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The Key To Confident Trading - Focus On What You Can Control

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Hi Traders, today's topic regarding "The key to confident trading - focus on what you can control." Believe or not, some of the best Traders out there I know, have huge amount of confidence in their own trading profitability. The confidence to stick to your process & strategies, execute your trade, and get yourself through drawdown period are all essential. Focus on your mistakes, is the one and only thing that makes you a better Trader each day.

During your journey to a consistently profitable trader, it's crucial to understand what are some of the factors you can control, and what you cannot control. This post is inspired by Mark, a trading mentor.

Can

1. Pre-trade/ Post trade Process
Have a strict routine and checklist, before you start jumping into the market begin shooting your position all over. Spend the effort to create your daily plan, be prepared, and be sharp clear on what you're looking for. After any closed position, spend the time to review and reflect them, identify common mistakes and methods to leverage them into your advantage.

2. Trading environment
Trading requires immense focus, you must have a peaceful trading office that allows you to tackle the market with a calm mindset.

3. Position size

Majority of Traders blow up their capital due to improper position sizing and risk management. Protect your capital at all cost, and never allow one position to cause damage to your capital. Treat every trade the same way, trading is a probability game.

4. Entry/ Exit
The patience to wait for the market to come to your entry point/ criteria is essential. The same goes to exit, identify your exit plan beforehand, so you're well-prepared for any possibilities.

5. Stop position
Knowing when to get out of a trade is equally important as your entries. Identify multiple ways to exit a position, it could be scale out, trail stops, market structure, etc. Learn how to squeeze as much milk from each winning trade and ride them through your daily review.

6. Markets you trade
Especially in the beginning of your trading journey, narrow down your watchlist and focus on what you're good at. Less is more, pay more attention to those high quality setups and ignore the rest.

7. Diet, nutrition, sleep
Great Traders focus on their diet, nutrition and sleep. If you do not have the discipline to eat and sleep properly, how good would you be at managing your capital? To be your at your peak mental performance, you must first have a healthy physical state.

8. Education & learning
Keep grinding and learning everyday. Do not overlook the significance of each day, small steps everyday is what get you towards your goals.


Cannot

1. What the market does
Most of the losing Traders tend to blame the market or themselves whenever things aren't going according to their plan. Understand the probability and possibility. Focus on your personal performance rather than the market behaviour.

2. When it stops you out
The feeling of getting stopped out of a position is unpleasant. But on the positive note, getting stop out of a bad trade avoids you from wasting your time and energy on any unfavourable setups. With a proper SL and Risk Management, several losing trades aren't a big deal, as you're confident that your capital is well-protected. Always stay positive!

3. How many losers you have
As a wise Trader, we can't control how many losers we encounter as trading is a game of probability. Instead, what we can do is to focus on get to get ourselves out of a losing streaks, journal and review our mistakes. A healthy equity curve is never like a 90 degree angle, but a slow and steady uptrend-like movement that keeps you in the business as long as you want.

4. How quiet or volatile
The volatility of a market is unpredictable & uncontrollable. But the ability to spot them and identify trading potential is important. If the market is quiet, simply stay out of the market if the potential isn't there. "Money is made by sitting, not trading." - Jesse Lauriston Livermore

5. Surprise events
Be cautious on major news event (Eg. NFP, CPI , Unemployment Rate, Interest Rate, Government Speech). These major events usually cause some surge in market volatility , stay out of the market to avoid some unpredictable spikes OR slippage.

Comment down what's your worst experience trying to 'control' the uncontrollable!
"The key to trading success is emotional discipline. If intelligence were the key, there would be a lot more people making money trading." - Victor Sperandeo

Trade safe as usual.

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