The responsibility of a trader is to become an independent, diligent craftsman who knows what he / she is doing. There is no magic wand, no system that will automatically trade every pip of the market and make you rich beyond your wildest dreams.

However, there is the Harmonic Auto Trader (HAT) that’s the next best thing. The HAT has been developed to take away some of the mundane search for trading patterns. With patience and careful stop placement, the auto trader can convert the traders’ probability of success into a steady growth of the client’s account balance. But what is the big secret behind why?

To act responsibly as a trader we must survive as traders and eliminate any actions that would cause us to jeopardize our account. Do you do any of the following things when you trade?

Over Leverage – You’ve all heard me say this, and probably so often you’ve become sick of the words coming out of my mouth as often as they do. But take it from Lehman Brothers and MF Global; over-leveraging your account is very irresponsible and should be looked at as an act of gambling.

Weekend Event Risk – Holding trades over the weekend that are not substantially profitable should be looked at as high risk and signals that traders are just looking for trouble.

Trading Around News – Why is this risky? No matter how you look at it, when news comes out the liquidity providers increase the spreads to minimize their own risk and exposure from clients. This gets passed onto the brokers who then increase their spreads and this is where you notice the difference on your platform when news does come out. In recent years, clients have been blaming their brokers for this sudden increase in spread and thus giving the brokers a bad name when they are really just increasing it because their liquidity providers increased the spread on them. So if the big banks increase their spreads, and you want to bet and hope you’re on the right side of the trade, go ahead, but I think we can classify this as not being very responsible. As traders, we’re not trying to get lucky on just one trade, we’re trying to be consistently profitable over many trades and chances are, with wide spreads, increasing your chances of being stopped out and taking a loss is a huge risk.

These are just some of the few responsibilities we have as traders. Can you think of any more? Leave them in the comments section below.

The success of harmonic pattern trading is taken over a succession of trades, not just a few. Traders who sustain losses must weather that storm and wait for the profitable trades to kick in. That’s what sorts out the men from the boys, the women from the girls and the fearless from the faint-hearted. When you combine this with being a responsible trader you’ll quickly be rewarded for your actions.