12 Laws of the Top 1% Trader

It took me 5 years to make my first $1M and along the way I have learnt that there are certain rules to the game that contribute to my success. These rules allowed me to go from a broke college student who works shitty part time jobs to a highly successful trader and entrepreneur. 

“Conquer the World"

"Win more"

"Work hard"

"Have a sense of urgency."

"Make more money”

All these things are supposed to make you successful but they are actually holding you back from trading success.

They are the same reasons why you are still losing money as a trader.

The condition to success in life and the condition to success in trading are very different. There is no control to the outcome in trading as there is in life or in business.

You can go to the gym and work out 7 times a week and eventually you will see the results in 1 year.

But you can stare at charts all day and work super hard but not see any consistent profits for 1 year.

Growing up, you are taught to have a sense of urgency if you want to succeed.

And then you bring this mindset into trading. 

“Don’t just sit there and do nothing. Get into a trade!”

And then the next thing you know you get into a bad trade and you get out with a huge loss.

All because you are urgent and you rushed into a trade. 

Most profitable trading is about patience.

Becoming a top 1% trader that wins requires you to take the unconventional route.

The route that not many people preach but is absolutely necessary.

And I want to share that path with you so you can become a profitable trader much faster than I did. 

So in this video, I want to give you an insight into what makes millionaire traders millionaires.

 

Here are 12 secrets that will make you a top 1% trader:

Law #1: Patience makes profits

 In trading, you don’t get paid for working hard. You get paid for making the right decisions.

The top 1% trader does NOT stare at charts all day.

He knows when to trade and when not to trade.

He sets alerts and only decides whether to enter the trade when he receives the alert on TradingView.

Patience is important before you trade, during the trade and after you trade.

Before you trade,

You need to have the patience to wait for the A+ trade setup

Only take the trade when your signals are triggered and you have your edge. 

For God’s sake, You don’t have to trade everyday.

Your strategy may not work for every market environment.

When there is no opportunity in the market, have the patience and discipline to do nothing.

During your trade,

You need to have the patience to let the trade play out on its own.

Don’t move your SL unnecessary unless you place it wrongly.

Don’t move your TP further or closer because it will mess up with your overall risk to reward ratio.

After you trade,

You need to have the patience to process and record your trades whether you feel like it or not.

The hardest part is when you lose a big sum of money or you enter a losing streak. 

It’s in these times when you will not feel like recording your trades because you rather spend that time on trading to make back the money you have lost. 

But these are exact times that you must take some time out to process and record your trades so you can learn from your mistakes.

 

Law #2: Never negotiate with your inner bitch

Inside all of us contains both the inner beast and the inner bitch.

The quality of your life is determined by which one you listen to the most.

If you listen to the inner beast, you will achieve massive success in trading and in life.

You will be able to reach all the goals you have set for yourself and make so much money that no one will believe you. 

If you listen to the inner bitch, you will continue to lose money and blow accounts after accounts.

Eventually one day you will be so sick of losing money that you quit trading forever.

The inner bitch is that little voice inside your head telling you:

“You can always follow your trading plan tomorrow”

“Journalling doesn’t work for me”

“Take the easy way out”

“It’s okay to skip the gym if you are feeling tired today”

“It’s okay to hit the snooze button”

We would then tell ourselves that this is a one time thing and it won’t happen again.

BUT it’s a lie. And you know it.

Once you start negotiating with your inner bitch, that’s when you start to remain where you always are.

An average trader at best.

You don’t follow your trading plan for just one day, and 1 month later, you lose your whole life savings.

Instead of persisting and learning from your mistakes, you quit trading forever.

You overleveraged so you can get rich fast, only to cheat yourself out of the wisdom and knowledge that comes from experience.

So you blow your account and lose everything you worked so hard for.

There’s a lot of people out there committing these mistakes everyday and they never learn.

I know because I was one of these people.

That is exactly why they never get anywhere in their trading journey.

They never achieve consistent profits from the market.

