What is a Trading Plan

How do you make money without picking tops and bottoms?

I am glad you asked...

Successful trading is similar to a successful business. You see, every successful business has a business plan so do successful traders. The astute reader knows that, successful traders have a systematic way they approach the market.

The definition of a trading system is a trader's business plan; it defines your approach to trading...

1. A properly constructed trading system will leave no room for human judgment
2. It will define your actions given any circumstances that may arise.
3. It is a distinct set of rules
4. Which instructs the trader what to do and when to do it.

The importance of this trading plan cannot be understated. Without a consistent set of guiding principles to govern your trading decisions, most traders will hop from one trade to the next, guided by emotion or hysteria.

I firmly believe that not having a plan, you are doomed to fail.

Trading systems themselves will come in many varieties, although they all take the guesswork out of trading. A trading system will determine for you when to buy or sell. System trading has proven itself consistently to be the most effective long-term trading technique.

In fact, you may have even heard the story about one of the most famous system traders of all time, Richard Dennis. It just so happened, in mid 1983, Dennis was having an ongoing dispute with his long time friend Bill Eckhardt about whether great traders were born or made. Dennis believed that trading could be broken down into a set of rules that others could learn. On the other hand, Eckhardt believed trading had more to do with innate instincts, and this skill comes naturally.

In order to settle the matter, Richard suggested that they recruit and train some traders and give them actual accounts to trade to see which one of them was correct. He named his prot