Focus on one single trading strategy
One thing that many people try and do is switch between strategies constantly. This is setting you up for failure, and if the concept of probabilities is truly understood, you will comprehend the reasons why a single strategy will work.
Any strategy is not going to have a 100% win rate, so first you should attempt at getting 50% of your trades right. After that mastering a 2:1 Reward to risk ratio is what will make you profitable. Trying to juggle many strategies will have you working tirelessly, but not moving forward in any particular one.
Less trading, more education
Many people have the conception that spending countless hours in front of the screen looking for potential set ups is how it should be, however that is completely wrong in my eyes. I spend minimal time now looking at charts and set ups, I highlight key levels I want to look at, along with alerts, and simply wait for the market to head there. Time spent looking at charts should be simply for education and mastering your strategy through back testing or simply understanding previous data.
Approach the market from a neutral position
Anyone that knows me knows how big I am on trading psychology and how I believe it is the most important aspect of trading.
Emotions in trading can be one of your greatest enemies as it can lead you to failure even after your success. There are scenarios where you can take trades and be in positive which will lead you to feel over confident, happy, and those will ultimately will lead to irrational decisions if you let them. Those emotions will make you believe you are better than the markets, or that you can outsmart them, ultimately leading your successful trade to turn into a failure. The same can happen when you feel the opposite and lack confidence to enter another trade due to a loss, or think have feelings of doubt.
This is why the market needs to be approached by a completely neutral position. Once you understand that for every person on one side of a trade, there is someone on the opposite side, you will begin to understand that the market itself is just a whole bunch of neutral information moving in nobody’s favour.
Write your goals
Affirmations are great and something that has helped me in every aspect of my life and not just trading. It is very important to write down your goals in order to manifest them into reality. All ideas first begin in the mind, and then come into the physical. Your goals need to be solidified, definite, and written down in order for your mind and yourself to know exactly what you are going after.
Every single day, you need to read your goals aloud, envision them in your mind with every bit of detail possible in order to bring them into the physical. In order to achieve a goal you need to arrive at the destination first in your mind.
Relax
There is no need to rush a single thing in your trading journey, and believe me take it from my experience, every time I tried to, I failed. People attend university for years before going out into a career which then takes many years before mastering it, yet people want to master trading in a year.
Patience is required in all aspects of trading, whether it’s on the charts themselves, or with your strategy, or with your learning curve. It all requires patience. If you are going after trading as a serious life career which you aim to remain in, then relaxing and taking your time is the first step. Nothing great comes from rushing it, especially the markets.
Know how to handle your trades
Based on your strategy and the concept of probability there are a number of things needed in order to appropriately handle your trades.
Firstly, don’t touch your stop loss. I cant say this enough, but stop losses are determined as the final barrier before the trade is invalid, and they are determine before entering the trade. If you find yourself moving your stop, ask yourself why. You will find out mostly its out of fear of losing your money, which is one of the 4 fears of trading. Accept your loss and let the trade stop out, you had it there for a reason.
Also, don’t leave trades behind out of fear. If you have a strategy that you have confidently developed, you should understand that the overall should be a greater number of winners than losers, and you should not leave trades behind out of fear, because they can be the ones that perform the best and make up for the losers.
Another thing to have in place is an appropriate strategy for exiting your trades. Many people have trades that are in profit, however due to the lack of knowledge on how to exit their trades, they still end up not profitable. You need to have a system on how to exit your trades appropriately and at what levels. Always remember, the profit running on a trade is not yours until its closed.
Risk management
Yes, I know you have heard it and read it a thousand times already, but you have no idea how important risk management is until the day you master it and recognise it was the single greatest thing holding you back from success.
People can have amazing strategies, the best reward to risk ratios, but with the inappropriate risk management trust me it means absolutely nothing. I have seen people overleverage on a trade simply because it “looked too good” compared to other trades, only for it to be the worst of the bunch.
I have seen people lose tremendous amounts of money and one thing I can promise you is not a single one of these people lost 100 trades in a row at 1% a trade. Every single one of them lost their entire accounts due to ONE trade that they married.
Risk management should be one of your main areas of focus, because believe me if you have mastered it, even with an average strategy you are doing much better than someone with an exceptional strategy with no adequate risk management.
Keep track of your performance
The only way to improve in any aspect of life is to first recognise what needs change and then work on it. It is very important to actually understand your positives and negatives and have them all tracked. A journal is one of the first steps in order to look in the mirror. Being completely honest is the only way a journal will work, and lying is only lying to yourself. If you are after serious improvement you need to appropriately identify all your flaws in order to better them.
You should never feel down or behind, remember trading the markets is one of the biggest psychological challenges one can face, and that is exactly why not everyone is suited for them. Instead see it as a challenge to better yourself and achieve the perfection and discipline you have always desired on and off the charts. Trading the markets will teach you lessons that you will carry with you throughout your entire life and not just on the trading floor.
