TPS E15: How to improve your Trading Skills?

If you want to develop into a successful trader, you will need to engage in some self-improvement.

If you don’t already, you need to realize the market is always right and you can take money out of the market as long as you don’t impose a rigid mental structure on its behavior. In other words, don’t get locked in an opinion and refuse to admit that you could be wrong about the market direction. Every successful trader realizes that he could just as easily be wrong as being right.

You need to let go of the fear of being wrong so that you can watch and observe the market from an objective clear viewpoint. If you can’t let go of that fear, it will cause you to make mistakes and poor trading decisions. This is because if you concentrate on your fear, it will cause your subconscious to act out that fear and give you the losses you’re trying to avoid. It will happen this way every time. That is just the way our subconscious mind works. What you think about is what you get. (We will talk much more about it in forthcoming episodes)

To improve as a trader, you will also need to set some defined trading rules to guide your trading behavior. You must learn how to adhere to these rules no matter how tempting it will be to break them. And trust me, it will be tempting to break them often. The fear of missing out will cause you to want to break your rules (especially in the beginning). But you must avoid breaking your rules no matter how tempting. Your rules are what will keep you acting in your own best interest. Certainly, breaking your rules will not be acting in your best interest.

The most important thing about self-improvement is to learn to be objective and avoid indulging in illusions. On the other hand, if you refuse to acknowledge your mistakes by blaming the market or some other factor, then you obviously are indulging in illusions. If that’s the case, improving yourself will be very difficult if not impossible.

To improve yourself, you must be honest with yourself. Only you are responsible for your results. Blaming the market, the broker, the floor traders, whatever, is just going to delay your self-improvement. The less illusions we believe in, the clearer we can see what is really going on in the market and inside ourselves. The clearer things are the more we will learn and grow. It will then be much easier to make good market decisions regardless of the circumstances, as you get in the habit of acting in your own best interest. And just like bad habits, good habits can become just as strong and powerful. But it takes time and effort.

Nobody likes to admit their mistakes, but this is exactly what we need to do to improve ourselves. If we don’t confront our mistakes, we will simply keep repeating them as they become a stronger and stronger habit. We obviously want to avoid that situation. Taking responsibility for our actions is the first step to self-improvement. Realizing whatever results we get were  because of the decisions we made. Nobody else is responsible.

Blaming others just slows the learning process. If you trade poorly and lose money, it’s your fault. But, on the other hand, if you trade well and make money, it’s also your fault.

You will improve yourself a lot when you simply admit that you are the only one who’s responsible for your results. You must confront the conditions that exist in reality (not the illusions). Identify what you need to learn or change to be more effective, and then get on the daily task of improving yourself. It’s not as hard as you think, and learning to improve yourself is always acting in your own best interest.