Make 2020 Your Year!
There is no such thing as a trading hack, secret, or tip that will magically make you a profitable trader. Instead you must commit to a process and then perfect it.
I’ve broken this down into 3 steps that I believe, will massively improve your trading results in 2020.
Detailed Written Trading Plan
If you’re failing to produce a consistent profit and you don’t have a written trading plan you shouldn’t wonder why.
To put it another way, if you want consistently profitable results then you need to have a written process or trading plan that you follow with the same level of consistency.
Many people complain they cannot find a profitable trading strategy while still revenge trading, taking boredom trades, or any other mental error!
The trading plan acts like a mirror and it’s going to cut through the BS allowing you to see the biggest reason/s you’re losing money.
After you have a written trading plan in place, the next step will help you get the most from it.
Keep a Trading Journal!
Having spoken with 10’s of thousands of traders over the last decade of running DTFL, I can tell you that those who have a written trading plan are extremely few and far between. Even less common is the percentage of traders with a plan who also journal those trades.
Journaling trades is something you have to be doing to make progress. You don’t have a photographic memory and recency bias will not give you a fair perspective on the past.
Only a well kept journal of every trade taken is able to help you spot patterns, both good and bad.
This leads us to the final step in the process.
Review Your Trades / Adjust the Process
As I mentioned above, journaling your trades is the only way to spot patterns in your trading, both good and bad.
Often the fastest way to improve isn’t by doing more things right, but rather, removing the 2 or 3 biggest things you’re doing wrong.
In other words, you don’t blow up accounts by taking 100% valid trades (according to the plan) with a safe risk.
Instead, traders blow up from over-trading, revenge trading, over-leveraging to make back losses, taking boredom trades, etc.
If you’re not journaling the trades, you’re never going to spot those patterns (both good and bad) making progress all but impossible.
After you’re able to trade without making these mental errors, only then would I look to start editing the structure of the trading plan/process. This would include things such as your entry trigger/location, SL/TP placement, trade management, etc.
This is often backwards from what most people might think but the fact is, the trading strategy you’re using is irrelevant if you lose your $hit and start revenge trading after every loss.
Use this process to fix the mental/emotional errors and then move on to the mechanics of the strategy.
-Sterling
Be sure to leave a comment below with any comments or questions!
Ive been trading for 2 years without a written trading plan. I’m ashamed to admit it but I’ll be taking steps to rectify that today. thanks Stirling!
Great lesson! I just completed my first month of using written trading plan and journaling the trades and the result is here. I made a 16% gain on my account. It was 20% by 29.04.2020 but on 30.04.2020 decided to trade the high impact news and was stopped out before price sparked to the upside 160 pips on the EURJPY, however, this was a new entry into my written plan “do not trade during high impact news”. Also, this month I traded only as per your strategy and now when analyzing the trades I found a pattern – 3 times I took a set up that occured outside the first 3/4 hours of the US session and all of those were losing trades, and that is another point to write down to my plan for future months. I trust your strategy and now with the written plan & journal I think my trading future looks bright 🙂 In light of the covid-19 lockdowns worldwide they say use the time to learn new skill and that’s what I’m doing – learning to trade forex 🙂 Thanks for sharing strategy tips & tricks with the public and not only to members, although, when I built my account will repay you by joining your members area 🙂 Happy trading! Dimadjo
Hey Don, I love it! It’s amazing what happens when you start treating trading like a business. Keep up the good work bro!