December 20, 2017
3 Ways to Make Day Trading Easier | Trading Psychology
Today’s Trading Psychology question of the day…
“Do you have any tricks on making trading easier? I started trading at the beginning of the year, and I assumed this was going to be a lot easier than it has been. Could you give me some ways to make this process easier on my bank account and easier on my emotions?”
Great question, and as always, I appreciate you guys sending me your trading psychology questions so I can keep making these YouTube videos for you.
In today’s psychology lesson, I’m going to give you three (3) ways to make trading easier.
But before I go into today’s lesson, I need to remind you that this psychology lesson is the most recent in a series of psychology videos that I publish every week, and these videos build on the topics we’ve already discussed, so if this is the first video you’re watching, you might want to go back to the beginning of this video series and start from the beginning to get the most value out of these lessons.
Here’s the link to watch from the beginning: https://goo.gl/k1F34D
I also want to remind you to subscribe to this YouTube Channel, give me a thumbs-up if you like it, and share it with a friend if you think they can benefit as well.
And if you really want to stay in-tune with what’s going on here at SchoolOfTrade, join our mailing list on the homepage of our website, or on my blog at SidewaysMarkets.com.
Without any further delay, the question was… “how do I make trading easier?”
The business of day trading is a difficult one. Many people begin their careers thinking that the software will trade for them, or that there’s some magic pattern that will do nothing but fill their bank account, or they will stumble into the next big breakout opportunity, but in reality, a successful long-term day trading career comes down to three specific things.
1. Trading Strategy
2. Trading Coach
3. Positive Mindset
Trading Strategy
The first leg of this strategy is the trading strategy, which most people assume is the most important part of the process, but in all honesty, a trading strategy is worthless if you don’t have the other three pieces to the puzzle.
Your trading strategy needs to cover all the different variables that make-up a successful career, such as, identifying the market conditions, finding reliable trading opportunities, proper entry timing, proper entry techniques, risk-management, and account management, ongoing performance analysis, the list of variables that your trading strategy needs to include is pretty long.
When you’re new to trading, your trading strategy should focus on ways of increasing your probabilities of success, such as following the trend, buying at support in a bullish trend, selling at resistance in a bearish trend, simple and easy-to-recognize trade set-ups with black and white rules that you can memorize, and a risk-reward-ratio that allows you to take a few losses and still make a profit.
Furthermore, your trading strategy should put the emphasis on weekly goals, rather than daily goals, which will take the pressure off and allow you to stay patient for the best trades each day.
We’ve discussed these details in all of my previous lessons, so if you missed those, make sure you go back and watch the beginning of this psychology series.
So the first way to make trading is easier is to use a proven trading strategy.
Trading Coach
The second way to make trading easier is to use work with a professional trading coach.
Think of your trading strategy as the bones of your trading career, and your trading coach is the muscle.
Your trading strategy will provide the structure you need, the rules to follow, etc, and working with a trading coach is going to make you most effective at executing that strategy.
In my almost ten years’ experience in coaching, I’ve learned that most people have the desire, but they need the continued support, guidance and discipline that comes with a professional trading coach.
Let’s take the example of a professional athlete, who hires a coach to help him/her perform at their highest level. Their coach isn’t better at the sport than they are, but they have a proven technique for bringing the best out of their clients.
For example, Roger Federer, one of the great tennis players of all-time will hire a coach to help him achieve his lofty goals. His coach probably can’t beat him in a tennis match, that’s not the point, the goal of that coach is to help him develop into the world’s best tennis player.
In day trading, a coach is just as important.
Your trading coach is going to look at your long-term goals, look at your skills, your personality, and develop a strategy to achieve those goals in the most effective way possible.
Your coach will help you create a plan, with short-term milestones and hold you accountable every step of the way.
Yes, you can be a successful trader by acting as your own trading coach, but very few people can wear both hats. The real value of your trading coach is going to be pushing you through the hard parts of this challenging career.
Personally, I’ve had great success using a professional coach in many different parts of my life, such as trading, health & fitness, and even relationships.
The money I’ve invested in my coaches over the years has given me the best return on investment I could have possibly imagined. Yes, I could have done well on my own, but I could have never accomplished what I have in such a short period of time.
The best way to get the most out of your trading strategy is to find a great coach, not someone who’s a better trader than you, but someone who can bring the best out of your specific skills and personality.
So, now we know you can make trading easier with a proven trading strategy and a great trading coach.
Positive Mindset
The third and final part of making trading easier is a positive mindset.
This might be the most under-valued aspect of a successful trading career, and most people never include this in their short-term goals.
We’ve talked about how a positive mindset and an optimistic view of the market is essential to our success, but how do we achieve that?
First, let’s address your personal life.
Your trading career is a mirror of your personal life. In other words, if your personal life is a mess then your trading will likely suffer as well.
Distractions, burn-out, lacking-sleep, poor nutrition, poor relationships, imbalances in your lifestyle… these are just a few ways that traders make their jobs more difficult because they aren’t operating at their peak performance.
If you want to be the best trader, you need to take responsibility for your personal life, and everything that applies to it.
It’s important to feel good
I know this sounds basic… but it’s really important to feel good about yourself.
Just like a gardener enjoys tending the garden just as much as he/she enjoys the food, the best traders in the world enjoy the process of trading as well as the profit.
· Do you feel good when you’re doing pre-market analysis?
· Are you excited when you’re hunting for the pattern?
