Hello, friends! We all know that it is important to have a trading plan and a profitable strategy, and, of course, to follow them. Now, the issue of discipline and following your own trading rules is where most of the problems start. However, there is one simple tool, literally a piece of paper, that can help you significantly improve your discipline in trading and, as a result, your key performance indicators and profits.
With that simple tool being the checklist. In this article we will talk about why it is important, why it is important for a trader and how to properly compile and apply it.
Why do traders plan their trades?
Great traders and world-famous investors plan how, when and why they are investing. They realize that to achieve their ultimate goal, they need a map outlining the route of their trading plan that will help guide them to make the right decisions at the right time.
A trading plan will provide you with structure and help you develop discipline in your trading actions. It will help you track your trading process, assign responsibility and measure your success. It will provide you with a framework to clearly visualize your current situation at any given time, and will help you identify your goals, outline your strategy, and determine your risks and returns.
Whether you are an experienced trader or just a beginner, a well thought out trading plan is sort of the vehicle you need to get to your destination. Not only is it important to have your trading plan, but it is equally important to stick to it. Some of us easily stick to it, while others are in a constant struggle with their concept and the reality of carefully following the rules, they have defined in their strict trading plan.
Do you really have a trading plan that you would follow by properly executing your market entries and exits? I'm a big advocate that we should all have a clear system to support our decision making that will help us remain objective and unbiased about when to buy and sell. However, should any good system that you should follow be so unambiguous? Should you trust it or doubt it?
Your discipline and commitment to your trading plan can be measured, reviewed and improved. You can incorporate key performance indicators into your trading strategy and determine how closely you follow your rules and trading plan. The number of mistakes you make based on aspects such as noise, emotion or oversights can be counted and questioned - as a result, you can improve your trading plan. Identify your mistakes by comparing when your system gives you a buy or sell signal, when and why you actually executed it. If most of your trades are not executed according to your system or rules, you may be managing your positions intuitively rather than following the rules. This approach to trading lacks consistency and will negatively impact your returns in the long run.
At the same time, there are cases where trading based on emotion will minimize losses and lock in profits, but only a narrow range of professional traders have intuitively mastered this ability on a consistent basis. In the end, for the remaining traders, emotion-based trading does not work because it cannot be replicated, and it only leads to insolvency and frustration. What may work today will not work tomorrow and always. In addition, this kind of trading increases stress and creates bad habits for repeated indecision.
If your trading plan is solid most of the time, then it is worth sticking to it. Thus, it is important to make an effort to check the reliability and stability of your trading plan before you start trading or increase your risks. Traders often abandon their plans when they do not have enough personal experience to follow the plans and thus naturally lack confidence.
What would make it easier to follow your plan?
So how do you follow your plan? One of the things that gets in our way is, oddly enough, our brain. We think and guess too much. From this we can assume that if we reduce the activity of our wandering mind and leave only logic, efficiency will increase. A good way to accomplish this is to make and print out a checklist for entering and exiting trades.
What is a checklist? A checklist contains a number of necessary items for any work. In our case for trading. The checklist is used to check if all the conditions are in line with your market entry strategy. You tick each of the conditions, if at least one of them is not fulfilled, do not enter the market.
Everything is very simple. Suppose your strategy is based on two indicators combined with support/resistance levels, you trade intraday, one of these indicators is a trend indicator and the other is an oscillator. Then your checklist could look like this:
1) Now American / London session? - Yes/No
2) Is there an entry signal on the X indicator? - Yes/No
3) Is the Y indicator in agreement with the signal of the X indicator? - Yes/No
4) Does the signal have a level support? - Yes / No
4) Isn't there another level in the way of the proposed trade, which will prevent it from reaching the target? - Yes / No
5) Is there no important news coming out in the next half an hour? - Yes / No
6) Am I feeling well right now (i.e. I am not sick, depressed, tired)? - Yes / No
You run through this list and mark the items with a pencil. If the answer to all questions is YES then enter the trade. If there is at least one NO do not enter.
Everything is so simple and you do not need to think. By thinking I mean the wandering mind mode, which leads to unnecessary trades, early entries/exits, etc. The checklist removes these mental "what ifs", "I guess", "it seems", etc. All items on the checklist match - enter. If at least one item doesn't match - don't enter.
How to Make a Checklist for Your Strategy
How to make a checklist? Very simple. Take the rules of your strategy and reduce them to a list of items so that against each item you can put a check mark, if the conditions on the chart correspond to it, or answer one-word Yes / No. I also advise you to include a point about your current moral state, because it is not worth trading when you are tired, sick, depressed, etc.
Conclusion
A checklist is essentially a checklist of items from your trading strategy and trading plan. Its purpose is to reduce the influence of a "wandering mind" on your trading. Also, the checklist helps you not to forget about anything. Every time, before opening a trade, run through each point on your list: if even one item does not correspond to the current situation - do not enter the market. And may the profit be with you!
