Your habits will determine your success
It's always wise to get the best of the other people's experience. Trading is no exception. They say that it takes doing something for 21 days in a row to form a habit. Isn't it time to get going? Below you can find a list of recommendations that will have a positive impact on the results of your trading.
1. Set goals
It's hard to invent something better than a goal-driven approach. Make sure though that you set yourself the right kind of goals. We don't recommend you to have a daily profit target: a day may be full of interesting profit opportunities or it may not.
If you try to reach some specific amount of profit every day, you will feel loads of the unnecessary stress. The odds that you will hate trading at some point will get high in this case. Consider having monthly and annual targets instead.
They will be able to keep you motivated and help you track your performance without too much pressure. Make sure that setting a goal is not a one-time event for you. Work with your goals on a constant basis.
2. Keep a journal
It's a piece of advice you will find everywhere. Yet, it's not possible to omit this point. After all, your own experience is the key source of your knowledge about the market. As a result, it's necessary that you make the most out of your past trades, no matter good or bad. A journal will help you to keep track of your successes and mistakes and improve.
3. Manage your risks
If you want to stay in the market for a long time and capitalize on your trades, then risk management should be your key habit. Check that your risk exposure is reasonable in every trade. Never make trades with random parameters. Always control your position size and your risk/reward ratio.
4. Control the time you spend on trading
This is important especially if you are a full-time trader. The longer you sit in front of the monitor, the lower your ability to remain in attention and think clearly will become. Get used to assign yourself specific time intervals for trading. This will help you achieve the maximum efficiency in trading and manage other tasks in your life as well.
5. Change your environment
Routine can be a mood killer for everything. When you are a trader, you can enjoy a certain level of mobility, so make sure that you change your position in space from time to time.
6. Use the weekends
The end of the week is a great time. Use it not only to restore energy and spend time with your loved ones but also to review the past trades and strategize ahead of the new week.
It's a great idea to devote an hour on Saturday or Sunday to looking at the weekly charts, checking the upcoming events in the economic calendar and reading financial media. Be prepared! This way you will feel confident and ready to act on Monday.
7. Socialize
Trading can be quite lonesome when you are focused on your ideas and strategies. Take time to communicate with other traders. This will broaden your horizons and bring you the joy of interacting with others. Nowadays there are plenty of social media and platforms that will help you accomplish this task.
8. Keep learning
Even if you understand that learning is a lifelong process, you should be very practical about it. Assign a fixed amount of time a day or a week to some educational activity, for example, attending a webinar, reading a textbook, completing a distant learnings course. This way learning won't be just an abstract idea for your and you will really improve your trading skills.
It's not easy to develop good habits. Don't think of the tasks above as something unpleasant. Think of them as things that will make your life easier. If you embrace them without resistance, you will see that your trading becomes more consistent and successful after 21 days or likely even earlier.
This article was submitted by FBS.