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Doesn't matter if you're a seasoned investor or a new investor, certain personality traits seem to insure success in investing. Depending on whom you listen to Wall Street, Main Street or even your mom and dad. Everyone has a reason why you will or will not succeed in investing. It's up to you to decide if they're right.

The following three things are personality traits that seem to share a common place with all of the top investors in history. Buffett at Carnegie, all of the successful investors have always had these three personality traits.

1) Resources

Resources have to be available to the potential investor, whether the person is new at investing or the investing for years. You must have some resources available to you. Those resources can be anything from education, personal experience, literature, computer access, personal relationships, etc. etc.

These resources will help steer you towards the direction of good solid investments. Use your resources. Trust your resources. You are the person who will make the decision based on these resources and information that you have gained.

2) Have a game plan.

Never make an investment with the idea of making fast money from it. That is a fool's way to invest. For every single fast money making investment, there are hundreds of investments that surpass it in value just due to time and seasoning of the product/stock involved.

Always plan on investing for the long-term. Never focus on what exactly is going to happen within the next few weeks... don't matter if it's the stock market, real estate, e-startup companies, heck even coffee beans. Focus on what is going to happen in the distant future, not necessarily in the next two months.

3) "Investors Endurance"

This goes along with number two having a game plan. Investor's endurance is absolutely critical. You have to plan for your investments should always be placed for the long-term gain. For example, someone that bought into some of the major stocks in 1950s those same stocks is the stable factors that many market analysts use to predict trends. Having investor's endurance is critical, that means that you're willing to ride out the valleys and peaks in order to ensure a long-term gain over your investment. Every stock will spike, every stock will fall, real estate prices will skyrocket, and then tumble and stabilize only to start the process all over. Is your job to notice rises and falls across a stance of time in which you hold your investments?

Most people do not think of trading as a business in the usual sense - with customers to serve.

Instead, their metaphor for trading and investing is the Colosseum, where gladiators battle it out.

Fellow traders are seen as the enemy - someone to compete against.

This model of the marketplace can work - unfortunately, it requires a great deal of effort and stress. The trader or investor has to keep researching new techniques and edges to stay ahead of the competition.

Ultimately, in a head to head competition, the Wall Street pros - with their money, resources, and staff of "rocket scientists" and analysts - usually come out ahead of individual traders.

99% of traders lose their money.

There is an alternative investment model that can work for the individual trader - it will never become outdated, and it can cause your trading to become effortless and calming.

Before we discuss this model, let's talk about the difference between gambling (as in a casino) and speculating (as in a market). Gambling adds no economic value - it is simply a zero sum transfer of money from winner to loser. Speculation also involves a zero sum transfer of money from winner to loser, but it also provides economic value in the form of liquidity.

This difference has nothing to do with luck vs. skill or odds. A trader provides some liquidity even if he or she buys and sells at random.

What is liquidity? Let's pretend that a cereal company wants to lock in the price of wheat on a commodity exchange. The company's trader sees that wheat is trading at 100 cents per bushel.

If, when he tries to buy 1,000 bushels, it takes time for the sale to happen and he gets the wheat at 105 cents, then the market is not very liquid. On the other hand, if his order is instantaneously filled exactly at 100 cents, then the market can be said to be liquid.

Providing liquidity, then, is about regulating supply and demand in a market so that buyers and sellers can smoothly execute transactions.

Now, the Secret to our alternative trading model is to see your fellow market participants as your "customers". The "product" you are supplying to them is liquidity.

Your "customers" - collectively the market - will "pay" you with profits to the degree that you provide liquidity to the market place.

A trader maximizes his job of providing liquidity when he or she buys when there is too much supply and prices are declining, and sells when there is too much demand and prices are rising.

So, all you need to do to be a successful trader, is to buy low (into declines) and sell high (into rising prices). Note that this model is different than trying to guess about fundamentals, follow trends, or trying to out-trade other speculators.

To make this model work, you need to develop trading rules that progressively buy into lower prices, and then liquidate shares as prices rise. Your rules need to prevent you from buying whole positions up front. - in case of prolonged rises and falls. Instead, you need to scale in and out of positions.