In your trading, are you playing to your strengths, or are you simply being an "opportunity seeker"?

There is a huge difference between the two and if you're just an opportunity seeker, then you are leaving yourself open to frustration and losses.

There are many parallels between trading, business and gambling, and your ultimate success long-term will be determined by how you approach any of the three. Playing to your strengths is critical in all three.

In any of the pursuits, there is competition and you always want to make sure that you're playing to your strengths and not your weaknesses.

The objective is winning, that is profiting, and you want every advantage that you can get.

Too often, the opportunity seeker will go after an opportunity just because they see that there's money to be made, and they figure that they can shore up their weaknesses (learn more) enough to go get that money.

Let's take a brief look at how this applies in each area, keeping in mind the parallels between them.

In business, the long term successes are built by those with an end goal in mind, a vision of what the business will look like when it's mature.

This is critical because the company must stay on a course that is consistent with its vision while it is growing. Distractions and deviations from the path only serve to slow it down or even take it backwards.

Successful business leaders know when to pursue an opportunity and when to say "no". Saying "no" is essential to keeping the company's activities (investments of time) focused where competitive advantages exist and avoiding those where the company is at a disadvantage.

In gambling, the poker player will stay at the BlackJack table and make his money there. He won't jump up and run to the Roulette table just because he heard somebody just won $50,000 over there. He knows what he's good at and will only venture over to other tables for entertainment, not to make money.

In Trading, let's say investing for the sake of argument, a good real estate investor that knows how to make $1 million a year isn't necessarily going to do well in trading. They are completely different games.

Just because a person knows how to buy properties right, increase their value through rehab or raising rents, does not mean that they will have the talents or skills to make money in the Futures or Forex markets.

Even an experienced trader should be hesitant to jump from one game to the next. A buy-and-hold position trader should exercise great caution before jumping into day-trading, and a spread better should hone his skills before thinking about buying (or selling) outright futures contracts.

Each strategy (or game let's say) has different skills associated with it, and different emotional requirements.

The other serious consideration is your proficiency level - period. This combined with your ability to devote time to trading.

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