You might think writing a blog post titled Why bother to trade? is a trivial topic at best, or joke at the worst.

It's neither.

The question is one that we all must not only answer before we begin trading, but also every time we open our trading platform.

And the answer is not to make $500 today, or 20 pips, or to 'beat the market'.

The answer should be — must be — to enhance our financial situation to make our lives, and the lives of those close to us, better.

If that's not what you think — and believe — then your risk management has been incorrectly crafted.

The Chinese book of Wisdom, The I-Ching has this of interest to say:

The I-Ching, Hexagram 42. I/Increase

"A man brings about real increase by producing in himself the conditions for it. That is, through receptivity to and love of the good. Thus the thing for which he strives comes of itself, with the inevitability of natural law."

And the reason this is important to note is found in another passage:

The I-Ching, Hexagram 39. Chien/Obstruction

"Difficulties and obstructions throw a man back upon himself. While the inferior man seeks to put the blame on other persons, bewailing his fate, the superior man seeks the error within himself, and through this introspection the external obstacle becomes for him an occasion for inner enrichment and education."

I hope you get it....

It's just not about the money. It's about the time that money buys — a mantra that I have taught my martial arts students for 50 years, and who teach their students, who teach their students, who....

As I note in my martial arts biography, my way of life must be in harmony with the Hopi prayer:

Hopi prayer

"Seek the way to conduct our lives in friendship and peace, without anger, without greed, without wickedness of any kind, among ourselves or in our association with any people."

Trading, particularly trading foreign currencies on the world FOREX market, demands what the Buddhist would term "right thinking; right living. Trading is an art, not a science where equations can be written to calculate some end result. Trading is more intuitive — as former Richard Dennis 'Turtle Trader' Curtis Faith discusses in his book Trading From The Gut.

Possessing rules alone is insufficient to be a good trader. Rules only give the 'what', and the 'how' of trading.

But no rule, or set of rules, can provide the all critical 'when' of trading, an element so amorphis that it can only be described as that special ju-ju pixie dust that triggers the artist's inspiration to create where nothing concrete exists to create with or from.

You don't learn to drive a car by reading a book. And you don't learn to drive it safely by jumping behind the wheel with just information. And even after driving for years, you can't expect to run with the big dogs in a pro track race.

What 'rules' are there that make a great race car driver?

There are none.

And thus, neither are there such 'rules' for eager currency traders looking for the Holy Grail secret ju-ju sauce of riches.

You learn to drive a car through information; you lean to drive it safely through practice, and by listening to and following the guidance of a teacher. Oh, you might be able to do it yourself. But the price you pay for not knowing something could be your life. Fortunately, in currency trading such ill advised action only results in the loss of money.

Just don't forget: that lost money could have bought time; time to spend that money to enrich your life, and the lives of those close to you.

Though the money can be made up, the time is lost forever.