After Six months of Launching my Prop Firm, Here are 6 Habits of Successful Prop Traders (Num 4 Is 🤯!)

Launching my prop firm (Willis Capital) has been an immense, educating experience.

It is a whole different ball game from being a trader.

Pleasantly, it comes with a few pecks, as this time instead of being the poker player, you are the house and this gives you insight and first-hand knowledge of different players’ styles; their manner of playing, their tells, their risk tolerance, etc.

You get a bird’s eye view of what is happening on the table.

This is the same experience with the prop traders in my prop trading firm.

With this knowledge, I have begun to see certain patterns repeat themselves when it comes to the successful traders in my prop firm.

Coincidentally these patterns are learnable traits that are common in all successful traders worldwide.

And no it is not waking up early, meditating, visualizing, manifesting, or any psychology tip like that.

This is real life, battle-tested, age-old habits.

They can be used to be successful in any type of trading and not just forex or prop trading.

The Top 6 of those top-tier habits of Successful Prop Firm Traders

Doing a daily report card. Keep a record:

Ever heard the phrase, the faintest pen is sharper than the sharpest memory? This is very true.

As humans and as traders who engage in swift decision-making moments of buying or selling, we forget a lot of what happened during the day, simply because a lot happened.

And while you may be thinking that you don’t forget your trades, what is he saying? You might not forget your trades but you probably forgot why you made such trades.

You probably forgot the instigator or the final hint that ended up convincing you to take that decision.

And this is something that is very important evening the trade went sideways or opposite what was expected.

This is because of numerous reasons; your hint might have supported your bias that you can’t work on simply because you don’t realize it is there, your hint might be a very effective signal that you might want you start adding in your trade analysis and predictions and many other scenarios like that.

This is why the number one habit of successful prop traders is keeping a daily record or report card detailing every trade taken and why.

You might probably be thinking I am doing good without it, and this might be true but you can never become successful or great without it.

Without a record of your successes and failures, you simply forget about them, and those who don’t learn from history are bound to repeat it.

Even the most successful traders keep details of their actions on forex.

Keeping a journal is a perfect way to show you how you would react when specific circumstances arise and why or when you should also change your reaction to certain circumstances.

To become a consistently profitable trader first thing to do is to keep a record of your successes and your failures, there are no two ways about it.

Testing your trading strategy:

You aren’t the first prop trader and you won’t be the last.

That being said, as a trader you have most probably heard of a lot of strategies and techniques that have been propounded over the years of trading.

Now while your first instincts might be to jump headfirst into using these techniques and strategies in a live trade to rake in all the dollars in the world.

But wait a minute, if the techniques and strategies were so effective and successful why do we have unsuccessful and broke traders?

No matter how great a strategy sounds, a professional trader always tests a trading strategy using a demo account before going live on the market.

This is because not all strategies will work for you, even though they work for someone else.

And while some might work, none will be perfect.
So you might need to invent a new one which would be the combination of two or more strategies into one.

And even then you won’t get a perfect technique but it would greatly increase your chances and the better you get the higher your chances of winning each trade, till your losses are very small.

By testing your trading strategy, you will be saving money and paving the way to stay in business.

Having realistic expectations:

Every trader comes into any market wanting to make money.

Every trader. If they were not interested in making money they would not bother to go through the stress of trading.

And because money is a very strong motivator, it is the go-to advertisement idea for prop firms, and who can say no to making money trading with huge amounts of money that isn’t even your own money?

This approach and picture painted by most prop firms has made prop trading sound so easy and the rewards so huge that newbie traders are coming with enormous expectations for little to no work.

They come expecting to make just one big trade and become millionaires. That is the major reason why 90% of Traders wash out and blow their accounts within weeks of getting them and why the majority of traders don’t even pass the challenge stage of Prop Firms and end up losing their money over and over again paying for prop firms challenges in vain hope of becoming prop traders and becoming millionaires.

Now I understand that to become successful, you need to be optimistic and believe that even in the worst-case scenario, there is a way out, but at the same time you need to be realistic.

A combination of attitude and discipline will eventually yield good results in trading, but you should keep your expectations grounded.

You will experience days with 10% gain and days with 10% loss; the market is filled with profits and losses, and you can never ignore losses or delete them generally.

