Hey everybody. Thanks for being here today. So before, I forgot to say it yesterday, but if you would please consider liking and subscribing to the show. It means a lot. It helps YouTube understand who’s liking the show and what messages are resonating with them, and then it actually helps expand the audience. Whereas the podcast platforms are happy to host your show. They don’t really do a lot to help you grow the show, and so YouTube does a much better job. Plus, I think there’s times when I’m going to be able to illustrate stuff. You want to be able to see it on camera. So we talked about being able to focus on one thing and excel at it. And for me, that started with the process of reducing the chores and the tasks and the studies of course, because I had been inspired by folks who could trade any acid class long or short, but that takes a long time to get to that spot.
So by focusing on one thing and excelling at it, that’s where you could also obviously develop your edge and then you’d want to trade when you can replicate that edge over and over and over again. But I think I would be remiss if I didn’t say this is one of the reasons why it’s very, very difficult for a person to be a successful trader because all the feelings that you feel in your body are fight or flight and trading has a way of pushing your buttons to make you feel like you’re under constant attack. You can self-doubt, right? You can have no confidence. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m afraid to put on this trade. I see other people are going long that e many, should I do it? And if so, is now a good time? Is this a good price to do it?
So when you have all those feelings running through your brain, those aren’t necessarily ones of that could build your confidence. Those are the ones that kind of undermine you and let you negotiate with yourself that you’re not going to enter the market with stops. You’re just going to buy spontaneously out of emotion using market orders. You’re going to use a mental stop to protect your capital, not actually put an order in. And then there’s, right, so there’s the breaking of those bad habits, and then there’s the doing of it every day because it’s one thing to get it done for one day, which is great. I mean, so many people have an issue getting it done in any one particular day, but it’s when you can do it day after day, week after week that you’ve developed that discipline. And I think that’s when people will kind of know that they’ve kind of made, it really comes down to your behavior more than the results of your behavior. Of course, you have to make money, but when I was eliminating those other asset classes, like my days, I freed up a lot of energy. I freed up a lot of time, so I didn’t have to spend time trying to hunt through options trades. I could
Use that time and that mental energy, which is hard enough to come by into things where I knew I had some skill and that allowed me to develop the skill even further. And so that’s why I think when you think about developing your craft and really getting good at it, you want to try to specialize as best you can. Give you an example. I know people that trade opening ranges on stock index features for the first 90 minutes, and that’s their trading day. And if they don’t see what they’re looking to see in that window of time, they turn off the computer, come back tomorrow. I also know people who are really good at trading the clothes, and that’s what they do. They just look at whatever market they’re looking at. Could be sugar, could be stocks, could be gold and silver, could be stock index futures, but they’re really good at knowing how to close trade the clothes.
Then there’s other guys and gals who look at scenarios where you have extreme overboard or oversold conditions, and they’re good at timing a mean reversion, for example, using stocks or options for example, or futures, commodity futures as well. And so it takes all kinds. You can really figure this out for yourself and figure out what one do you want to excel at? Which one come na, which comes natural to you? Which of these feels good? And then when you kind of look at your results, do you realize, am I doing this because it feels good, but I’m not getting results? Or am I doing this because I have a bit of a knack? Then you go through that stage, which is frustrating because it also takes time. Again, why is it hard to become a successful trader is because all of these feelings, they don’t meet your needs.
You want to have success and you want to have it now. You want some sign from heaven that onto something. And it’s always life on life’s terms. And what happens is people tend to want to gravitate towards things that have more certainty because when you’re trading, you don’t get a paycheck. It’s really you and your ability. So all those forces and those pressures can play on you in such a way that they can actually stop you dead in your tracks and freeze you. So that’s why it starts with the goal setting and the planning. Where is it that you want to be in six months? How do you see your life being different from where it is right now? And then can you set up daily behavior that you can execute a little bit on day after day after day? Manifest the abundance, be prepared, be ready to win. Envision where you
Want to, and then despite whatever you’re feeling or whatever you’re going through, just focus on the abundance that, hey, it doesn’t look pretty. It’s awfully messy and ugly, but I’m doing it and I’m doing it every day, and I take solace in the fact that I’m doing it every day and I’m not quitting. So in conclusion, I would say focus on the process. Don’t necessarily look at the results. You can always gear down your risk and trade and risk just a few bucks. I’ve read stories where there’s certain prop trading firms where they literally gave the person a $10 limit on the day. So if they can do it, so can you, right? But just realize that it’s very difficult to have staying power if your discipline’s all over the place. Usually folks, like I said, they find or they gravitate towards one type of setup, one type of a trade, one type of a timeframe, maybe even one instrument or one asset class could be tech stocks, it could be the softs in the future’s market.
Doesn’t matter to me what it is, but that’s where you might find your edge, is where you think you have that natural ability, right? So be open minded that way. Anyway, like I said, please like and subscribe, leave a comment. If you want to reach out through the blog and give me a topic that you’d like me to cover, I’d be happy to check it out, see if I have anything halfway intelligent to say. If not, I’ll say so. I don’t have all the answers, I only have some of them. I appreciate you being here, folks. I’ll see you tomorrow.
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