The first thing you need to do is determine, if you're truly comfortable risking money in the market.

It's really amazing, as I've talked to many traders around the world and of course they're all really excited to make the big dollars in the market, but…

When I ask them, "are you prepared to lose money trading"? You wouldn't believe the puzzled looks that I get when I say that.

You see, they're so focused on only making money in the markets that they forget that to make money in investing you actually have to risk money.

The bottom line is, every time you enter the market you have to risk money to make money. I wish there was another way around that, but there simply isn't.

Let me ask you this, if you gave me $100, and I gave you $200 in return, how many times would you do that? I think it would be safe to say, that you would do that 24 hours a day every day for the rest of your life.

Well this is what trading is all about, in other words, you may have to risk $100 to make a potential $200 back. Without risking the hundred dollars, there is no way to make the potential $200. The only difference in trading is that you have to risk the money to make the money versus the initial example I gave you where was no risk on your part.

Successful trading involves nothing more than using a strategy that gives you a mathematical edge. For example, say you have a system that wins 60% of the time, and each time it wins it makes $200, and every time it loses, it loses $100.

Let's do the math very quickly… six times out of 10 were going to make $200, which equals $1200. Four times out of 10 you are going to lose $100, which equals $400 in losses. That means an overall were going to make $800 with a system that wins 60% of the time.

This is what trading is all about; it's simply a game of mathematical statistics. As long as your system keeps performing in the guidelines of statistics, you will come out ahead.

One of the biggest problems with mathematical statistics in trading is that traders don't like the losing part of the equation. They're all happy when they're in the 60% winners part of the equation, but when they start experiencing their 40% losers they become unglued and start second-guessing what they're doing. Whats makes things even tougher is that you never know when the 40% losers are going to show up. Many times at this point, they start researching on the Internet for another system that hopefully doesn't experience any losses.

As I have already said, losses are part of the game and there's no way around it.

Another really important thing when it comes to risking money in the market is that you can't trade with scared money. What that means is, if you try to trade with money that should be for your rent or perhaps risking money that should be a going to feed your family, then what happens is…

You start focusing so much on the potential losses that you trade out of fear and as a result keep doing the wrong things.

Another thing that I can't stress enough about being profitable in the markets is that you need to be prepared to put some good old-fashioned hard work and time in learning how to trade. You would be surprised how many traders think they can just spend a few weeks learning how to trade and they're going to go turn in a $2000 in the $50,000 in a very short period of time.

Yes, there are amazing success stories of traders taking a small amount of money and turning it into a fortune in a very short period time, but… the reality is, that these cases are very few and far between.

As a side note, one of my UK students using my Trade Secrets program did turn 1000 pounds into 109,000 pounds in ten months, but… That is the exception as he truly was the "Tiger Woods" of my system.

Think about this…

When you go to college, you know that you have to spend four years there to get your degree and then even after that there are no guarantees that you're going to get a job and make a lot of money. When you first started college, you didn't have any crazy expectations that you are going to start making a lot of money in your first semester of college.

You knew that you would have to put in four years of hard work to get your degree and then you would be able to think about starting to make some real money. So, it's really crazy, when you think about it how a lot of traders think that in a few weeks or months that they can be another Warren Buffet. I will be the first to admit that I was this way too when I started out. It seemed so easy as I would look at a chart where a big move occurred and say, "wow, if I bought here and sold there I would have made $3000.' Little did I know that it wasn't quite as easy as it seemed!

Ironically, thinking that you can beat the markets in a unrealistic timeframe is going to backfire and prevent you from achieving your goals. No, you don't necessarily have to spend four years studying the markets to learn how to trade more profitably, but you do need to be realistic, and put in some good old-fashioned hard work.

As motivational guru Anthony Robbins says, "there are no unrealistic goals, just unrealistic time frames."

A lot of the so-called hard work isn't really that hard when you get down to it. It simply involves you spending hours and hours looking at charts real time, so that you really understand how the markets move. By doing this, your eyes get trained to spot new trade setups and opportunities in the markets really quick. Additionally, when you spend a lot of time studying charts, you begin to develop a sixth sense in the market.

After you've spent all his time looking at charts, you really understand how the markets move, when they move and what they're most likely to do next. I can definitely help you speed up this process by many of the articles and programs that I teach, but once again… There is no replacing the time spent watching the market real-time.

The last thing I want to talk about is the lack of focus. What I'm talking about specifically, is that traders will buy a new system and the minute they get a few losses in a row, they get discouraged and they blame the system and then they're off buying yet another program. What ends up happening is that the same cycle repeats over and over again and before long they've spent thousands of dollars on trading programs. And yet they're not one step closer to actually making money in the markets. The bottom line here is, that they never took the time to focus long enough to make one system work.

Let me give you a real example involving a program I teach called "Trade Secrets". I'll have traders buy it and after a few short days ask for a refund and say it doesn't work.

Now here's the interesting thing… During the same time I receive e-mails from traders that are extremely happy and that they were actually becoming profitable for the first time ever. Now if the program didn't work, these traders wouldn't be reporting these results.

So why is it one group of traders were making it work and the other didn't see any potential in the program? Well for starters, unfortunately there are some people who are plain ripping me off. They buy the program, download it an make a lame ass excuse and ask for the refund.

As a side note, my all time favorite was by a guy that said he didn't know how to use a computer. Hmmm… He managed to go to my web-site, order the program and then download it. Hmmm…

Other traders simply don't have the patience and discipline to stick to one thing and make it work and give up the minute they find any obstacles.

Several things I've noticed from talking with traders who are very successful are… 1. They're always asking themselves, how can I make this work?

2. They are always looking at what is good about something versus what isn't.

3. They also understand that no system is perfect and that trading is simply a game of mathematical probabilities.

4. They get good trading one system before they learn another.

The bottom-line is that whether you use one of my programs or any other one, you will only get what you put into it.

I understand that much of what I have said is either something you have already heard or plain common sense, but… In my experience traders are so busy trying to find the most advanced and sophisticated strategies that common sense often takes a back seat.

I hope these trading tips help keep you on track or get you back on track.