With that simple tool being the checklist. In this article we will talk about why it is important, why it is important for a trader and how to properly compile and apply it.
Why do traders plan their trades?
Great traders and world-famous investors plan how, when and why they are investing. They realize that to achieve their ultimate goal, they need a map outlining the route of their trading plan that will help guide them to make the right decisions at the right time.
A trading plan will provide you with structure and help you develop discipline in your trading actions. It will help you track your trading process, assign responsibility and measure your success. It will provide you with a framework to clearly visualize your current situation at any given time, and will help you identify your goals, outline your strategy, and determine your risks and returns.
Whether you are an experienced trader or just a beginner, a well thought out trading plan is sort of the vehicle you need to get to your destination. Not only is it important to have your trading plan, but it is equally important to stick to it. Some of us easily stick to it, while others are in a constant struggle with their concept and the reality of carefully following the rules, they have defined in their strict trading plan.
Do you really have a trading plan that you would follow by properly executing your market entries and exits? I'm a big advocate that we should all have a clear system to support our decision making that will help us remain objective and unbiased about when to buy and sell. However, should any good system that you should follow be so unambiguous? Should you trust it or doubt it?
Your discipline and commitment to your trading plan can be measured, reviewed and improved. You can incorporate key performance indicators into your trading strategy and determine how closely you follow your rules and trading plan. The number of mistakes you make based on aspects such as noise, emotion or oversights can be counted and questioned - as a result, you can improve your trading plan. Identify your mistakes by comparing when your system gives you a buy or sell signal, when and why you actually executed it. If most of your trades are not executed according to your system or rules, you may be managing your positions intuitively rather than following the rules. This approach to trading lacks consistency and will negatively impact your returns in the long run.
At the same time, there are cases where trading based on emotion will minimize losses and lock in profits, but only a narrow range of professional traders have intuitively mastered this ability on a consistent basis. In the end, for the remaining traders, emotion-based trading does not work because it cannot be replicated, and it only leads to insolvency and frustration. What may work today will not work tomorrow and always. In addition, this kind of trading increases stress and creates bad habits for repeated indecision.
If your trading plan is solid most of the time, then it is worth sticking to it. Thus, it is important to make an effort to check the reliability and stability of your trading plan before you start trading or increase your risks. Traders often abandon their plans when they do not have enough personal experience to follow the plans and thus naturally lack confidence.
What would make it easier to follow your plan?
So how do you follow your plan? One of the things that gets in our way is, oddly enough, our brain. We think and guess too much. From this we can assume that if we reduce the activity of our wandering mind and leave only logic, efficiency will increase. A good way to accomplish this is to make and print out a checklist for entering and exiting trades.
What is a checklist? A checklist contains a number of necessary items for any work. In our case for trading. The checklist is used to check if all the conditions are in line with your market entry strategy. You tick each of the conditions, if at least one of them is not fulfilled, do not enter the market.
Everything is very simple. Suppose your strategy is based on two indicators combined with support/resistance levels, you trade intraday, one of these indicators is a trend indicator and the other is an oscillator. Then your checklist could look like this:
1) Now American / London session? - Yes/No
2) Is there an entry signal on the X indicator? - Yes/No
3) Is the Y indicator in agreement with the signal of the X indicator? - Yes/No
4) Does the signal have a level support? - Yes / No
4) Isn't there another level in the way of the proposed trade, which will prevent it from reaching the target? - Yes / No
5) Is there no important news coming out in the next half an hour? - Yes / No
6) Am I feeling well right now (i.e. I am not sick, depressed, tired)? - Yes / No
You run through this list and mark the items with a pencil. If the answer to all questions is YES then enter the trade. If there is at least one NO do not enter.
Everything is so simple and you do not need to think. By thinking I mean the wandering mind mode, which leads to unnecessary trades, early entries/exits, etc. The checklist removes these mental "what ifs", "I guess", "it seems", etc. All items on the checklist match - enter. If at least one item doesn't match - don't enter.
How to Make a Checklist for Your Strategy
How to make a checklist? Very simple. Take the rules of your strategy and reduce them to a list of items so that against each item you can put a check mark, if the conditions on the chart correspond to it, or answer one-word Yes / No. I also advise you to include a point about your current moral state, because it is not worth trading when you are tired, sick, depressed, etc.
Conclusion
A checklist is essentially a checklist of items from your trading strategy and trading plan. Its purpose is to reduce the influence of a "wandering mind" on your trading. Also, the checklist helps you not to forget about anything. Every time, before opening a trade, run through each point on your list: if even one item does not correspond to the current situation - do not enter the market. And may the profit be with you!
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bit.ly/3spSQqC
🔻FREE Telegram channel🔻
t.me/DeGRAMChannel
🔻Contact for Paid SIGNALS🔻
t.me/DeGRAMForex