Wednesday, December 27, 2017

A CREATIVE USE FOR THE TRADERFEED BLOG POSTINGS

Many who visit the TraderFeed blog and its nearly 5000 posts will use it the way they might use a library.  They'll browse through readings and eventually pick something out that catches their attention.

 There is, however, a more active use of the material, where it becomes tied to your plans for development as a trader.  Here is how you can make an active, creative use of the trading psychology material.

 The first step is keeping a weekly or monthly summary of your performance, depending upon how actively you trade.  In this summary, you would give yourself grades on key aspects of trading process:

 *  How well you generated ideas and identified opportunity
*  How well you entered into and sized positions
*  How well you managed positions that were on and managed their risk
*  How well you managed yourself and kept yourself in peak performance mode.

 In your summaries, you would identify what you did well--and how you did it well--so that you could repeat the successes going forward.  You would also identify what you didn't do well and the specific adjustments/changes you'll make going forward to correct the problem.

 But wait a minute!  How will you actually know the changes to be made or even the best practices to extend?  Perhaps in your best days you traded with focus and in your worst days you experienced distraction.  Do you actually know how to build focus and how to minimize distraction?  Similarly, you could find that in your worst trading days you were impulsive and reactive, whereas in your best days you remained selective and planful.  What can you do in real time to keep yourself focused?  To sustain self-control and selectivity?

 Here's where the creative use of the blog comes in.  By Googling the topics related to your performance goals, you can immediately pull up several relevant posts.  Similarly, you could browse the selected links from the home page and find topics related to your goals.  Suppose you read 3-5 posts/articles and then start jotting down ideas that came to mind during your reading.  The odds are good that some of these ideas would help you narrow your goals and identify the specific practices to pursue for improving your trading.  

 In this way, the blog becomes a creative resource--a stimulus for brainstorming.  You could accomplish something similar by purchasing several good trading psychology books and reading the portions relevant to the issues you're working on in your trading.  In synthesizing the views from the books or articles, you generate unique ideas for pursuing your goals.

 Imagine--weekly or monthly--systematically reviewing performance and finding creative ways to extend your strengths and correct your weaknesses.  Week over week, month over month, the compounding benefit of this work on yourself would accumulate, supercharging your performance.  By using the blog to inspire ways of working on your goals, you truly become your own trading coach, guiding your development in the short run to achieve superior returns in the long term.
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