The first three years of my trading career were a nightmare.
I was all alone, trying to study and apply the course material I bought from a guru who ghosted me a few months later. He didn’t teach me anything besides telling me how to study the course and what my future will look like with trading. I followed his instruction, failed, and told him about the outcome. The response I always got was to study again.
After some time I stopped following his advice. I decided to study what other successful traders were doing. And I found the cause of my problem - not taking responsibility.
At first, I didn’t understand how I’m not taking responsibility. Because I forced myself to study the course and apply everything taught. But as I questioned myself and searched for the answers, I bumped into an AHA moment that was a game changer.
It improved my trading performance.
I unconsciously devoted myself to creating and mastering my 3 edges, which are my:
Following the steps we'll discuss below, allowed me to become responsible. And made me realize that taking charge of your trading career early on is important. Because it shortens the journey from being an unsuccessful trader to a successful one.
Not Taking Responsibility For Your Trading Results Prevents You From Succeeding
There are other factors that lead to avoiding being responsible, such as:
1. Focusing on the outcome instead of the journey. 2. Not documenting our performance. 3. Blaming the markets and brokers.
Without realizing that it's holding us back.
Taking responsibility creates integrity. Many people have been taught to believe that accepting responsibility weakens their position or causes them to look bad. But in reality, the inverse is true. By taking responsibility and accepting the consequences, we create safe places of trust and learning. We then stay in a learning loop that makes us better traders.
With that said, let me show you how to stay in the loop and become a full-time successful trader.
Step 1: Create a Trading and Risk Management Plan
Having a plan will get you to cut distractions to keep you focused. But it needs to clearly outline all your strategies, rules, and processes for execution, managing, and reviewing to do that.
It will save you a lot of time and allow you to run your trading business smoothly. Like any other successful business, they have the plan to run successfully.
So, take time to create your own trading and risk management (business) plan. It must include your:
- objectives and executive summary, - trading system strategies and rules, tools, and checklists, - risk management strategies, - as well as processes for planning, executing, managing, and reviewing your trades.
Step 2: Document everything you do in your Trading Journal.
Keeping a trading journal that has your thought processes written in it before, during, and after your trades, will allow you to execute the next step.
Thus having it will keep a record of what led to missing, losing, or winning a trade. You need that data. If you don’t have it, you won’t be in a learning loop, which will result in being stuck in the same place.
So, create a simple journal on Notion or buy one on Amazon. If you decide to create it in Notion, it must include your:
- entry, stop loss and take profit details that have reasons behind the trade, - emotions before, during, and after the trade, - before and after chart images.
Now with all the data, it's time for the next step.
Step 3: Review your performance 2-4 times a month.
This is where you become responsible for your trading. This is where you start and stay stuck in a learning loop that insures trading success. This is where you become the top 5% who make it.
What you need to do here is simple. Set a time or day to review your performance using your journal and software that’s like (or is) Myfxbook.
You can do this daily, weekly, or monthly. Not quarterly or yearly. Unless you’re a veteran trader who knows what they’re doing, why they're doing it, and how they should continue doing what they do to stay successful.
That’s the stage you should be aiming at. If you haven’t reached it, review your performance daily, either after your trading session or before sleeping time.
Follow the above steps and start molding yourself into one of the best traders in the world who are rich, famous, and free.
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