QuCap @qucapllc - Twitter Profile

I spent over two decades as a full time futures trader and scalper, and I learned your edge isn’t just your strategy. It’s your focus. It’s the amount of hyperfocus it takes every single day. Blocking everything out, slowing your heart rate down, staying calm, believing in your homework, executing at a high level. Trading has to be your number one focus each day. So if you’re learning to become a successful trader, here are three things you may be focusing on that are working against you. First, other people’s money. Stop looking at how much everyone else is making. That’s the number one thing you have to look away from. I was around thousands of traders on the floor and I barely remember us talking about money. It was private. The goal was to build a life. It felt blue collar. Today everyone talks about what they make, trying to prove someone wrong about the market. It’s a different place, and a lot harder for a new trader to block the noise out. Second, the access. Overnight used to just be overnight, where you managed a position if you had one. Set time to start, set time to break, set time to come back. We traded mornings, skipped midday, came back for the close. Now the access never stops, and it’s spread everyone’s focus too thin to stay locked in. Third, understanding the market environment. We move between environments at a very rapid rate. We go from trending higher with no signs of a pullback, buy the dip and hold on, straight into sell off mode. Trying to guess what those days will be like going into them is very difficult. You have to stay open minded and understand how quickly the tape can change. Last Friday was the perfect example. A market runs higher a lot further than most thought, then unravels all at once. It’s the same psychology we see in traders. They stay in their own trend for only so long, then unravel all at once. If you’re not focused, or you’re clinging too hard to one market environment as you move into the next, you aren’t allowing things to be what they are. You’re fighting them for what they were. So here’s the simple part. Slow everything down. Survive a game where you pay your bills and stay in long enough to make a living. There will be moments this business really pays you, and you won’t choose them. They choose you. The rest is grinding, surviving, enjoying the process. Arguing with people on social media is a time waster, and the people who do it are usually unhappy in their own lives. Spend your time wisely. Focus is the whole game. Protect it like your account depends on it, because it does. Enjoy your life. Have fun. This is the greatest business in the world if you let it be. And it’ll be the worst, and destroy your life, if you let it. Cheers, DELI

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