 Compare this to your inner beast. 

The inner beast doesn’t make excuses. 

It doesn’t look for the easy way out. 

The inner beast is asking you to focus on the performance, rather than the outcome.

Focus on the process, rather than the money.

When the inner beast is in charge, you take full responsibility for all your actions.

You do the HARD THINGS that make you a disciplined trader, and most importantly a better trader. 

Even when you enter a losing streak and trading starts to get hard, you keep going.

In fact you love it when things get hard. You love a good challenge. It gets your inner beast excited.

You know that losses are part of the game and you fully accept that trading is simply a probability game.

A game of chances.

You look at the losses and smile because you know that you can only build mental resilience with pain. 

Whether you are building physical, emotional or mental muscle, pain is absolutely necessary.

For your whole life, you have been listening to the inner bitch. It’s time for you to wake up and unleash your inner beast.

If you are watching this, you don’t want to live an average and mediocre life. You want to be a top 1% trader who refuses to give up. So shut out your inner bitch and unleash your inner beast. 

And you can starve your inner bitch by doing these 4 things every single day:

1. Keep the promises you made to yourself

2. Set high standards

3. Do the things that others are not willing to do

4. Choose hard over easy

Kill the little bitch within and feed your inner beast!

 

Law #3: Never Lose Money

 

"Rule No. 1: Never lose money. Rule No. 2: Never forget rule No. 1."

This is a famous quote by Warren Buffet that emphasizes the importance of capital preservation.

Instead of focusing on making money, focus on protecting what you have.

Instead of thinking about how much you would make if you are right, think about how much you will lose if you are wrong.

Just like how you can’t drive a car without petrol, you can’t trade without capital.

If you want to trade for the long term, you need to learn how to sustain in the game, how to conserve your capital so it doesn’t run out fast.

The only way to preserve your capital is by managing your risk properly.

Before you enter the trade, you must know where you are getting out if you are wrong and if you are right.

When the price hits your SL, you must accept the loss and move on.

Determine your risk before you enter the trade to define your risk to reward ratio. If you are not comfortable with that amount of money you are risking, then use a smaller position size.

In trading, wins and losses are inevitable. You have to accept this fundamental fact. 

The only way you can be profitable in the long run is if your winning days are bigger than your losing days. When you win, you must make more money than when you lose. And you can do this by having a proper risk to reward ratio of at least 1:2.

As long as you are using stop losses and proper position sizing, you should be able to win more money than you lose. 

Law #4: 1% Better Everyday 

To become a top 1% trader, you just need to become 1% better everyday

You might think that 1% improvement is insignificant. 

 “How can I become profitable fast if I only improve 1% every day?”

Everyone thinks that to achieve success in trading, you need to set a big goal, and then try to take big leaps in order to accomplish that goal as fast as possible. 

This will lead you to using a lot size way too big for your account or forcing trades when there are no opportunities. 

Eventually you will blow your account and get frustrated. 

Instead you should focus on making continuous improvement by slowly and slightly adjusting your day to day habits.

Sticking with the boring fundamentals is not impressive but IT WORKS.

You won’t see any results immediately after you have improved 1% today.

 

At the start, there is no difference between making a choice that is 1% better or 1% worse. It won’t really have a big impact on you today. 

But as time passes, these small improvements or declines start to compound and suddenly a year later you will find a very big gap between those people who make good decisions on a daily basis and those who don’t.

If you get 1% better each day for one year, you’ll end up thirty-seven times better by the time you’re done. 

That’s why small choices do not seem to make much difference today, but add it up over time and you will see tremendous results because of the compound effect.

 To become 1% better everyday, I have 3 steps for you:

1. Do more of what works

2. Eliminate just 1 trading mistake a day

3. Track your progress

 

Law #5: Always Grateful, Never Satisfied

The truth is you can never truly become a master at trading. 

You can never really conquer the market because the market is filled with uncertainty. 

This is a lifelong journey and you should always be trying to get better.

