Trading Excellenceis mundane. Superlative performance is really a confluence of dozens of small skills or activities, each one learned or stumbled upon, which have been carefully drilled into habit and then fitted together in a synthesized whole. There is nothing extraordinary or superhuman in any one of those single actions; only the fact that they are done consistently, correctly, and all together, produce excellence.
The mundanity of trading excellence is typically unrecognized. I think the reason is very simple. Usually you see good traders only after they have become good – after the years of learning the methods, after years of trial and error, after the years of losing, after finally developing the habits of profitability and consistency, after becoming comfortable in their word. They have long since perfected the myriad of techniques that together constitute trading excellence. Ignorant of the specific steps and time that have led the current level of performance and confidence, or aware but refusing to accept it as necessary, new traders think that somehow excellence sprang full grown from the good trader, and it is deemed that that person has “talent” and is “gifted”. Even when seen close up on a daily basis in a live real time environment, the mundanity of trading excellence is often not believed.
Trading excellence is accomplished through the doing of actions, ordinary in themselves, performed consistently and carefully, habitualized, compounded together, added up over time. While these actions are qualitatively different from those traders at lower levels of performance, these differences are neither unmanageable nor, taken one step at a time, terribly difficult.
Note: this is paraphrased from an article written by Daniel Chambliss about the making of Olympic swimmers
As trader’s we always make mistakes during the trading day. If you are a new trader or an experienced trader, mistakes are part of the game and a part of being human. However what separate’s the winners from the losers is how you handle those mistakes and the corrective action you take.
- At the end of the trading day ask yourself, Did i make a mistake ?—Where a mistake means you did not follow your trading rules. If you have no trading rules, then everything you do is a mistake
- If you did not make any mistakes, then pat yourself on the back. If you lost money, but did not make a mistake, Then be confident and do it again.
- If you did make a mistake, then determine the conditions that lead up to the mistake. How might that happen again. What can i do to avoid it again.
- Now determine several effective responses to those conditions. Rehearse yourself performing them because this will make it automatic for you and the next time you face the situation you will be mentally prepared to handle it.
Use this procedure on a daily because.. Why ? Because it works
Happy Trading
