How To Get What You Want Out of Your Trading

Nov 4, 2022

Hello traders,

All the below are based on my preferences, I don't give any financial recommendations and I have nothing to sell you with this article.
I'm sharing content because I see a lot of traders being/becoming broke and I don't want you to be one of them.

The today’s lessons coming from my experience is me sharing how I got what I wanted out of life

Whether, it’s a 6 packs, money, success etc…

I) Is writing down your goals even useful?

A keystone habit that served me very well in retrospect, when there is something that I want that I do not have, so I have a desire which means I’ve made a contract with myself to be unhappy until I get what I want.

So there is this thing external that I wanted - think of 6 packs, money, success, ...

Writing down goals means nothing and I know it’s contrary to common belief or practice - which states people writing down their goals are more likely to succeed.



Sure having a direction is more likely to achieve them than not having a direction right
I don’t disagree with that.



Here is an interesting statement that may hit you: winners and losers have the same goals

Successful traders and unsuccessful traders have the same goal namely increasing how much money they’re making.

Then, having goals cannot be the main driver of success

We have to dive deeper to understand what are the behaviours making our goals being achieved.

II) Mimic the behaviours of very successful traders

We all already know the activities that are going to generate the result we want.


- Maybe, it’s not trading what you want to trade but trading what’s moving
Yes, I’m thinking of crypto traders scalping ranges while recent events brought an insane intraday volatility with futures, commodities and even FX pairs


 - Maybe, it’s trading with a demo account, tiny baby trades for months, and scaling up progressively the position size.
Self-mastery is a skill that MUST be acquired - going outside of your lane too quick INEVITABLY results in a catastrophe

- Maybe, it’s not trading from our phone but from our computer only....
We tend to miss some obvious data on the charts, screeners when trading from a small screen


 - Maybe, it’s also not trading when we’re tired or sick or frustrated
Trading is hard - trading without a body/mind in a decent shape is...... not smart....

I bet every reader knows how to lose fat right? Burning more calories than we eat...

Even fat people know that
....

They know what kind of activities they should do to lose fat but they don’t do it.


The same goes with unsuccessful traders.
The vast majority of traders know what to do to become successful but don’t want to do it because it’s too time-consuming and boring right?

A new trader, looking to get rich quickly will be poor quickly

III) A simple hack

I’m often asking myself the question, what would a person who does this type of thing do in this instance?

Your identity is a weighted voting system where you can votes based on your activities and what type of person you want to become.

What Paul Tudor Jones or Jesse Livermore or Ed Seykota did to be successful?

A simple google search gave me a list of common behaviours/habits shared from the most successful traders.

Instead of writing a 50 points checklist of all the activities I need to do to achieve my goals, I wrote down a list of behaviours commonly shared between extremely successful traders and investors.

If you’re a millionaire, ask yourself, what would a billionaire do?

If you’re not a millionaire yet, ask yourself what would a millionaire do?

Another great question to ask ourselves: what would someone 10 times smarter than me would do in that situation?


It’s a different way of saying, what would someone 10 times richer than me would do


Word it in whatever way resonates with you.



I wrote those questions on a post-it and sticked it on my wall above my computer - it’s a constant reminder for me to reflect and think before I take a trade.



And that type of person, when you’re asking yourself the question “what would that person do in that situation?” is who you will eventually become as you continue to cast votes that reinforce the stories that we tell ourselves about who we are.


Those are the things that create long-lasting changes

.

This hack isn’t about telling ourselves affirmations such as:

- I’m a successful trader
- I’m rich
- I’m a high value man/woman

Just saying them doesn’t make them true

.

What makes them becoming true is creating some level of evidence through behaviours/actions for an extended period of time.



It all starts with activity, with doing.



And for a new trader, doing is….taking as many trades as possible while testing as many strategies as possible, one by one, until one sticks with his/her risk appetite, capital, lifestyle etc… + accumulating a tons of small activities or habits leading to success.

I’ll write next Monday an education post listing the behaviours I “copy/pasted” for years until they became a part of “ME” and how they fast-tracked my way to multiply my net worth.

I'll keep bringing a few articles like this every week because it helps me clarifying my thoughts AND giving back to the community makes me feel good about myself somehow :)

Thank you for reading

Dave