Can trading be learned or do you have to have a "gift" for it?

Hi gang,

I recently had this question posed to me as part of an email: Can my trading methodology really be learned by anyone or does a person have to have a certain type of personality or gift that others may not have. My response was as follows:

I do think that certain personalities are more apt to succeed in the market than others. I know that my style can be learned by anyone from a technical standpoint, but whether the person can impliment them themselves is another matter. The most common reason for failure is that traders don't actually follow their plans. Emotions come into play and they make any number of mistakes, from pausing too long and not taking their entry triggers fast enough, bailing ahead of targets, changing stops based on fear, looking for too much based on greed, not keeping a stop, trading too small from fear, etc. etc... My daughter is 9 and she can pick out the setups and know what to do. She has no concept of money on the line. She just knows what the rules are.

Obviously that doesn't translate to most of us as adults. Trading becomes emotional as opposed to a game where if you follow the rules you will win.Another thing is that some people have a much easier time with pattern recognition that others. I was trained as an artist. I can pick out patterns out of pretty much anything and can make subtle observations about price changes that do take time to learn to pick up on. So, that advanced analysis will take longer than being able to catch onto the core ideas even though those subtle changes come from the same form of analysis. You have to train your eye to look for them though, and how quickly and how well each individual does this varies.