Millionaire TradersI go into the office at about 7:00a.m.Eastern time, and I trade
the short-term New York session if a setup comes along, and if
I haven’t already reached my profit goal for the week. I answer
e-mails and keep an eye on long-term charts at the same time. I
also chat on instant messaging with some of the best traders that
I know. By 12 noon, I’m done with the short-term trading, and
I move on to producing content for my Web site, and planning
long-term trades. In the afternoon I try as often as possible to also
go back home and spend time with my family, wrestle with my son,
or play with my baby daughter, and help out around the house. In
the evenings I do more long-term analysis, read with my wife and
kids, help put the kids to bed, and then do more long-term analysis.
I don’t often get up in the middle of the night any longer,
but when I do, that is a perfect time to check on some of the
longer-term trading.
Q: What is your goal for the week?
A: I have a point target in my trading account, a goal for a number
of points of profit, or pips, that I want to make per week. But I
don’t have a dollar-based earnings target. I find that thinking too
much about a certain dollar amount, or an item that I want to buy,
takes my focus off what the market is able to give me, and puts
the emphasis dangerously upon what I want the market to give
me. I’ve pretty much consistently decided that Rob Booker is a 50-
to 100-pip a week trader, meaning I understand the limits of my
trading capacity—and over 50 to 100 points of profit, I start getting
a little bit crazy. I become a little bit less disciplined and a little
bit more euphoric to put it mildly. So I have not generally done a
lot to increase that pip target over time even though systems that
I build might produce bigger gains.
This is actually something that I strongly believe in. There are
two things that I haven’t mentioned so far that I feel are really
important, and one of them is that there is a misconception that,
in order to be considered successful as a trader, one has to earn
a certain dollar amount per week, or per month, or per day. One