I read the post below by Diallist in ForexFactory and aptly summarizes the real essence in trading. Please read below:
Secret: It is not possible to know where the market is going to go next. No one can do that. Not you, not me, not anyone, so quit trying to do the impossible. You have to learn to trade without knowing where the market is going next. You must trade with uncertainty, because you will never have certainty.
We may not have certainty, but we do have probability. But probability cannot be traded randomly, or with gut level feelings. It must be approached in an organized systematic way. The only way to get probability to work in your favor is to apply a consistent method to your charts, looking for the same setup every single time, and trading it the same way every time.
Confidence in a repeatable methodology only comes from having traded the methods setup over and over for hundreds if not thousands of trades. A lot of this can come from MANUALLY backtesting the method one bar at a time. Automated backtesting that spews out statistics in a few minutes has its place, but only manual backtesting can impart confidence into your soul. Once you have confidence in your method, you will trade it the same way ever time regardless of how you "feel" about the market. Once you have confidence in your method, you wont CARE whether a particular trade is a winner or a loser. You wont care because you will have learned that it doesn't matter, and that the outcome of individual trades is meaningless. Only when you have attained to this mental state can you trade with consistent repeatability. And this consistency, over time results in compounding, and compounding leads to riches.
Not that long ago, I too subscribed to the idea that it was inevitable that a trader blow out a couple of accounts in order to learn to trade. I no longer believe this. With the advent of micro lots and sub-micro lots, the only way anyone can blow out an account is through sheer stupidity.
