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.Every trader has different times when he orshe is the most successful.I will be mostly just watching the market from about 3PM to theclose and exit some of my trades or take partial gains if I haveany open positions.In this time I will also start working on mywatch list for the next morning.The close will be very interestingfor me to watch, especially if I have positions that I might bewilling to hold overnight.A general rule is, that the stronger thestock is at the close, the more likely it is going to continuehigher the following day, and the more likely I am to hold itovernight.I like my long positions to finish at least in the upperhalf of the trading day in order for them to be interesting as anovernight hold (vice versa for shorts).85 Note: this is pretty much how my trading day looks if I tradetrend-following patterns as well as some swing trades.If I wouldonly do very short-term scalps, my day would certainly lookdifferent because I would be less affected by the overall market.If I am in a position I will always keep an eye on it.For longerterm trades I strongly advise using automated stops for yourprotection.They have two advantages: 1.You don t have towatch the stock all the time and 2.They automate your exitdecision, which leaves less room for failure.Please be carefulthough with stop orders and study your brokers order guidecarefully.Some stop orders are only saved on your computer; ifyou lose your Internet connection or your computer crashesyour order wont be send out anymore and you are notprotected.86 Keys to success - psychological aspects:I believe that the right state of mind is by far the single mostimportant key to successful trading.Yes, a solid strategy is anabsolute necessity too; but without being in the right state ofmind it won t make you successful either.I state in the philoso-phy section of my website that I don t think trading needs to becomplicated and that keeping it simple is the way to success.The most successful traders I know only use a few basic strate-gies.What made them so successful was their confidence intheir strategy, their ability to stay neutral and to execute accord-ing to what they see.Other people I met had very sophisticatedand complex approaches using several indicators.And guesswhat, a lot of them were successful too.I doubt that the indica-tors themselves made them successful though; more importantwas their confidence in their strategy.Some people can onlywork with very sophisticated approaches just because theydon t believe that simple things work.They say: it can t be thateasy .My point is that there are many approaches.I don t wantto judge whether one is better than the other.As long as theywork for you the goal is achieved.No one holds the Holy Grailto success.Personally I don t like advanced technical indicatorstoo much.The reason is that there are too many variables thatcan be adjusted.I like to get clear entry signals based on abso-lute prices (i.e.highs and lows), which I am not able to alter.This gives me less room for personal interpretation and moreclear signals.Going back to the mental aspects, I would like to point out someof the key traits of successful traders:1.They stay neutral:Staying neutral means to be emotionally detached from yourtrading decisions.You probably know guys for whom the worldsucks if they take a loss of $100 and if they make $1000 theyare on top of the world.They are definitely not neutral.87 If you are like that, then your trading will definitely be driven byfear and greed; if you are down $100 you probably don t want totake a loss, just because you know that you will be emotionallysuffering.If you are up $1000 you might want more, eventhough you should take profits.Or you might end up takingprofits way too early because you are afraid that the positionmight turn against you.The professionals don t let the day-to-day oscillations in their account faze them.The results of oneweek don t matter much, not even the monthly results.It s just asmall blip of time in their career, so the day-to-day oscillationsdon t really matter.Emotional ups and downs are pretty normalfor beginners.If they influence your trading decisions too much,then I would strongly advise you to go back to paper trading inorder to gain the confidence you need to not let those oscilla-tions affect you too much.Staying neutral also means to see the price movements likethey really are, not how you want them to be.You might allknow the situation where a trade is going against you, and youstart looking for other reasons why it is still a good trade andyou should hold it.This is very dangerous since it leads peopleto breaking their stops and to lose big.Your entry and exit crite-ria has to be absolutely clear before you make a trade.Switch-ing strategies while you are in a trade is one of the worst thingsyou can do.You can always find a reason for your position to goup or down, but you don t see the actual price movement any-more
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