I have been trading for over a decade and have encountered a diverse array of traders, each with their own unique personality traits. I have also observed that while unsuccessful traders come in all shapes and sizes, successful traders tend to share many similarities. Later, as I established my own trading team, I developed my own criteria for selecting traders.

Today, in this article, I will discuss some of the personality traits that a successful trader should possess, which can also serve as a guide for everyone to self-assess whether they should join this industry.

1. Attention to Detail

A few years ago, I recruited a group of traders, all of whom were young people with more than three years of practical trading experience. One young man who left a deep impression on me was full of ideas and quick-witted, but he had a significant and persistent issue: carelessness. For instance, he made mistakes such as calculating the wrong position size, placing stop-loss orders incorrectly, and even trading the wrong instrument, which happened on multiple occasions.

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I required all traders in my team to strictly set stop-losses on all orders and insisted that they check their orders after entry: the instrument, trading direction, position size, stop-loss, and take-profit settings, etc. I emphasized this in every meeting and reminded him about it. I have also summarized some common mistakes that traders often make on my public account (Eight-Digit Garden), which everyone can refer to in order to avoid the same errors.

However, this young man still made a fatal mistake. After the Brexit in 2016, the fluctuation of the British pound against the US dollar became very large. One night, he carelessly forgot to set a stop-loss on a long position in the pound against the dollar. The next morning, when the pound plummeted, the account suffered a 30% loss, involving a significant amount of money. I had no choice but to let this young man go.In the same batch, there was also a young man who didn't talk much and was rather introverted. Sometimes when we joked with him, he didn't know how to respond. However, he was extremely meticulous with every transaction he handled, whether it was a large account or a small one. Once it was handed over to him, he would meticulously complete every order with a very low error rate, almost zero.

He may not be very talkative, and he may not stand out in his work, but every time I handed over accounts to him during duty shifts, I felt very reassured and hardly needed to remind him of anything.

Moreover, I found that he has a strong research ability. If given a market trend or strategy, he could quietly focus on it for an entire month, not missing any detail until he found the merits of the trading strategy.

Currently, this young man has also become one of the core traders in our team.

Attention to detail is an excellent quality and a habit of doing things. Many people don't take the matter of being meticulous to heart, thinking it's useless and that being smart in trading is the most important thing.

However, this is not the case. Although trading may seem simple, just a matter of buying and selling, there are many details involved, and being cautious and meticulous is extremely important.

Be meticulous when doing technical analysis. You can't afford to make mistakes, such as the patterns on the charts, the establishment of high and low points, the connection of trend lines, etc. Once you make a mistake, all subsequent trading decisions and orders will be wrong.

Be meticulous when entering orders. Confirming before entering and checking after entering are the most basic qualities of a trader, especially at key points of significant risk events, where a small mistake could lead to fatal losses.

Be meticulous when executing orders. Whether to adjust the stop loss, take profit, add or reduce positions, these details are all very important, and not handling them well can greatly affect profits.

Being inattentive is being irresponsible to the money in your account. If you don't love your own money, then how can money love you?2. Patience

I believe many people have read "Way of the Turtle" and "Reminiscences of a Stock Operator." I have also given away copies of these books because they indeed offer much to learn from. The stories within took place over a century ago, yet the financial markets today continue to echo the same patterns.

In "Way of the Turtle," the turtles, who had received identical trading training, were trading the exact same market conditions, and even the capital in their accounts was the same. At the start of their trading journey, most turtles lacked patience when holding positions, closing them prematurely and missing out on substantial profits. The author, however, patiently held on to his positions and ended up making $78,000, a profit three times that of the other turtles. Most turtles closed their positions during market corrections, missing out on significant gains.

Behind trading lies human nature. What are these individuals truly competing for? Is it the level of trading skills? Who is smarter? Or who possesses more trading knowledge?

In reality, it's none of these. The profitability of trading often comes down to human nature. If you are more patient than others, more resistant to temptation, and more capable of enduring pain, then it is the person who perseveres to the end who will ultimately reap the rewards.

I have spent time in a trading room filled with many traders. Once orders were placed, if the market did not move as expected, many would become extremely agitated, even cursing and using foul language to express their frustration with the market.

Such venting of negative emotions is pointless; it only serves to further excite and potentially enrage the traders, leading to more irrational trading actions.

Subtly, you may start to perceive the market trend as being in opposition to you, as if the market is deliberately preventing you from profiting. We have previously emphasized a key phrase: befriend the trend, go with the flow, and only then can you make money.

In the face of vast market trends, we are but a drop in the ocean, akin to the relationship between an ant and the Earth. It is meaningless to oppose it, but by hitching a ride on the market's wave, it might just share a portion of the spoils with you.So, if you can learn to observe the market from a detached perspective, to view your account beyond the orders, and to hold your chips waiting for the wind to come, you can truly achieve stable profits.

