Every trader, no matter how successful, loses money trading. There is no Holy Grail in futures trading, no perfect system that always wins. But there are tricks and techniques you can learn to keep your losses small. You can learn these tricks and techniques in my Futures Trading Secrets Study Course. You can spot a successful futures trader by the fact that his losses will be consistently minuscule. Novice traders give themselves away every time by the enormity of their losses. It takes practiced skill and discipline to maintain a consistent pattern of small losses. Success is not so much a matter of how much you win, but how well you manage your losses.

The hallmark of a successful futures trader is his ability to understand failure. He learns to read and understand the market through the small losses, the failures, it hands him. Whenever the market takes an unexpected turn up or down, doesn’t do what it should do, catches us unaware, it is giving us little warnings, usually by handing us a loss on a trade. Successful futures traders are able to tune into these warnings, to see the patterns in their losses and to incorporate that knowledge into their trading system.

If a reliable technique suddenly breaks down, the successful trader does not doubt the validity of technical analysis. If a proven strategy suddenly loses its accuracy, the successful trader does not abandon it. He looks beyond the individual event for the pattern it reveals. In every loss lies the path to success. The successful futures trader knows that loss cannot be avoided so he turns it to his advantage. The successful futures trader learns to listen to his losses, to embrace them and learn from them.

In futures trading every day is a new day. You must put the failures of yesterday, and particularly any feelings of disappointment and inadequacy they cause, behind you and focus on what is happening in the market today. Dwelling on your losses will only erode your self-confidence and cause you to start second guessing yourself, your system and your decisions. Start down this road and you might as well throw in the towel. Successful futures trading is 90% attitude. Learn from your losses and move on.

D.H. Lawrence wisely said: “If only one could have two lives: the first in which to make one’s mistakes, which seem as if they have to be made; and the second in which to profit by them.”

A futures trader must live both lives simultaneously. He must learn from today’s mistakes to profit tomorrow. Think of it this way: Each mistake, as long as you learn from it, is one less mistake you’ll make in the future. Since there are a limited number of ways you can lose on a trade, each loss becomes a building block toward solid future success. You’ll make mistakes and suffer losses as a futures trader, especially as you’re learning the ropes. But by discovering the lesson in each loss, you will increase your power as a trader. Each loss then becomes a brick in the growing pillar of your success.

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