3 Must-haves for Top TradersStats published by exchanges clearly show that 80% of traders lose money. So the inquiry is not “how to get into the top 20%?” Who wants to settle for mere profitability? The inquiry becomes “how do I get into the upper 3% of traders?” - The “fly around in private jets” and “build whole schools in Africa” traders?
The answer is simple. Stop being human. It’s our human emotions that trip us up every time. We close winning trades too early (take the money and run) and hang onto losing trades too long (pray for a miracle).
Top traders (the ones with private jets) have one thing in common. They all know how to code. And they automate their trading to take the human element out of it. So here’s your quick list of must-haves skills and tools to invest in. Your best investments to get you into the upper 3%. The journey from staring at your computer doing live Technical Analysis to sitting on the beach while your bot trades for you.
Get Tradingview Premium. If you’re serious about making money, you need the ability to back-test. The deep-backtester that comes with a premium level account is going to give you the accurate results you need. Trading code that hasn’t been properly back-tested and optimized is a game of russian roulette. The money you make from trading well tested strategies will pay for this investment ten-fold. Which brings me to my third and final point, optimization.
Master Pine Script. Shout-out here to Matt Slabosz who developed Pine Script Mastery - an excellent overview course for beginners. Matt is not only a solid trader and exceptional coder, his true brilliance is being able to explain complex coding concepts in simple terms. Given that the last time I’d coded was punching fortran cards in University, taking his course was a pleasant surprise in how easy and addictive learning to code Pine Script can be.
Optimize your strategy. There are solid strategies published on tradingview that look unprofitable at first glance. That’s simply a matter of knowing the correct settings for the derivative and market conditions you’re trading. So you have two choices.
Sit at your computer all night and run scenarios on the deep back-tester, or
Buy an optimization tool that will run scenarios while you sleep.
Being way past the age where I’m willing to give up my sleep, the answer, for me, is a no-brainer. TradingTools.software is my top pick for optimizing your TradingView strategy. It allows you to pinpoint the weak areas of your strategy down to the window of where the biggest losses are occuring. This information is pure gold to creating strategies to filter against market conditions where your automated strategy would otherwise fail.
Learning the skills and buying the tools you need is critical to mastering any profession. Trading is no different.
