10 Golden Rules for Successful Trading

Are you new to trading or more experienced? No matter how long you have been in the markets some common sense approaches never get old!

Here are 10 golden rules of trading on patience, discipline, trade setup, system & plan and money management.

1. Never add to a losing trade (martingale approach)
2. Never risk more than 1-2% of your trading capital on any one trade
3. Never trade anything you don't fully understand
4. Always trade in the direction of the trend (in your trading timeframe)
5. Only look for low risk/high reward trades, or high probability setups. If there is no setup, simply don't trade!
6. Trade your plan, your signals, your setup, the chart and price action. Do not trade opinions, biases or predictions.
7. Find a (backtested) trading methodology that fits your personality and trust it.
8. Don't trade before you have a complete trading plan, including rules on entries, exits and risk management.
9. The size of your wins and losses determine your trading success
10. Your risk management rules will determine the success of your technical trading system.

These are some basic principles and rules that will make you successful in trading long term, regardless of what you trade. These are interchangeable for stock traders, options traders, futures traders, and forex traders.

It is up to every trader to establish a pre-market routine and build strong trading habits. You should strive to attain discipline if you ever hope to achieve any level of trading success. Trading discipline is practised 100 percent of the time, in every trade, each and every day!

There is no 'holy grail' of trading, no system works 100% of the time.

Discipline and Risk Management are the key!

"I always say that you could publish trading rules in the newspaper and no one would follow them. The key is consistency and discipline. Almost anybody can make up a list of rules that are 80% as good as what we taught people. What they couldn't do is give them the confidence to stick to those rules even when things are going bad" - Richard Dennis (The Trader & Teacher Behind the TurtleTraders)