" the economy. It does stimulate unemployment, as the data clearly show and as common horse sense would predict. Other things it stimulates in the economy include foreclosures, plant closings, store closings, unpaid loans, bankruptcies, cutbacks in city services, and cutbacks in county services.

People who rejoice in the fact that the USA ranks at the bottom of all industrialized nations in literacy will be pleased to know that Obamanomics also stimulates the closing of public libraries, due to the shrinking county tax base resulting from the other things this insanity stimulates.

So be careful when you encounter the propaganda about money "helping" the economy via federal "stimulus." This is not merely a false idea. It's outright fraud.

The money isn't the result of a transaction, for example I spend money (that I earned) on something I want. What enters the economy is not new wealth (none is created in this scam) or even wealth taken from another party or loaned by another party. As we just noted, it's debt-added taxation.

Just to make sure this point hits home: when the Federal Reserve creates this money out of thin air for the govt to "borrow" (instantly debasing the currency), that does not "inject" money into the economy. It taxes us by degrading the value of money already in the economy, and amazingly the FR adds debt by invoicing us for the amount we are taxed!

Accounting for Stimulus

To believe in the hocus pocus of "stimulus," you would have to do Enron style accounting. This kind of fraud is illegal, which is why Ken Lay, et al, went to prison. Also, we flunk second graders (used to flunk them, anyhow) for not being able to differentiate between adding and subtracting. It's an elementary concept. It is impossible to increase by decreasing.

So when the federal govt spends (transfers to wealthy individuals via govt contracts) money it does not have, this can never stimulate the economy. It can, and does, stimulate job loss and a whole string of other negative consequences. Thanks to Obama, we have the empirical data to prove this and no longer have to rely on difficult concepts such as 4 - 2 = 2 not 6.

Stop the Stealing

The effect all this stealing has on your financial security is anything but positive. Please let your misrepresentative in CONgress know that the rampant spending, inflating, stealing, debt creation, and "Ken Lay accounting" must stop.

About 90% of all federal govt expenditures are illegal (see the 10th Amendment), so reducing the spending to something approaching sensible does not involve any hard choices. Unless, of course, you're on the take and are accepting illegal payments to induce you to spend money your fellow Americans do not have.

It's no coincidence that most members of CONgress don't take long to become millionaires once they are in office. If we are silent, they will continue to pillage and steal. So speak up. Your financial future depends on it.