One thing that many people try and do is switch between strategies constantly. This is setting you up for failure, and if the concept of probabilities is truly understood, you will comprehend the reasons why a single strategy will work.
Any strategy is not going to have a 100% win rate, so first you should attempt at getting 50% of your trades right. After that mastering a 2:1 Reward to risk ratio is what will make you profitable. Trying to juggle many strategies will have you working tirelessly, but not moving forward in any particular one.
Less trading, more education
Many people have the conception that spending countless hours in front of the screen looking for potential set ups is how it should be, however that is completely wrong in my eyes. I spend minimal time now looking at charts and set ups, I highlight key levels I want to look at, along with alerts, and simply wait for the market to head there. Time spent looking at charts should be simply for education and mastering your strategy through back testing or simply understanding previous data.
Approach the market from a neutral position
Anyone that knows me knows how big I am on trading psychology and how I believe it is the most important aspect of trading.
Emotions in trading can be one of your greatest enemies as it can lead you to failure even after your success. There are scenarios where you can take trades and be in positive which will lead you to feel over confident, happy, and those will ultimately will lead to irrational decisions if you let them. Those emotions will make you believe you are better than the markets, or that you can outsmart them, ultimately leading your successful trade to turn into a failure. The same can happen when you feel the opposite and lack confidence to enter another trade due to a loss, or think have feelings of doubt.
This is why the market needs to be approached by a completely neutral position. Once you understand that for every person on one side of a trade, there is someone on the opposite side, you will begin to understand that the market itself is just a whole bunch of neutral information moving in nobody’s favour.
Write your goals
Affirmations are great and something that has helped me in every aspect of my life and not just trading. It is very important to write down your goals in order to manifest them into reality. All ideas first begin in the mind, and then come into the physical. Your goals need to be solidified, definite, and written down in order for your mind and yourself to know exactly what you are going after.
Every single day, you need to read your goals aloud, envision them in your mind with every bit of detail possible in order to bring them into the physical. In order to achieve a goal you need to arrive at the destination first in your mind.
Relax
There is no need to rush a single thing in your trading journey, and believe me take it from my experience, every time I tried to, I failed. People attend university for years before going out into a career which then takes many years before mastering it, yet people want to master trading in a year.
Patience is required in all aspects of trading, whether it’s on the charts themselves, or with your strategy, or with your learning curve. It all requires patience. If you are going after trading as a serious life career which you aim to remain in, then relaxing and taking your time is the first step. Nothing great comes from rushing it, especially the markets.
Know how to handle your trades
Based on your strategy and the concept of probability there are a number of things needed in order to appropriately handle your trades.
Firstly, don’t touch your stop loss. I cant say this enough, but stop losses are determined as the final barrier before the trade is invalid, and they are determine before entering the trade. If you find yourself moving your stop, ask yourself why. You will find out mostly its out of fear of losing your money, which is one of the 4 fears of trading. Accept your loss and let the trade stop out, you had it there for a reason.
Also, don’t leave trades behind out of fear. If you have a strategy that you have confidently developed, you should understand that the overall should be a greater number of winners than losers, and you should not leave trades behind out of fear, because they can be the ones that perform the best and make up for the losers.
Another thing to have in place is an appropriate strategy for exiting your trades. Many people have trades that are in profit, however due to the lack of knowledge on how to exit their trades, they still end up not profitable. You need to have a system on how to exit your trades appropriately and at what levels. Always remember, the profit running on a trade is not yours until its closed.
Risk management
Yes, I know you have heard it and read it a thousand times already, but you have no idea how important risk management is until the day you master it and recognise it was the single greatest thing holding you back from success.
People can have amazing strategies, the best reward to risk ratios, but with the inappropriate risk management trust me it means absolutely nothing. I have seen people overleverage on a trade simply because it “looked too good” compared to other trades, only for it to be the worst of the bunch.
I have seen people lose tremendous amounts of money and one thing I can promise you is not a single one of these people lost 100 trades in a row at 1% a trade. Every single one of them lost their entire accounts due to ONE trade that they married.
Risk management should be one of your main areas of focus, because believe me if you have mastered it, even with an average strategy you are doing much better than someone with an exceptional strategy with no adequate risk management.
Keep track of your performance
The only way to improve in any aspect of life is to first recognise what needs change and then work on it. It is very important to actually understand your positives and negatives and have them all tracked. A journal is one of the first steps in order to look in the mirror. Being completely honest is the only way a journal will work, and lying is only lying to yourself. If you are after serious improvement you need to appropriately identify all your flaws in order to better them.
You should never feel down or behind, remember trading the markets is one of the biggest psychological challenges one can face, and that is exactly why not everyone is suited for them. Instead see it as a challenge to better yourself and achieve the perfection and discipline you have always desired on and off the charts. Trading the markets will teach you lessons that you will carry with you throughout your entire life and not just on the trading floor.