Every single day you have to show up, put one foot in front of the other and trade in silence. 

 When we achieve a little bit of success, we think that we are the best traders in the world and we are invincible.

Then the market humbles us by giving a huge loss.

Every single day, I wake up and I tell myself that I am absolutely nothing. 

I have the day 1 mentality where I treat every day like it’s the first day of my trading journey. 

I know nothing about the market so I continue to learn and improve. 

I still work like I'm broke and I never ever let success get to my head. 

Because I know that once you get comfortable with what you have and you start to settle, mediocrity sets in and prevents you from taking things to the next level.

It’s easy to make your first $10,000 per month but it’s extremely hard to consistently make that amount every month.

If you sleep on a win, you will wake up with a loss.

That's why when I reach the top of the mountain, I purposely push myself down and try to climb another mountain that is higher. 

So I can become a more disciplined trader. 

So I can change more lives. 

So I can make more money for my family in case something unfortunate happens in the future.

Law #6: Purpose over Pleasure

Here’s a harsh truth: you won’t find happiness or fulfillment in materialistic things like sports cars or luxury watches

It was in June 2022 when I had just got a little bit of success, where my trading started to take off a bit and I made my first $10k per mont.

I took a little vacation to Phuket in Thailand.

I wanted to live the digital nomad lifestyle so I went to this beautiful beach called Patong Beach. 

My friend and I went to this beach club and we sat at this table that was outside the beach club so we could see the seaview.

I could feel the gentle sea breeze blowing on my face as the sun started setting.

It was the most beautiful scenery I have ever seen.

After ordering food, I pulled out my laptop and started looking at the charts. 

Then I got distracted by the loud EDM music playing at the beach club.

9And then there were kids splashing water at each other in the swimming pool.

I couldn’t concentrate on analyzing the charts at all.

I thought this was the lifestyle I have always dreamed of. After all, this was the dream lifestyle they preached on Instagram right?

But why don’t I feel happy?

Because I was not in a flow state. I was more happy when I was back at home, waking up at 5am and exercising then sitting in front of my computer and do 2 hour deep work blocks where I can fully focus on trading with no distractions.

I realised that material stuff like the watch, the car don't make you happy. 

We think that when we reach our goal like get good grades or reach 10k subscribers or make $1M , we will be happier but when we actually reach the goal our happiness doesn't change at all. It actually dips a little bit.

Naval said that “Desire is a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want.”

You start to become disturbed because you want something and you work really hard to get that thing and you're miserable in the meantime. 

And then once u get that thing, u actually revert to the state u were in before u get that thing. 

It's a delusion that there's something out there that will make you feel complete happiness. A bigger house. A faster car. A more expensive watch.

As I get older and wiser, I realized that the things that truly make us happy are the basic boring things like helping others, getting good sleep, exercising, mindfulness, focused trading and getting into a flow state.

Things that are often boring and monotonous become enjoyable when you have a reason to pursue fulfillment over pleasure.

So don’t let society dictate your definition of happiness. Find that out for yourself. Determine your core values and find out what truly makes you happy.

Be grateful for the little things that you have access to like clean water, food or even just a shelter above your head. 

 

Law #7: Process over Money

“You can control the process, not the outcome.”

That is the secret to trading success.

At the end of the day, you can’t control how much money you make from a trade. But you can control:

• Follow your trading plan

• Whether or not you should even enter that trade in the first place

• What lot size to use 

• How do you manage the trade? Do you move your SL or your TP?

When you focus on trading your system with discipline and consistency, the profits will eventually come.  

Just because you lost 1 trade does not mean your trading system does not work.

If you used the correct position size, each trade should be treated as just 1 of your next 100 trades.  

1 trade can have a random outcome but 100 trades can be used as a filter to determine whether your strategy works or not. 

That’s why you should zoom out and focus on the big picture and not just 1 trade. 

 Focus on your process, not short term results.

 

 Law #8: Take Full Responsibility

When you focus on the process over money, that also means that you take full responsibility for your trading results.

