Own Your Trading Results

Whether we’re talking Elliot Wave, Fibonacci, Donchian Channels or even a simple strategy such as the Golden Cross, the trading strategies and market analysis techniques a trader uses are rarely original.

Ideas from experienced and successful traders and market technicians rise and fall in popularity as the next revelation becomes hot.

Traders often hold tight to a trading method that no longer works.

People are dropping trading methods when something new that promises trading riches pops on the scene. At Netpicks, we call them system jumpers.

Why?

The traders who are jumping around from trading strategy to another one are not achieving great results with the one they are using.

Take Ownership – Be An Expert

The problem is that people are not taking full ownership of their trading.

They might accept that it’s their choice when to take a trade and to exit, but there are many traders who fail to get to the heart of what makes a strategy tick.

On the flip side, the traders who make a living from the trading profession make it their business to become experts in their understanding and execution of a strategy.

They know when it’s good to push their trading in certain situations and when it’s a good time to step back.

They do this because trading is like a constantly unfolding story, where you can never be sure what’s going to happen – where you need to have your wits about you and always be assessing the incoming data.

Observing and testing, then making minor adjustments where necessary is the hallmark of a great trader.

How Much Support Do You Need?

A professional traders has probably emulated someone else’s strategy and adapted it to suit many different shifting factors and their own personality of a trader.

On the flip side, there are many traders who are constantly trying to find a perfect trading system.

Observations of this kind of trader (or phase of a trader because some will “get it”) include for example a feeling of never having enough knowledge and always wanting confirmation from an “expert”. This is one reason trade calling rooms and hot tip newsletters still make money!

And although this is natural up to a point, there comes a time when a trader needs to take responsibility for their trading and make a strategy their own.

You are the one who clicks the mouse and when it’s time to act, you are the one who decides to take or pass on a trade – nobody is going to do it for you.

Traders live and die by the decisions that they make in real time.

An understanding of a method allows you to trade your plan seamlessly. But the strategy or method itself can be thought of as a framework around which a plan is formed.

Making changes for the sake of it isn’t always desirable, but if you spot something that might make it more profitable when trading Crude Oil, then test your theories and define rules to incorporate them into your plan.

It’s these nuances and know-how that can make the difference between a solid trading strategy in theory and a profitable performance in practice.

Define Your Trading Path

Taking absolute responsibility for your trading destiny and the results you get is the first step to take. This might seem pretty obvious, but it’s amazing how many people don’t lay down a clear path to achieve their vision of trading success (assuming they have clear vision of success).

Once you’ve defined a path for getting where you want to be, you’ll automatically start to critically assess everything you do, see or read.

You’ll start to question what’s in front of you and whether it helps or hinders you. With this mindset, you’ll begin to fully appreciate the true nature of a trading strategy and see its strengths and inevitable weaknesses as all the “non-signals” play out in front of your eyes.

Accepting that a trading technique isn’t always going to produce a winning trade is also essential.

There is no perfection in trading.

Markets are always changing day by day depending on who’s active in them and what type of news events are taking place. They shift over time as fundamentals change new traders with new trading ideas enter the marketplace.

Being okay with this is part of taking responsibility for your trading plan.

But there are also times when with a deep understanding of your trading plan and its interaction with the market, can help generate specific rules and ideas to adapt with the shifting trading sands.

Take ownership of your trading and the tools you already have can be the foundations for your success. There is not time like today to start doing this.

The question is, how bad do you want it?