Stock trading isn’t all about just finding a trading pattern, taking it, and counting your money. There’s plenty of intuition involved too.

Have you ever tried to follow someone else’s trading style, only to pick all the losers, and miss the winners? I’m not sure why it works that way, but it frequently does. It’s an issue of self confidence. Don’t get me wrong, I believe in sharing stock picks, but when you pull that trigger, you should know all the reasons behind the buy or sell. It makes us feel secure getting second, or third opinions to justify our trades. Look at the success of Jim Cramer’s Mad Money. Sure, Cramer is a professional, and has more insights than the regular investor. You just have to make sure you know why you are trading, on what you believe, the stock is going to do.

Today, I took a trade in QLD where I had to face intuition, others’ beliefs in market direction, and my own decision. When the stock market started it’s afternoon slide, I looked at the daily Nasdaq chart. The index had put in an outside day, engulfing yesterday’s candlestick. Trade was at the low for the day, and had formed a sell signal. I monitor a stock chat room of 600+ members, basically to get a feel for sentiment. The feeling was that the market would keep sliding into the close. Who wants to hold stocks into a weekend? My intuition was telling me that next week is options expiration, the market has already produced a large amount of fear in the last few weeks. My gut said go long QLD, and fade the market signals.

I saw that QLD put in a bottoming tail on the 5-minute chart. Volume was high for that bar. The boat was leaning too far to the side of the bears.

I had to fight the emotions of being wrong. I had a stop of .50 for R, and set my targets for selling.  So what was I worried about? Psychology is definitely 99% of this game.

Passion: a strong or extravagant fondness, enthusiasm, or desire for anything

Most people have a passion. It doesn’t matter what that may be. It matters if they pursue it or not.

Last night, on The BigIdea with Donny Deutsch, they had guests on who pursued the passions they loved. One man went from working at NASA, to designing video games. Another quit a high paying job as a corporate lawyer. He now builds lego strutures for a living, and has become quite successful (some of his pieces are shown in museums). On my blog, I discuss my passion for online stock trading. John Chow is another blogger who muses about his passion for technology, fine dining, cars, and investing. The common thread between us, is that we are in pursuit of what we enjoy. We follow our passions.

Take John’s blog for instance. He doesn’t talk about topics that bore him. He muses about subjects that excite him. He says, “I never started John Chow dot Com to make money. This was just a place for me to post my miscellaneous ramblings about whatever was on my mind. While I cover a number of topics, from cars to fine dining, the main focus of this blog is about making money on the Internet.” Has John made any money?

With jests about playing with his food, to discussing maximizing your RRSP, John pulled in over $7000 with his blog for the month of February. In September, his income for the blog was $352.94. That’s what I call growth! Now it helps that John is the mastermind behind the popular computer hardware review site, The Tech Zone. That brings us back to passion though. John took his passion for technology, and turned it into a business he could enjoy and live off of. He’s now doing the same thing with his addictive blog. Is it luck, or is it seizing opportunity when it strikes?

Are you following your passion?