Even the most successful prop traders get trades they lose on.
What makes them successful is the fact that their losses are way less than their wins.

Bringing your best you to trading sessions:

Most prop traders do not realize that trading forex is a business, and you need to trade with discipline to be successful.

This means that you need to treat your trading as professionally as possible.

Have a fixed time for trading, practice mindfulness when it is time to trade, bring your best to the trading sessions, get exercises when necessary to ensure blood flows to your brain, get enough rest and sleep so you are sharp and energetic, watching what you eat, making sure you are getting all the necessary nutrients needed.

It may seem like overkill but the fact is that only serious traders will win in the long run.

No matter how intelligent or lucky you are, you need to put in way more effort unless your luck will surely run out.

I want you to realize that successful traders are not lucky and do not claim to be lucky.

They put in the work and make their luck.

They don’t spend extravagantly, eat junk at nightclubs every night, skip sleep, and then just magically excel when it is time to trade.

You cannot eat your cake and have it.

To succeed at anything you need to sacrifice and forex trading is no different.

Ironically, what you are sacrificing is helping you in the long run to live a better, healthier life and lifestyle

Building up the quality of patience:

You have probably heard the phrase “Patience is a virtue”.

And in a field that requires split-second decisions and buying and selling, you might be thinking it is not in this field, but you couldn’t be more wrong.

Patience has influenced the success of many traders and the lack of it has deterred many more traders and is the cause of numerous regrets.

When a trade is made after analysis and predictions, sometimes it goes right almost immediately, sometimes it goes wrong immediately, other times it just seems to take a pause, making no significant in the right or wrong direction, and even some other times, it might have even started moving in the wrong direction slowly.

It is during this period that many traders have made decisions they ended up regretting because of a lack of patience.

They quickly cancel the trade, sell their positions, and leave.

It however becomes too late to retrace their steps when the currency shoots straight up or down as they predicted but they have lost that chance in that trade sometimes trades that could have earned them a huge amount of profit.

They had read the charts right and had predicted correctly yet missed the trade simply because of a lack of patience.

Another aspect of patience comes from learning from mistakes.

To be a professional trader, you need to be patient and learn about your mistakes. Believe it or not, it is inevitable to make mistakes when Trading forex.

The problem arises when you ignore to accept your mistakes and continue to do that again.

Believe it or not, for many professionals, the truth of being a successful Trader lies within the patience and persistence qualities rather than skills and insights.

Trading based on Math, and not myth or feelings:

Trading is very similar to gambling.

However, unlike gambling, forex trade is something you can win without luck. The gambler bets against the house or other players and has no way to control or influence the game.

The best he can do is a couple of cheating tricks or counting cards. Both of which the house frowns upon. And both of which an average gambler cannot do. So the average gambler relies on luck and the house rids him of his money.

A professional trader on the other hand never gambles. A professional trader respects the odds against him in the trade and thus tries to even them by focusing on risk management.

Through the use of stop losses, take profits, and never losing more than 1% of his capital per trade, s professional trader makes sure that he never blows his account and ensures that his gains would always be greater than his losses.

A professional trader never trades unquestioningly because, in this case, he will be gambling, not trading.

You need to feel the market, calculate, and make a plan for your next trade, and even when you feel the market, you have to justify it with analysis and signals.

You don’t just trade on feelings.

Not if you ever want to be successful in forex trading. You have to be analytical and devoid of emotions when trading.

This lack of emotion trading must be on while you are making a profit or making a loss, or reading the signals while thinking of which choice you make.

This is because emotions cloud your judgment especially when you make a loss.

Your first instinct would be to immediately make a trade to recoup the lost money but this is a very bad idea.

Conclusion:

Other habits of successful traders include having an accountability partner or group, taking breaks or as traders like to call it; going outside and touching the grass, knowing when to stop and not overtrade, having a pet, etc.

These habits might seem unorthodox and just like normal lifestyles but as a trader, you would realize that it is very easy to fall into a life of isolation, lack of rest, and depression.

Or to make money and fall into the illusion that you are made and lavish it all without saving or anything.

With ruthless execution of these attributes and imbibing them as habits, not only would you become successful as a prop firm trader but also in any other trading or anything you put your mind to.