How to deal with uncertainty

1 Nov 2022

Hello traders,

All the below are based on my preferences, I don't give any financial recommendations and I have nothing to sell you with this article.
I'm sharing content because I see a lot of traders being/becoming broke and I don't want you to be one of them.

Who taught me to become a great trader?
Was it a majority of trying and failing? or was it masterminds? was it consultants? mentors? books?

I) I was not afraid to fail

I became successful because I wasn't afraid to fail.
We learn quickly when we can fail then instead of dwelling I just got back up and tried again.

And it took me weeks to figure out some issues with my trading simply from analysing my past trades AND it's way faster than reading trading books, buying trading courses taking me months to figure them out.

II) I was totally fine in the unknown

Disclaimer: you'll never be able to predict the future, what the FED is going to do, which country is going to invade which country, which bank will default, etc
Most traders, the reason they can't succeed, is because they're looking for a mentor, a book, i.e. certainty and reassurance

If you can survive and be ok with uncertainty then you realise you don't need all those things because you have common sense and thinking power.
And you can actually think on your feet, you can iterate, you can innovate => fancy words to say you can adapt your trading strategies based on how volatile and directional the market is

Great traders don't need certainty that a scenario will happen for sure.
Regardless if it happens or not, they'll handle it either way.
No blueprint is needed.
They're prepared to trade regardless of how they feel the market should do and that's how I deal with uncertainty too.

I accepted taking those risks with a demo account first and then trading micro-lots for about a year because I trusted I could make it as a trader.

III) Self-education

Now that I have a bit of money, I spend a lot in courses, mentorships, workshops, books, one-to-one coaching with 9+ figures people way above me in the "food chain"
But let me be perfectly clear, I didn't spend a dime when I learned how to trade
I learned by..... doing, failing, again and again and again.... at a 0 or low risk because I was smart enough to trade with the smallest position sizes possible.

Conclusion

The learn on the go mentality doesn't mean you learn and then go.
It means you learn while you go.

It's not because you have incomplete information that you have incomplete action.

You're going to learn more from the completed action than you would from the lesson you're trying to learn through research (book, course, ...)
With enough volume of trades, you'll be directionally correct eventually and then you can iterate from there.

Rather than looking to capture the whole trades profit from top to bottom/bottom to top, not looking for the perfect trades but looking to capture opportunity at every trade, you'll speed up your decision loop a lot.

Thank you for reading
I'll keep bringing a few articles like this every week because it helps me clarifying my thoughts AND giving back to the community makes me feel good about myself somehow :)

Dave