by Ken Long

It is amazingly easy for people to become day traders, compared to other professions. All you really need is the willingness to learn, access to the Internet, small bankroll and a willingness to learn risk management techniques that can keep you in the game while you learn your craft.

In fact it's so easy, that the vast majority of people who try it, fail.

This should not surprise us, when we look at the statistics regarding the failure rates of other business enterprises.

90% of new small businesses fail in the first five years and it's not because people are inherently stupid, it's just that business is so inherently difficult.

Any new venture faces the risk becoming successful in an environment where people are already fighting for their lives and have years of experience and first mover advantage on their side.

Trading is no different.

If you approach it as a business, and develop the plans and support structures necessary for any business to survive, you will have taken a big step forward in preparing yourself for the challenges of trading.

Here are a few things that will do you no harm as you consider a career in trading:

1. Make sure you are adequately capitalized: you need money to trade and you need enough money to ensure that each individual trade doesn't make the difference between success and failure. It's only by spreading the risk among many sensible bets that you have a chance for long-term success.

2. Develop a detailed business plan that includes identifying your strengths and weaknesses, your strategy for mold of market conditions, at least three different trading systems that are not correlated in time or focus, so that you always have a system that's workable in a given market.

3. Make sure you have a disciplined commitment to continuous learning and self-improvement so that you can systematically analyze your strengths and weaknesses and steadily improve your trading game.