7/30/2026 - An impressive developing trader recently wrote to me, not to ask questions and seek answers but to share what he was doing successfully in his trading. Right away that stood out. What he shared, however, taught me an important lesson.
He observed that the specifics of his trade planning--tracking market patterns he had observed and outlining in depth every detail of how each pattern has played out--made it possible to see more clearly what was happening in real time and respond without hesitation.
In other words, trading with confidence was a function, not merely of his self-talk, but his intensive preparation. Because he had seen and noted every facet of every setup, doubts and self-talk did not interfere with his trading. Indeed, the right actions came to him.
This trader was succeeding because of his self-coaching. He wasn't just creating chartbooks of setups; he was looking within each of these patterns to see what to do when. That has enabled him to size up his best trades and has bolstered his confidence.
Truly, this is what success looks like in markets. I'm hoping this trader will give me permission to give him a proper, personal shout out in my upcoming Trading Psychology 3.0 book!
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7/29/2026 - How we manage time is how we manage ourselves. We can be highly purposeful in our structuring of time, or we can go with the flow. Once we're intentional about our use of time, then we can ask questions about how productive we were, how we could become more productive, how we could use the time more effectively. Each block of time becomes a project, an enterprise, and we can use each block to become more and more intentional.
The goal is to do the right things and to do them more and more effectively. Working on each block of time and learning from our performance of each block *is* our way of working on ourselves. It is how we manage ourselves.
It is how we train.
Every day can be a workout. Every day can make us better. It starts with how we manage time.
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7/28/2026 - In any performance field, coaching has very limited value unless the performer is actively involved in training. Much of what is offered to traders is framed as "education". So we see online courses, videos, and talks from educators, influencers, and others offering secrets to success.
But in what performance field do people expect to become successful by taking courses and watching videos? Will that make someone a successful athlete? Musician? Painter? Broadway actor/actress?
And imagine performers signing up for coaching without involving themselves in a structured training program! Would a legitimate football or basketball coach offer their services if the players were not training each day?
Coaching ourselves to trading success can only occur in the context of our ongoing training. Each day we build our fitness to sustain concentration, gather and organize information, recognize market patterns, and act on them flexibly: sizing up when indicated, stopping out when they don't play out. How in the world are those skills going to develop by talking to a coach or by reading books or watching videos?
When we try to succeed in markets without rigorous training, we quickly become frustrated when success doesn't follow. And then we tell ourselves that the problem is with our "psychology". And we listen to other coaches and watch other videos. Sigh.
Training involves daily, directed effort to build specific competencies and grow our ability to sustain market focus. I work with many successful portfolio managers, and I've read every Market Wizards book. No one achieved distinctive success by watching videos and following influencers.
No one.
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7/27/2026 - A unique aspect of the upcoming trading psychology webinar will be the opportunity to hear from different coaches on topics important to trading. (See below for registration information). A great exercise is to assume that all of the coaching perspectives contain useful information. Your job is to pull it together in a way that makes sense to you so that the suggestions of the three coaches can become your own self-coaching.
In any performance field, what we find is that successful performers work with multiple mentors and coaches. They pick up different things from different experienced professionals and then synthesize these in their own ways. One way of accomplishing that is to review performance each day and then ask, "What would each of my mentors say about what I did?" Out of those perspectives, you can then create goals for the next day.
When you pull together the inputs from different coaches, you develop your own perspectives on performance. This enables you to identify your strengths (and ways of building these), as well as your shortcomings. At times, the coaches will offer the same advice, and that's when you know there's an important theme to work on.
Imagine collaborating with other traders, each of whom is coaching themselves. Their lessons become your lessons and yours become theirs: everyone is both mentor and student. This accelerates development and also broadens it, as we grow in many ways that we would otherwise never think of on our own.
On a great team, everyone is both coach and student.
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Most traders work on their trading, some more intensively than others. Fewer traders work on their self-coaching. How well are you developing yourself as a trader? What positive changes have you made in your trading? How did you make those changes? How could you apply your self-coaching successes to new areas of growth and expand your performance?
Every trader is both a performer and a performance coach. The best way you could utilize your time in the upcoming webinar is to figure out how you become better and better at guiding your own trading success. You'll make your greatest changes when you train yourself to be your own best change agent. You can begin by figuring out the most positive changes you've already made as a trader and identify how you helped yourself make those changes.
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7/24/2026 - Please see the post below for information about the free trading psychology webinar a week from Wednesday. This will be a great opportunity to ask Agniezska Wood, Peter Robbins, and me questions about how you can take your trading to that proverbial next level.
A hard working developing trader shared his journal with me recently and made a very interesting and valuable observation. He noted that he trades much better--with better clarity--if he has no distractions at all in his preparation. I've explained in past posts how interactive teamwork helps traders process more information in different ways, helping ideas stick in the mind. What this trader found is that such interaction *is* a distraction for him. By preparing in a quiet, focused environment, his ideas became clearer and his execution of those ideas improved. Yes, he could benefit from interactive review and research with other traders after hours, but what underlies his success is deep focus.
The risk is that traders can pursue breadth of processing--looking at more things, talking with more traders--that they compromise depth of processing. Clarity gives birth to conviction. Great traders have a process for teamwork, but they have separate processes for deep work.
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7/23/2026 - On Wednesday, August 5th at 7 PM ET, I will join Peter Robbins and Agniezska Wood for a free trading psychology webinar. Registration is here. This will be a great way to get different coaching perspectives and practical takeaways that can improve your trading. 
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