"The stock market is a device for transferring money from the impatient to the patient" - Warren Buffett
Good things come to those who wait
Believe it or not, it’s the traders that are overdoing it who at the end of the day end up losing the most money, compared to those who are doing less. To illustrate our point, let us give you an example of a lion stalking a herd of wildebeest. The only way for a lion to get the chance to feed himself would be to patiently wait and try to spot the weakest member of the herd, falling behind or singling itself out. The lion knows that he won’t actually achieve anything if he aggressively jumps right at the herd and hopes for the best.
We used this as an example to help you understand that if you want to succeed in trading, you must be like a lion. Or if we have to give you another example - you have to be like a sniper, stalking and anticipating the right moment, rather than rushing. The sniper trading approach is described as waiting for the desired trade criteria, instead of “attacking” everything that moves.
You, as a trader, should invest a lot of time and patience to look for assets, compare movements and stare at charts in order to find the signals that would get you large movements and then go in with comparatively large sums if you feel confident enough.
Ultimately, the way to become a successful trader is learning how to wait. Waiting can help with practising self-control which is the key to making money in the markets. Sometimes, the waiting can go on for weeks and even months, however studying the markets instead of trading them and ending up with a huge profit is absolutely worthy.
We want to challenge you, as a trader, to try and change your mentality about being patient and not doing anything. Remember that trading is a high-risk environment and sometimes our desire to feel thrilled and get our rewards right here, right now can lead us into dangerous paths and losing hard-earned money.
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“The Wizard of Omaha”
That’s exactly how one of the most successful investors of all time - the oracle from Omaha, his greatness Warren Buffett has done it. To get to a position of managing billions he didn’t jump right in for the smallest movements in the market. His strategy of waiting and carefully selecting his next big move gave him the opportunity to buy a huge business and run the multinational conglomerate holding company Berkshire Hathaway. His success story is presented in books and a documentary, titled “Becoming Warren Buffett” which can further give you an idea of how he made billions by being patient and highly precise in his trading activities. He is, surely, one of the traders we can learn a lot from and admire.
Conclusion:
With this article, we wanted to emphasize that if you are aiming at the big moves and want to make it big in the trading world, you have to learn to “do nothing”. Patience, as we explained, should be a very important character trait of all the traders if they want to grab the right trading opportunities. The charts might be offering a constant temptation for traders, however, traders need to understand when they’ve reached their limit and don’t over-trade.
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