The Advantages of Trading Alone

People sometimes experiment with the idea to trade with other people. It might work, but for me, it did not. I trade alone. The advantages of trading alone are:

1. You are free to make your own decisions without having to find a way to explain the rationale of your decisions to anybody else. Your time and effort can be focussed on what the market is doing and how you react to it, instead of worrying about the psychological and emotional dynamics of a trading group.
2. You are free to experiment, based on the knowledge you gain from your experiences and your self-education, without having to asking others to allocate a certain portion of the trading funds to let you conduct your experiments.
3. No one can blame you for their failures. No time is wasted on justifying your actions or feeling guilty about the impact of your trading blunders on someone else's financial situation.
4. You alone are responsible and accountable for your own success or failure. You cannot shift the blame to anybody else. It could be disappointing to some knowing that they cannot blame anyone else if they fail. For others, it is very empowering to know that they, and they alone, are in charge of their own destiny.

Personally, I believe that a person should trade alone first before he or she decides to trade with other people. This allows the individual to develop his own philosophy and his own understanding about himself and the market. I understand, however, that not everybody can trade alone because it requires a set of beliefs and values to be part of the trader's character. Not all people are created with the same set of characteristics. Not everyone can operate under the solitude of the journey. For example, there are people who need social contact more than others. Individuals who are social by nature and those who solve problems by talking to other people, may have difficulty undertaking a solitary endeavour.

Furthermore, there are people who do not have faith in their abilities and in their capacity to learn to trade successfully. I know of individuals who need constant reassurance before they take any step towards their goals. In similar circumstances, trading in a group may be the only option available for some people to give them the push they need: otherwise, they may never start.

by Marquez Comelab

Marquez Comelab is a private trader in Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of The Part-Time Currency Trader, a book on how to develop trading strategies. He is also the founding editor of The Part-Time Investor Magazine: an online magazine for traders and investors. See http://www.marquezcomelab.com.