IEL sits at his trading station staring at his screens ready to pounce. GMan sits at his much larger trading station (he is the Head Trader) watching every tick in the market, with his hands on his keyboard. Scuba sits patiently processing every bid and offer in ARNA (even though he is a Partner). And then some others trade AND answer emails or trade AND play their new favorite video game. Those others are under-performing and there is no secret why.

Being an elite intraday trader requires doing the thousands of little things. Things that have nothing to do with creating a brilliant new trading strategy, or predicting whether ARNA will trade higher on a slow Friday before the Jewish holiday. I start my StockTwits TV show Sunday night talking about the little things that make all the difference. And focus (in this case doing nothing else save trade) is one little HUGE thing.

I’m not sure why people think developing the next brilliant trading system is paramount. I am uncertain why so many believe that predicting the direction of a stock or the markets are the keys to the profitable trading kingdom. I suppose we could blame the media (they are always an easy target). We could rebuke our society which glorifies the uber-rich (an even easier target). Anyway it is all just not true for the intraday prop trader.

So the next time you are trading AND playing a video game or trading AND answering an email recognize that the elite performers aren’t. Your job as a developing trader (and btw, we’re all just developing traders including this author) is to find your trading potential. And you can’t if less than 100 percent of your focus in on trading.