Should You Trade Only One Market?

Restricting your trading exclusively to one market may not be your best choice. Here are some reasons why:

You must not trade under pressure. Trading involves being eclectic and choosing only the best, most clear-cut trades in liquid, not overly volatile markets.

It is sheer folly to trade feeling that you have to make a certain amount of money each day, or that you have to make up for a previous day. Each day is its own day, and must be viewed as such.

Trading is not a job. If you want a job, go out and find one. Trading is to be done leisurely, with plenty of time in-between during which you do not trade at all. You cannot possibly be at your best all of the time while sitting and watching a screen. The pros typically trade a short period of the day, usually around the open, and then again at the close. That's why they last as long as they do. For those who stay in the market because they act as market makers, they trade their own money only when they can take advantage of you for a few ticks at various times during the day. Otherwise, they stand aside, waiting to fill orders coming in from the outside, which is what they feel they have to do.

There can be benefit in position trading various markets using the weekly chart and entering via the daily chart. If you are going to be a trader, you are going to have to learn to be an all-around trader, always going where there is money to be made. If you are going to stick with only one market, then you are going to have to patiently sit out those times and periods when it is doing nothing.

This is not the first time in my life that I've been unable to easily day trade in a particular market. I have seen markets that were virtually not tradable for more than a year. At some point they once again become tradable. During those periods in which a market became not tradable, if I wanted to day trade I had to look elsewhere. There have been other periods during which I could not trade at all. I will repeat a story here that I've told at many seminars. There was a time in the early 1970s (yes, those were the olden days before there was day trading), when I was able to make only one trade in an entire year. It came in November, and it yielded the only money I made that year. I was able to trade the following year, and then again the markets became very difficult to trade, and many traders simply disappeared from the markets and went home broke. Such is the life of a trader. That is why I had to learn to trade what I could, where I could, and when I could. Trading in itself can be seasonal. There are dry spells from time to time. What saved my neck in those days of lean opportunity? Trading spreads on futures contracts.

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Master Trader Joe Ross wants you to learn trading and he created products to do just that, teach you how to trade. Go to our website to find which ones best fit your trading style.