The virtue of patience in trading is often overlooked as a key success factor. Most likely it’s because the majority of traders who are enticed by the prospects of huge, immediate returns on their money aren’t likely to have patience as a virtue.

After all, the promise of trading is to make big money fast, isn’t it? And when a trader first enters the arena, they want big money, quick money, easy money NOW.

Without patience, a trader may have the tendency to trade when he or she shouldn’t. Instead of waiting for the best trading set-ups, the trader would take extra unnecessary risk by trading when not all the factors are in their favor.

Worse, this bad habit is compounded by the uncertain nature of the markets.

Some of these hastily taken trades sometimes do make profits, and do make profits big. This reinforces the belief of the trader that he or she has done the right thing. On those trades that lose, the trader can deceive themself that, “It’s ok, losing is part of the game. I’ll win more than I lose.”

However, over a series of trades, the losers will tend to mount up and eventually the losses will outweigh the gains. By this time, the bad habit of taking trades because of the “need” for a quick fix will be deeper ingrained onto the psyche of the trader, making it much more difficult to break out of the emotional need to trade.

Fortunately, however, if you have applied sound money management and managed to save your trading capital, you might have the chance to learn patience.

It’ll be a swing from the “need to trade” to “fear of trading” after getting burned several times. But if you practice sound money management, keep your trading journal, and paper trade your way out of this pyschological funk, you have a much better chance of trading success.

But since you know this already, why do it? It’s much better to practice trading discipline right from the start!