One successful investor who made a lot of money defined stock trading as a challenging game of strategy and discipline. The stock market is vastly complex and dynamic, so you need to exercise strict discipline, clear judgment, do your homework, and set firm goals and limits. Sometimes the most important work you can do is exercising patience, confidence, and discipline. You need to stay calm, keeping your mind clear and focused. You can't blindly bet that the stock price will go up or go down. You need to be well informed and make buy or sell decisions based on facts and logic.In investing, intuition also plays an important role. Good intuition comes from experience and sound judgment. When you start making money, you cannot think of yourself as a winner yet because if you lose focus and become greedy, you can lose your money in an instant. More importantly, if you happen to lose money, you cannot let yourself conclude that a single loss makes you a loser. Losing money can be very upsetting, but you need to be consistent and not quit the game easily. Learn to use a loss as a lesson, just as professional traders do, and determine why you lost. In this way, you maximize your chances of becoming a better investor. Talk with your friends and listen closely to trading tips, but in the end, you have to make your own judgments. Believe in yourself. If your next pick ends up being wrong, that may mean you have not yet done sufficient homework on that stock.
