You need practice and discipline to succeed in Trading

Being able to successfully trade means achieving a level of focus and discipline that most people will never achieve, no matter what career they choose. This is as opposed to traditional investors, who buy relatively safe products and let their equity grow over decades. You can think of it as the difference between being a hobbyist singer and a Grammy award artist. Their level of practice and dedication to their art is obvious. All skills can be developed, even if you have a little talent. You can become good and very good. In Trading, you do not need to win awards. You only need the skills to execute the strategy very well. Developing skills over and over will move towards mastery. At that point, profitability is a natural outcome.

“Skills are really

just circuits

in your brain.”

 - Daniel Coyle          

“Real experts seek out

constructive,

even painful feedback. ”

 - Harvard Business Review          

Step 1 — Be Aware of The Learning & Practice Process

The most important part of mastering anything is knowing what is involved and what the outcomes will be. That is why we like to have a process & system and that is how we know when we reach our goal. Or if our progress is doing okay.

Simply knowing that learning would not stop once you have achieved some success will already allow you to work towards mastery without you having to do anything. Simply reading this information will already help you on your way to mastery, but it is up to you to take the next steps.

When you embark on this journey, you need to adopt a process to continuously learn and practice, that is how we become better Traders.

Awareness and clarity are the starts, not the end of learning.

Step 2 — Clarify Your Goals Outcomes

This sounds obvious, but in most environments, I have been in, there were never tangible outcomes for training programs defined. People attend Trading training because they heard other people having successes with the same course, not because they had a specific trading problem in mind to solve. That is keeping up with the Jones’ and it does not make much personal sense, except to look cool and be able to socially connect. Also, many of us, including me, have the SOS (Shiny Object Syndrome) disease.

What do you want to change in your Trading results? What are your objectives and what behaviors do you want to see changed?

What are the problems you are trying to solve? Training is always because of solving a problem, but mostly the training only addresses part of the solution.

Quantify the return on investment, and explicitly specify what you want to do with the knowledge. For an example of how I do it, I look at how I can put better Stop losses so that my risks are mitigated. 

Step 3 — Admit To Where You Are

Like a GPS not being able to direct you to your destination without first knowing where you currently are, if you are not honest about where you are in terms of skills and abilities, you will not benefit from a training program in the same sense as when you admit your weaknesses or issues.

Most people are however afraid to say that they do not know something, and trainers or coaches are helpless to empower an individual if they do not ask for help or admit that they do not know the answer.

On the other hand, some traders are afraid to admit that they do not know because they fear the repercussions of being perceived as incompetent by their peers. Trust me on this…nobody cares.

But without honestly admitting your current state, you will not be able to progress and the gap between where you are and where you want to be will just get bigger and training won’t help much as it will either be the wrong training or too hard or easy. Or like many traders…keep searching for the “Holy Grail”

Step 4 — Integrate the Knowledge and Practice

Newly acquired skills must be integrated into the current knowledge and it must improve things. Then you must keep practicing the knowledge until your skills are good using a trial and error approach, Coaches can provide good feedback.

The biggest pitfall to be aware of during this phase is not to bite off more than you can chew.

Rather take one aspect of the training, like introducing scanning for stocks, or researching the companies, and get it right before you move on than implement everything half. It is better to learn one thing properly than 10 things half.

Just like learning to juggle, you start simple and increase the complexity and difficulty one step at a time.

Working with a fellow trader you met in class is also a good idea, or joining a community which most training course setup, help each other out, in the spirit of learning and improving is very helpful.

Step 5 — Rest and Restoration

One of the most neglected parts in any course I attended is the time allowed for rest and restoration. But just like machinery needs downtime for maintenance, so our brains also need time to recover after an intense learning session.

When you skip this step, you risk burning out yourself, and you will most definitely see a reduction in results and productivity over time. Like pouring water through a funnel, pouring more water is not going to fill up the bottle faster, it is simply going to waste the water spilling over.

Use the rest period to reflect on the completed learning and start setting goals for what is needed next, but in a relaxed environment without any deadlines or must-do tasks. Have an informal discussion over coffee, or even better, while walking down the beach to find out how effective the training was and how it helped the organization. Do not rush. There is no competition. It is you against the markets and the markets will always be there, waiting to reward you with profits when you are a better trader.

Celebrate your successes and share them with your trading buddies.

Conclusion

Learning to trade is a process, attending a course to learn a system is an event at the start of the learning process.

In order to master any field, you need to allow yourself to integrate the newly acquired skills following a process of trying and failing, until it becomes easier, and until your problem you set out to alleviate, is resolved.

To speed up, you first however need to slow down. Effective learning is not about how fast or how much training and knowledge you complete, but how flexible you are in applying your knowledge to your trading style.