Lost too much money on this trade? My fault.

Lost this trade because of news? My fault.

Losing streak? My fault.

Blaming everyone else, the market, the Federal Reserve for your losses and losing streaks does not help your trading at all. 

 Growing up, I had this victim mentality where I would blame everyone else but me. 

I would blame my parents for being so poor that we had to get financial assistance. 

I would stutter when I speak and I would blame my dad because he stutters too.

I would blame my friends when I don’t get invited to parties.

I would blame everyone else BUT me.
I didn’t really achieve success until I decided to take back control of my own life. 

If you are born poor, it's not your fault. But if you die poor it is 100% your fault. 

In life you don’t get what you want, you get what you deserve.

You have to play the cards that you are dealt with.

You can blame the market all you want but nothing will change unless you do.

In the end, you chose your trading strategy, you did the research, you entered and exited the trade, so you own the outcome.

You can’t control how the market moves but you can control your own actions and you must accept both the wins and the loss.

 When you accept the outcome and you take full responsibility for your trades, that’s when you can finally learn and adjust to the market and not repeat the same mistakes. 

 Make your decisions. Live with them.

Stop making excuses. Hold yourself accountable.

Because worrying does not undo anything and wishing doesn’t change the future.

You can either be a victim or a victor. Your choice.

 

Law #9: Think long term

When was the last time you wrote out exactly how you want your life to be?

You don’t need motivation.

You just need clarity of path and clarity of vision to achieve your dream life. 

Having a clear vision does something magical for a trader. 

It’s what gets you out of your bed in the morning when you’re going through a shitty phase. 

It’s what gives you milestones to celebrate as you get closer to making your vision a reality.

And it’s what keeps you going with a sense of relentless obsession even when the suck factor kicks in and trust me, the suck factor always finds its way into a trader’s life.

Everything we do in trading, we do it because either we want to avoid pain or we want to gain pleasure. 

The secret to success is to learn how to use pain and pleasure instead of having pain and pleasure use you. 

If you can do that, you are in control of your trading account. 

If you don’t, the market controls you.

The problem is that most of us base our decisions about what to do on what’s going to create pain or pleasure in the short term INSTEAD of the long term.

Get out of a good trade? Avoid Pain.

Move your SL? Avoid pain.

Over leverage? Seek Pleasure.

Force trades? Seek pleasure.

However, anything you want that is valuable requires that you break through the short term pain in order to gain long term pleasure.

Which brings me to the next secret to trading success

 

Law #10: Choose discipline over motivation

Just like how the sun comes up everyday, you have to show up every single day without fail, whether you feel like it or not.

 Every action you take is a vote for the person you wish to become.

Everytime u take a bad trade that goes against your trading plan, you are voting for yourself to become a losing trader

Everytime u take a good trade that is aligned with your trading plan, you are  voting for yourself to become a successful trader

Compare Trader A and Trader B

 Trader A 

• Does not have a trading plan or a trading journal

• Trade based on his emotions

• Uses lot sizes way too big for his account

Trader B

• Stick to his trading plan all the time

• Journal his trades after he’s done

• Practice proper money management

• Patient to wait for good trade setups

Who do you think will be more profitable in the long run?

Trader B!

A lot of you always ask me “Hey Brad how do I become more motivated like you?”

My answer is I'M NOT MOTIVATED, I AM DISCIPLINED. 

I don't believe in motivation because motivation doesn’t last.

You can watch my videos and be motivated for 5 mins and then the next thing u know you go back to your same old bad habits and continue losing money.

What you really need is not motivation, it is the discipline to practice good habits of a top 1% trader.

Once you actually develop good habits, it would be very hard for you to go back to your old bad habits 

When you see my instagram profile, you will see all my public victories.

Videos of me living my dream life, traveling, buying stuff for my parents and hanging out with friends.

What you don't see is the small daily wins everyday that accumulated over time that contribute to these public victories.

