Market Wizards: Mark Weinstein

Always do your homework.

Don't be arrogant. When you get arrogant, you forsake risk control. The best traders are the most humble.

Understand your limitations. Everyone has limitations---even the best traders

Be your own person. Think against the herd, as they must lose in time.

Don't trade until an opportunity presents itself. Knowing when to stay out of the markets is as important as knowing when to be in them.

Your strategy has to be flexible enough to change when the environment changes. The mistake most people make is they keep the same strategy all the time. They say, "damn, the market didn't behave the way I thought it would." Why should it? Life and the markets just don't work that way.

Don't get too complacent once yyou have made profits. The toughest thing in the world is holding on to profits. That is because once you have attained a goal, you then set a second goal that is usually the same as the first one: to make more money. Consequently, for many people, attainment of that second goal is not as rewarding. They may begin to question what they really want from trading and trigger a self-destruct process in which they wind up losing.

You have to learn how to lose; it is more important thant learning how to win. If you think you are always going to be a winner, when you lose, you will develop feelings of hostility and end up blaming the market instead of trying to learn why you lost.