The first step in becoming a successful trader is to understand your own psychological makeup, because once in a trade , logic goes out the window. this is because the emotions of fear and greed take precedence . To be a consistently successful trader the most important trait is to learn emotional discipline.

Second step is money management. Risk in terms of individual trades and risk as a percentage of account size. Understanding that losses are apart of trading ''The Holy Grail'' does not exist

Third step you must have a methodology that is objectively definable. That is a systematic unwavering way of examining price action, it should be simple enough, that if someone asks how you make a decision to trade you can quickly and easily explain and if someone asks the same question in six months time it will be the same answer, however that is not to say the method cannot be improved.

Agree with martinhunting 80 % is emotional and 20 % is mechanical , and if you try to find out the holy grail on the 20% , good luck .you will waist a lot of your life years
now you need to learn the mechanical part first to be in this business and that where the first problem show up , who is going to be your mentor, where there is hundred of options to choose from and where 95% are sale business man not a real professional traders, they can not make money trading and that where you need to choose from, wow, talking about
a hard way to start a business...now this business is all about prediction of the future,if this dont turn you off keep reading, yes you here me right you try to predict where the price will go in the near future so all you have is probabilities nothing else and no program or computer can tell you where price will do for sure but can give you some probable outcomes that all.
Now my advice for new traders is not to get to close to the action like scalping ,reading the tape, order flow, etc .this area is where the institutional algos are heavily invested and is where your emotional will be tested to your limit, you dont want to be there jet
Is much better to learn Market profile , volume profile and use bigger time frame charts to see where big money has been participate and where you can expect to participate in the future, now this levels of support and resistance are very visual and a lot of traders can see it, you are not the only one so you need to expect some kind a game from the big money to shake some weak hands, so my advice is to trade with micro emini contracts to keep you emotional levels low and be able to stay with the trade
you dont need any fancy tools to trade this way only basic charts.

mayazoro 

That's a very nice volume profile. Is that Sierra Chart or a 3rd party indicator? Thanks.

Sierra Charts

tonybravo 

I have no edge. I don't know what my edge could be. I'm trading blind. Today I lost $50 by over trading and just being wrong I started with just $1000 near the end of April. I'm down by $280. I can't seem to get this right. I go long, I'm down 10 ticks. I go short, then the contract moves 10 ticks upwards. Once in a while I'll get lucky and catch a 20 tick move but then it's back to getting it wrong constantly. I'm trading the mes contracts. 1 at a time. Should I just withdrawal and go home or do I keep trying to get better? It just seems that no matter what direction I choose I have it wrong. Sent using the nexusfi.com mobile app

Yours is a very common situation with beginning retail traders.

A couple of questions to ask yourself:

1) Do I really love trading?
2) Am I willing to put in a ton of hard work to find an edge?

If your answers to either 1 or 2 are no then quit trading and find something that 1) you love, 2) you're good at, and 3) can make decent money.

Analytic 

Yours is a very common situation with beginning retail traders. A couple of questions to ask yourself: 1) Do I really love trading? 2) Am I willing to put in a ton of hard work to find an edge? If your answers to either 1 or 2 are no then quit trading and find something that 1) you love, 2) you're good at, and 3) can make decent money.

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