Enjoy the process and keep learning

Enjoy the process

Today I felt like sharing some of my recent insights on trading.
Here they are: enjoy the process, keep learning.

Let me elaborate a little bit. Becoming a consistently profitable trader is hard, few people are able to achieve this, it requires significant and consistent effort, and it takes time. Given this reality, it is much better, and you will be more effective, and certainly more likely to persist, if you enjoy the process. What to do to actually enjoy it?  Well, it is a matter of mindset and attitude isn't it? Surely we should take out the monetary pressure away, while we learn. Trade small size, focus on high quality execution, not on making money.



The process learn trading I largely described here, in my post on how to Qualify a trading setup. It is a step-by-step action plan on how to take a trading setup and make it your own, and become consistently profitable trading it.  It does take time, so it is better to enjoy it.

The outcome may be that trading will become Effortless. But I think we never achieve a "final" state. Markets evolve, so should our approach, the setups we trade, maybe the markets and time frames that we trade, etc. Luckily the trading business offers endless opportunities if you think how many markets, time frames, and trading methods are available out there.  Key is to find the one that works for us.

And how to actually find the trading system that is right for us? While this is a topic for another post, and I wish I had a shortcut available, but what it seems to me that you need to search for it on your on, test and qualify different methods, and at some point you will find it. Actually, it is best to have a few trading systems / setups / method.

And in choosing the system that is right for us, we need to consider issues such as: how much time we have available for trading (scalping five minute charts is OK if you can dedicate a few hours of full attention to trading a day), what markets we understand and like, what approach feels logical and right for us so that we trust it (momentum trading, trend following, mean reversion, fundamental trading, etc.) and many others.  In terms of the sources: think books, forums, talk to traders for inspiration, or to get a fully documented "ready" system, but even in that case, always test it and make it your own.