3. The ability to think and explore

I once had a student who was particularly inquisitive, sometimes to the point where I found him a bit annoying, yet he was also my favorite among all my students.

Why was that?

I remember one time he asked me, why choose the lowest point? Can we choose the second-lowest point? How much difference is there between the lowest and second-lowest points? Wouldn't a smaller stop loss at the second-lowest point with a better risk-reward ratio lead to more profits?

I told him that choosing the second-lowest point is also possible, but the transaction error rate is relatively high, which is not conducive to execution. However, choosing the lowest point results in much more moderate trading outcomes, which helps traders maintain their mindset and is beneficial for the execution of trades. This choice is made from the perspective of the executability of the trading system, not from the angle of profitability.

He was a bit puzzled by my explanation, so he continued to ask me, "Teacher, can I learn from you how to verify the validity of this viewpoint?"

Later, I directly taught him how to use backtesting software to test the performance of the second-lowest point. After spending a week on testing and doing data statistics, he turned around and told me, "Teacher, I finally understand why."

Although this student often made me feel "annoyed," he is currently the best trader among all my students.

I also have another student who is the epitome of diligence. He takes notes on most of what I say and has shown me several thick notebooks, all filled with my words and written articles.He often says to me: "Teacher, I've written down everything you said, and I flip through it whenever I have nothing to do."

When I ask him: "So, the 60-day moving average and the 80-day moving average, which one do you think is more useful?"

He replies: "You mentioned before that their performances are similar."

I ask: "Do you know why? Have you tested them in historical data?"

He says: "I already know the answer, so why bother testing?"

In fact, this way of thinking is closely related to our educational methods. In school, teachers often tell you what the answer is, and all you have to do is remember it. As a result, no one thinks about how the formula came to be or why it is the way it is.

So you give up thinking and exploring, happily accepting the information given to you, using memory to cover up your laziness.

However, trading is not like that.

Trading is a thousand faces, based on your personality, based on your trading habits, actually everyone should have their own trading system. A set of trading formulas is not suitable for all traders.

Just like in the past, when I shared a trading system, some people thanked me because they took it, retested it, and debugged it, eventually turning it into their own, and found it useful; some people came back and cursed me, saying my stuff was worthless.In fact, all the knowledge is right in front of you; you can simply reach out and take it, placing it into your own mind. But the most challenging part is to "deep process" this knowledge within your mind, to think about it, test it, break it down and rebuild it, forming a piece of knowledge that bears your name, and then storing it. Only then does it truly become yours.

However, many people still fail to understand this principle and continue to reach out for "ready-made solutions." As a result, those who demand things in any industry often struggle to thrive.

4. The ability to summarize and reflect

After a game of mahjong, when asked if you won, you would typically respond with "Yes, I won." Few would willingly admit: "I lost, and I lost badly."

I remember in the past, when I was in some trading discussion groups, there would often be disputes because of differing views on the market trends, mutual denial, or looking down on each other's trading strategies.

Including when I shared some of my trading insights online, many people would leave comments saying: "Your insights are garbage; you don't even understand and still dare to speak out, etc."

In the early days, I would definitely rush to argue with people, but now, sometimes when I see such remarks, I would instead reflect on whether I didn't explain something clearly enough or if there was an issue with the details of a particular strategy.

Then I would go back and review and adjust my own approach to achieve optimization.

Among us traders, 80% are male. Men tend to value face and are prone to overestimating themselves, not being open to others' opinions.

(Don't get angry, brothers, when you read this; I am also a man, and criticizing you is like criticizing myself, but I must address it because our goal is profit, not face. Only when we make money do we have face.)But in fact, we have all blurred the key point. Outside, you can maintain your pride and face, but inside, you must calm down and reflect well.

For example, in the early days, even though I was losing money, when communicating with others, I still wanted to "guide" others on what to do because I felt I knew more than him.

But after the quarrel, I would still take out the previous account's trading records to have a look, what mistakes I had made, and whether the points that the guy pointed out as wrong were reasonable.

Then I would make a summary and reflection, and found that I really made these mistakes, and had been making the same mistakes in the history of orders for a year. So I recorded these issues and started to formulate a new trading plan, forcing myself to strictly implement it.

All the traders in my trading team have to write daily summaries, weekly summaries, and spend half an hour every day to review and summarize, whether they missed trading opportunities that day, or made wrong trades.

In this way, over a long period of time, everyone can be more strict with themselves, face past mistakes calmly, and also know what they should improve and how to improve.

No one is born perfect, we can have our own self-esteem, and we can have our own small pride, but if we want to do better, we must find the root of the problem. And to find the root of the problem, we can only summarize and reflect from past mistakes.

If you have been stably losing money for many years, there must be a problem in the transaction. You might as well try to implement it as I said, and you may have different gains.