· When you’re doing your daily review, do you feel a sense of accomplishment?
· How about when the market throws you a curve ball and you need to re-think your strategy? Do you look forward to that challenge?
Are you passionate about the challenge of the markets, or are you passionate about the money you can make from the markets? There’s a big difference there.
Here are some easy ways to check if you really feel good about this work you’re doing:
· Positive Mood more often than not?
· Optimistic Expectations?
· High Levels of Energy?
· Feeling of Fulfillment?
· Affection for the people around you?
Remember, most people feel happiest when their current lives match what they THINK their lives should be, but when there is a disconnect, that’s when people feel unhappy. They lack energy, they lack enthusiasm, and their performance suffers because of it.
This is why I say that emotions are important and shouldn’t be ignored, because they are telling us where we are in our view of the world and how to achieve what we want.
Pain tells us to stop doing something because it’s bad for us, and pleasure tells us to do more of something because it’s good for us, our emotions do the same that, they act like our “true north”. They push and pull us in the direction that fulfills our true fulfillment, whatever that may be.
I’ve said this many times before, “feeling good about ourselves is one of the most important parts of success in ANY business.”
This is why positive emotions are so important for our trading careers.
As I’ve said in previous lessons, when we’re developing more each day, getting closer to our goals, using goals that WE can control, our emotions will be positive and our work will be much easier and more productive.
We want our emotions to be pride, accomplishment and satisfaction because it gives us energy to keep going. If they aren’t, our energy levels will be lower and we won’t work hard to reach our goals.
Keep in mind, it’s unrealistic to be happy at all times, but when we are unhappy during the trading day, it’s usually caused by either unrealistic expectations or using a daily goal that is NOT within our own control.
Start Tracking Your Emotional-Score
So, how do we accomplish that positive state of mind?
To accomplish a more positive mindset, I recommend using your journal to keep track of your “emotional-score” throughout the day.
On a scale of 1 to 5, 1 being very negative and 5 being very positive, I’s recommend you start keeping track of how you’re feeling throughout the day, giving yourself an emotional-score at the end of each day.
For example, every half-hour, make note in your journal for how you’re feeling. Start at the beginning of the day, and every 30-minutes, give yourself a score. Then, total the number at the end of the day.
If you find yourself unhappy more often (if you emotional-score is low), you should take a step back and think about your definition of success… think about how your personal life might be affecting your mindset… think about what’s realistic and what’s not, and how to set more reasonable goals for your trading and your personal life.
I also want to encourage you to look closely at your personal habits, your relationships, and your lifestyle.
Our lifestyle choices have a domino effect, they don’t seem to make big changes right away, but soon all those little poor decisions start adding-up to big problems.
Here’s a tip:
A number of years ago I remember looking back at my production levels and seeing that I was working hard, but I was losing momentum in those small 20 to 30 minutes of free time each day, or on the weekends, so I started a new mantra…
I began to always ask myself… “is this getting you closer, or further away from your goal?”
I would recommend you do the same thing.
Starting today, in every aspect of your life, ask yourself “is this getting me closer to my goals, or further away?”
And remember, this doesn’t mean you’re working 24/7/365. There’s no trophy for being a work-a-holic.
I believe in taking strategic breaks from my computer every day, week, and month. I highly recommend eating healthy foods, taking power-naps to increase productivity, and I always encourage my clients to find something outside of trading that makes them feel good about themselves.
A balanced lifestyle is necessary for our success, I don’t expect you to work all day every day, but I do expect you to make the lifestyle choices that will put you in mental, spiritual and physical position to be successful at achieving the goals that YOU control when you DO get to your desk each day.
We’ve covered a LOT in this psychology lesson, so let’s do a quick recap.
Today we talked about three (3) ways to make trading easier.
1. Trading Strategy
2. Trading Coach
3. Positive Mindset
We talked about how your trading strategy needs to be battle-tested in various market conditions, how it should be effective at identifying reliable trading opportunities with a positive risk to reward.
We talked about the importance of using a trading coach to bring out the best in our personality and skills so we can execute that trading strategy correctly each day.
And we talked about how important it is to have a positive mindset, and how this is achieved through balance in our lifestyle, setting realistic goals that are tied to OUR actions, not the markets actions, and how we can use a journal to track our “emotional score to identify opportunities for improvement.
Guys, I hope this lesson helps make the business of trading easier, and remember, I’m always here, ready to work hard with you as your coach to help you set the proper goals, create structure in your lifestyle, and make it easier to reach your goals.
Wrapping things up… I’ve taken way too much of your valuable time…
I hope you found a ton of value in today’s trading psychology lesson…
…and I would love to hear from you about additional topics that you’re struggling with as traders.
Do me a favor…drop me a comment below this video with any topics you’d like to see me cover in my next psychology video…
…make sure to give me a thumbs-up if you found value, subscribe to the channel if you’re not already, and please don’t forget to share this video with a friend who can benefit from this information as well.
Guys…It doesn’t matter what market we trade, or the strategy we use, even the most experienced & successful traders battle with their emotions when there’s money on the line.
And don’t forget, you can find me every morning @ 8:00am EST working hard in my trade room with all of our members here at SchoolOfTrade.com, I have a great free trial on the homepage of our website, I publish my Nightly Newsletter every evening on my blog before 8:00pm EST, and I’m excited to see you again soon on my next trading psychology lesson.
===========================================================
Learn the Strategy & Join the Trade Room; Click here to register for the Free Trial