Wake up at 5am. That's my first win.

Meditate for 10 mins. Another win.

Read books for 30 mins.

2hr deep work. Another win.

Go to the gym. Another win,

I love to stack wins after wins. 

And that's how I have an amazing and fulfilling day.

By doing the hard things, you are building the discipline muscle up and soon the things that you hated doing become a habit.

Tired? You do it anyways

Don't feel like it? You do it anyways

 The small things you do everyday add up to big results.

If you want to change the world, start by changing yourself.

If you want to change your life, start by changing your habits.

Humans hate to change. 

They love to be in the same old comfortable place and that is bad because in order to grow to become the person you want to be, you need to change.

Why do people take so many years to become a profitable trader? 

Because it takes years to develop a disciplined mind that trades well

After a winning streak, you will get euphoria. And the euphoria will make you think you are invincible. It will tempt you to jump into the next trade, without looking for your confluences. That is the true test of discipline. 

It’s easy to be disciplined when there are no emotions involved.

This is where discipline comes in. The disciplined trader will resist the temptation and stick to their plan, knowing that deviating from his plan will lead to a loss.

I believe more in self discipline because at the end of the day, no one is coming to save you. You’re born alone and you will die alone so all you have is yourself in this world. 

It’s easy to work hard when everyone is watching you. It’s all about what you do when no one is watching you. 

The early mornings where you wake up to grind and study trading.

The late nights where you stayed up to journal your trades.

The times when you almost gave in to your emotions.

Self-discipline is going to help you to make the decision to resist daily temptation that might prevent you from moving towards achieving your goals.

When I die and I go to Heaven, God will show me a sign board “Brad this is what you could have been. You could have been a millionaire trader, a leader that changed millions of lives and most importantly a good father who can provide for his family” 

I want to tell him “YES SIR this was my life and I had no regrets.”

My biggest fear would be when God replied “Too bad you were just a waiter. Then you went to work a 9 to 5 office job and you didn't had the balls to chase after your dreams and do what you really wanted to do” 

 

Law #11: Adapt or Fail

“What's the best timeframe?"

"What's the best indicator to use?"

"What's the best settings for the moving averages” 

It depends. 

Most beginner traders don’t understand context. 

Trading without understanding context will cause you to lose money.

 Beginners treat every scenario in the market the same so they use the same strategy all the time

Professional traders always adjust their thinking and positions because the market is always changing. 

It can change in terms of volatility, direction and bias.

 You can get in for a BUY but one hour later, a high impact news comes out causing the currency to be bearish now.

 Instead of sitting there and praying to God that the price will go up, you need to be flexible enough to adapt to the new circumstances.

 Understand that you need to get out when the conditions of the market have changed. Or even pivot your position if necessary. 

The context of the market will determine the size of the move and how long a move will last so you need to be flexible and adapt to new situations on the market.

Don’t impose your thoughts onto the market. React to what the market is doing.

 

Law #12: Trade like a Business

Trading is a business where you are putting your hard earned money on the line everyday. 

Yet most people go into it without a solid plan. 

These people are not trading, they are gambling.

Trading wasn’t my first side hustle. I tried everything from starting an online business to affiliate marketing. 

 I failed at the first few businesses I started. 

Because I didn’t execute. 

I was busy reading all the business books I could find.

I was busy creating a business plan.

I was busy creating the website for that business.

And in the end, I didn’t even launch the business. 

Reading books will not make you rich. 

Watching my videos will not make you a successful trader. Unless you take action.

You need to take action. Start then learn. 

• Set quarterly goals

• Develop a trading plan

• Follow a set of trading rules

• Track your progress 

• Review your trades

• Study and improve 

All these things will allow you to treat trading as a business.

When you finally treat trading seriously, that’s when the market will finally treat you seriously. 

 

If you are ready to treat trading seriously, invest in The Trading Blueprint where I teach you everything I know about trading so you yourself can become a top 1% trader as well.

- Brad Goh (The Trading Geek)