Saturday, January 06, 2018

How to Get the Most From Your Trading Practice

An excellent post from NewTraderU and written by Colibri Trader explains how 10,000 hours of practice typically goes into the creation of expertise.  As the post makes clear, there is a world of difference between repeated experience and practice.  Practice, in the sense of deliberate practice, means that we actively reflect on our experience, examine where we've fallen short, and then institute efforts at improvement.  The trader who trades for a month and merely jots notes in a journal is repeating one day of trading 22 times over.  The trader who makes daily efforts at improvement, using trading results as feedback to guide future efforts, compounds learning 22 times over.

 This is how expertise is created.  We learn with each practice session, feed that information to the next practice session, and continually make incremental improvements.  If we simply target our one biggest mistake each day and figure out why it occurred and how we can prevent the occurrence going forward, we turn trading into a series of performance drills.  Practice can make perfect when we perfect the process of practicing.

 One of the reasons the report card has become a major tool in trader development is that it anchors the process of deliberate practice.  When we grade ourselves on aspects of trading that matter, we create a framework for reflecting on performance and systematically pursuing improvement.  When we share the report card within a community of traders, the practice of others provides lessons for us.

 In the spirit of my recent New Year's goal of using the blog to highlight the good work being done in the trading community, allow me to add one thought to the post from Steve and Colibri.

 The worst, as well as the best, trading is the result of practice.

 When we trade poorly and then go over and over and over our mistakes, blame ourselves for them, become frustrated with them, talk incessantly about them, and vent about them in our journals, we are engaging in a kind of reverse deliberate practice.  Just as reviewing our trading constructively can aid our development, reviewing our trading destructively actively builds and reinforces our worst habits.  

 This reverse practice effect explains many downward trading spirals.  We ultimately live out the image of ourselves that is reinforced in our thoughts, feelings, and actions.  Everything we do--from how we talk to ourselves to what we read to who we associate with--is a mirror, reflecting an image of ourselves.  Successful people create positive, constructive mirrors and thereby internalize that positivity and constructive attitude.  Unsuccessful people often practice just as hard as the successful ones, but with all the wrong mirrors.  

 Take a look at your trading practice.  Reflect on how you end up feeling after a day or week of trading.  You're most likely practicing something.  Are you practicing the right things, and is your practice the kind of practice that will make perfect?


.
Posted by at