take ownership of your trading
DESCRIPTION
The problem is that people are not taking full ownership of their trading. They might accept that it’s their choice when to take a trade and to exit, but there are many traders who fail to really get to the heart of what makes a strategy tick. Conversely, the traders who make a living from this profession make it their business to become experts in their understanding and execution of a strategy.TRANSCRIPT
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Whether we’re talking EWT, Fibonacci, Donchian Channels or indeed Trend Jumper, the trading strategies and
market analysis techniques a trader uses are rarely original.
Ideas from seasoned traders and market technicians wax and wane in
popularity as the next revelation becomes hot.
Knowing that traders often cling to their once reliable strategies way
beyond their sell-by dates and at the same time people are constantly dropping methods in favor of the
latest and greatest that the trading world has to offer, demonstrates an
important (and obvious) fact:
FACT: the traders who are constantly seeking new methods are not
achieving particularly good results with the ones they currently use.
If they were, why would they be
actively seeking to change to a new method at all?
The problem is that people are not taking full ownership of their trading.
They might accept that it’s their choice when to take a trade and to exit, but
there are many traders who fail to really get to the heart of what makes a
strategy tick.
Conversely, the traders who make a living from this profession make it
their business to become experts in their understanding and execution of a strategy. They know when it’s good to
push their trading in certain advantageous situations and when it’s
a good time to step back.
They do this because trading is like a constantly unfolding story, where you can never quite be sure what’s going to happen – one where you need to have your wits about you and always
be assessing the incoming data.
Observing and testing, then making minor alterations where necessary.
In contrast to the professional who has in essence emulated someone else’s strategy and adapted it to suit many different shifting factors, there are
traders who are constantly trying to find a perfect system.
Observations of the stereotypical nature of this kind of trader (or phase of a trader) include for
example a feeling of never having enough knowledge and always wanting confirmation
from an “expert”. And although this is natural up to a point, there comes a time when a trader
needs to take responsibility for their trading and make a strategy their own.
You are the one who clicks the mouse and the immediacy of trading is such that when it’s time to act, you are the one who decides to take or pass on a
trade – nobody is going to do it for you. Traders live and die by the
decisions that they make in real time.
An implicit understanding of a method allows you to trade your plan
seamlessly.
But the strategy or method itself can be thought of as a framework around
which a plan is formed.
Although making changes for the sake of it isn’t always desirable, if you spot
something that might make it more profitable when trading Crude Oil or avoids
trades in the Bund where probabilities clearly drop significantly, then test your theories and define rules to incorporate
them into your plan.
It’s these nuances and knowhow that can really make the difference
between a solid strategy in theory and a profitable performance in practice.
Taking absolute responsibility for your trading destiny and the results you get
is the first step to take.
This might seem pretty obvious, but it’s amazing how many people
meander about without having laid down a clear path to achieve their
vision of trading success (if they even have a clear vision of success).
Once you’ve defined a path for getting where you want to be, you’ll
automatically start to critically assess everything you do, see or read. You’ll
start to question what’s in front of you and whether it helps or hinders you.
With this mindset, you’ll begin to fully appreciate the true nature of a
strategy and see its strengths and inevitable weaknesses as all the “non-signals” play out in front of your eyes.
Accepting that a technique isn’t always going to produce a winning trade is also
essential. There is no perfection in trading.
Markets are always changing day by day depending on who’s active in them.
They shift over time as fundamentals change and old participants drop out
with new traders with new trading ideas enter the marketplace.
Being okay with this is part of taking
responsibility for your plan.
But there are also times when with a deep understanding of your trading plan and its
interaction with the market, can help generate specific rules and ideas to adapt with the
shifting trading sands.
Take ownership of your trading and the tools you already have can be the foundations for
your success.