How does making money trading make you feel?
This is an important question to ask ourselves, as it gives us an insight into our real feelings about money and making money through trading.
Why do we need to know how we really feel about money and trading?
Your feelings and beliefs about money could be sabotaging your trading success.
These beliefs could be deeply ingrained since childhood and depend on the culture you were brought up in, the opinions of people around you and the ways your family made a living.
One throw-away comment made to me by a highly-respected uncle when I was 8 has stayed with me since, and made a huge impact on my relationship with money and my ability to make “easy” money trading.
For years I grappled with the belief that “easy” money is somehow bad, that speculation is an immoral way to make money, that it is exploitative and unjust.
I get the irony that making money in the markets is somehow “easy”, by the way, hence the speech marks. It’s easy in the sense that it just takes a couple of clicks of a button, but no-one outside of trading can know how hard it really is!
I had to spend a lot of time finding a way to be OK with making money this way, to undo the years of conditioning that was sabotaging my progress as a trader.
So, I invite you to ask yourself some questions:
How do you feel about money and wealth?
How do you feel about those richer than you?
What reactions do you have when someone you love starts ranting about traders?
Do you feel that there is something unsavoury about making money too easily? If so, you might be making your trading system more difficult than it needs to be, or spending more hours in front of the screen just to feel like you earned the money you’ve made from trading.
It’s worth having a good hard look at your beliefs about making money and being rich, because to be a successful trader, you have to really truly believe that it is OK to make money in this way.
Even if you feel you don’t have any of these issues, it’s well worth taking a closer look. Imagine an annoying friend playing devil’s advocate and challenging your decision to make money trading.
Would you be able to explain how you stand ethically and morally? Are you clear in your own mind? Even if you'll never have that conversation in real life, it's a good exercise in working out what you believe.
If not, have a think, read around the subject, get clear on your beliefs about money, wealth, civilisation, society, the universe, whatever makes sense to you.
Then you can put to bed any un-ease about making money this way and get on with trading with renewed clarity.
- Looking for the best way to trade the markets? -
Our recommended broker is