For me, profit is the main motivation for most traders. It's not the only key to long-term success. The often overlooked but crucial factor is risk management (this is very important), without this, even the most skilled trader can lose everything.
Managing losses wisely ensures you survive long enough to enjoy the gains.
Thank you for putting it rightly because the author almost mixed things up in a bit. From your reply, two things stand out which is profit and risk management as the key to long-term trading. While profit is the motivation for every trader to continue trading, risk management is easily overlooked and that hurt badly. So, to become a successful long-term trader, it is important to take risk management seriously so as to protect the capital and profits made on it. Without proper risk management, even profits will be lost together with the capital.
You can’t call yourself a successful trader without putting in the best risk management skills into your trades. You will never be profitable and won’t be called a profitable trader without that knowledge of risk management and applying it to all of your trades. It does been overlooked and some may feel having patient is more important. Having patient without employing the best risk management will result to total waste of time and not be praised for imitating one of the attributes of a good trader of being patient while waiting for a trader set up to reach the point of interest to take the trade. Risk management is one of the essential and bedrock of trading, one shouldn’t joke on that while trying to get the best out of trading.