--- title: 'Most Important Skill For Day Traders' source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=pIM5odkkKL0' video_id: 'pIM5odkkKL0' date: 2026-09-29 duration_sec: 414 channel: 'The Moving Average' --- # Most Important Skill For Day Traders > Source: [Most Important Skill For Day Traders](https://youtube.com/watch?v=pIM5odkkKL0) ## Summary This video addresses the emotional challenge of patience in day trading. The creator shares a live trade example to illustrate the difficulty of waiting for a setup to play out, and offers practical advice on how to train yourself to be more patient. ### Key Points - **Patience is a core trading challenge** [00:12] — Patience is one of the hardest things for traders to handle emotionally, especially when waiting for a trade setup that may not even happen that day. - **Trading feels unproductive** [00:44] — Unlike manual labor, day trading doesn't feel productive because you're waiting rather than doing visible tasks. - **Live trade setup** [01:31] — The strategy involves drawing a box around the overnight range and waiting for a breakout, then using Fibonacci retracement from the impulse move. - **Fibonacci strategy rules** [02:18] — Entry within the Fibonacci gold zone, stop loss at the top of the impulse move (bearish), take profit at the bottom of the impulse move. - **Sideways movement tests patience** [02:48] — The first 35 minutes of the trade were sideways, testing patience while monitoring. - **Distract yourself during trades** [03:37] — Advice: set stop loss and take profit, then do other tasks like laundry or walking the dog to avoid over-monitoring. - **Patience is earned through practice** [04:26] — Patience is learned by waiting, not by reading; you earn the right to be called patient by practicing it. - **Educational resource** [05:45] — Recommendation of The Trading Floor (trdfloor.com) for step-by-step trading education and daily trade ideas. ### Conclusion Patience is the hardest skill in trading, but it can be trained by deliberately sitting with discomfort and focusing on other tasks while trades play out. ## Transcript I'm going to talk about something that irritates a lot of people in trading. And it's one of the things that feels almost impossible for traders to handle emotionally. And it's so simple. But when you think about it or when you're actually doing it, you want to feel like you're doing something. That one thing is patience. I've struggled with it for my entire life as an adult. I'm the most impatient person. I don't like waiting in lines at the store. I don't like waiting in lines at McDonald's. Waiting for a trade setup is one of the hardest things you can possibly do when it comes to day trading. Because let's say your job is manual labor. You're building a house. When you get to work, you start doing something. You're moving two-by-fours from A to Z. You're getting all your tools in order. you're nailing the two by fours to the frame, framing the house, measuring things, the whole time you're doing something. So you feel productive. When you are day trading, it doesn't feel productive. You're sitting there and waiting for a setup that might not even happen that day. So you feel like you wasted your day. Now I'm going to show you a trade that I'm in right now using the exact same strategy that I explained in yesterday's video. It's on the five minute chart and I find it extremely irritating because each five-minute candle feels like it takes an eternity to form. All right, so the two indicators or drawings I have up on this chart is a box around the overnight range, and I waiting for a breakout of this range Now in the meantime I saw a nice fat momentum swing down This had zero retracements nice momentum push and then it jolt back up So immediately, I grabbed my Fibonacci retracement tool and drew it from the top of the impulse move to the bottom of the impulse move, and then we got a wick above the Fibonacci retracement to the 0.618. Once we started getting a bearish candle here, I immediately entered. Now, my normal rule for this strategy is like this. You want to enter the trade within the Fibonacci gold zone, and you want your stop loss to be the top of the impulse move in a bearish move, and the take profit to be at the bottom of the impulse move. The reason being why I don't like to go for the Fibonacci extensions is because if price makes a double bottom and then shoots up, I could have still captured the move without getting stopped out. I entered this trade, I entered this trade 70 minutes ago. And I've been sitting here in my office monitoring this trade, doing other clerical work, checking emails and so on. And you can see the first 35 minutes of this move literally were sideways. So every single second that the clock was ticking, I'm sitting here being impatient, waiting for that quick get to my take profit, have a nice day. As you can see here, I'm in the trade and it's almost at the take profit level. But while I've been in this trade, like I normally, I know I struggle with this, so I always try to do something else while I'm in a trade. But while I been super engaged in this trade and watching every single candle I realized that this is one of the hardest things for traders to do is just sit there and wait for the move to play out without panicking without worrying about drawdown And it one of the most irritating things that you can do But what I want you to do is start doing something else Start to learn to enter a trade, set up your take profit and stop loss, and whatever the result may be, you don't have to stress about it. Go do something else. There's probably something in your apartment or your house that needs fixing. You probably need to take out the trash. You probably need to do some laundry. You probably need to walk the dog. If you have all of your house obligations taken care of and you have some free time and this trade is doing what it needs to do, go, I don't know, to the local pond and go fishing. Go ride your bike. Go for a walk. clear your head. Patience is a thing that you learn by waiting. You don't magically learn to be patient somehow through a book. Your brain earns the right to be called patient when you actually practice patience. Sitting there, waiting, doing nothing, without bitching about it, without complaining, without trying to manipulate the situation so that it happens faster. Patience is a virtue that is one of the hardest to get. And especially if you're somebody that has kids and you're a parent, being patient is one of the most important things that you can give to your children as well as your significant other. So if you're struggling with patience and you're sitting there waiting for something to happen, sit with that feeling. Learn that feeling. Become friends with that feeling Because once you get used to it and you done it enough times even if it feels irritating and you feel frustrated you know that eventually the wait will be over The trade will either work out or it won't. Once that happens, then move on to the next one. But for the time being, sit there, don't do anything, and become friends with the irritated part of you that does not like to be patient. Now, there are many other aspects of day trading that you need to learn. market structure, price action, support and resistance, how momentum indicators work. If you haven't gotten a full grasp yet on everything when it comes to day trading and you need more education, you need a step-by-step process, you want the curriculum to take you from where you are now to where you want to be, I highly suggest using a website called The Trading Floor. It's trbfloor.com. They have an entire system that will literally take you from zero knowledge to making your first profitable trade. It is a step-by-step process called the roadmap. And if I had something like that when I was starting out, I'd be in a way better position than I am now. Because the way that I learned caused me years of anguish and tens of thousands, if not $100,000 or more of losses. They also give you like daily trade ideas. So while you're still learning, you can actually be active in the market, taking some trades, and seeing how it feels to actively be in the market. Again, that's trdfloor.com, one of the best education platforms you can find. Thank you so much for watching. I really hope that you're able to practice patience and become more comfortable with it. If you know anybody that needs to hear this video, please send it to them. Again, thank you so much for watching, and we will see you in the next one.