10/7/2025 - I've been speaking with trading coach Agnieszka Wood and an active member of the Australian Technical Analysts Association about the idea of an enriched format for coaching traders that could provide greater opportunities for performance improvement. In the medical world, it's common, when a patient enters a hospital, for multiple physicians to collaborate on their care. Each physician has a distinct specialty and they combine their areas of expertise to create a well-rounded treatment plan. Every patient benefits from this collaboration, and the physicians gain the opportunity to learn from one another.
Why not bring this model to the coaching of traders and create greater opportunities for change? Traders would meet with multiple coaches in a group setting and would bring their questions and challenges to the team of coaches. One coach, for example, might focus on how changes in the trader's psychology could help their trading. Another coach might emphasize trading improvements that could help the trader's psychology. Because the team coaching is conducted in a group session, it is affordable for traders and also allows traders to learn from the questions of others and the multiple responses of coaches. It's a dynamic learning environment: active and interactive.
We create greater opportunity when we innovate--in trading and in all areas of life!
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10/6/2025 - I am getting a number of emails asking for help with trading discipline. The traders feel that they can identify opportunity, but then violate their rules/stops/trading plans in the heat of action. They recognize that opportunity is only opportunity if we can act upon it in a planned, disciplined manner. They are asking for advice that will help them instill such self-control.
The key psychological principle here is that trading rules must be internalized as trading habits before we can pursue meaningful risk-taking. In other words, we have to: a) define the rules for our trading that reflect our best practices; b) turn those rules into checklists and step-by-step templates for action; and then c) repeat the application of these best practices again and again in practice/simulated trading and then in small-size trading until they are internalized as automatic habit patterns.
We do not gain discipline by exercising self-control; we achieve discipline by turning desired behaviors into habit patterns. Then we can act upon opportunity consistently.
The mistake many developing traders are making is that they're trying to make money--and take meaningful risk--before they've truly internalized their best trading practices. Until they build robust habit patterns around their best trading, they will be vulnerable when market events distract them.
Of course, the other reason for practice/simulated trading is to try things out, learn from our successes, figure out what we do best, and capture that information as best practices. If we attempt to trade before we fully understand what goes into our successful trading, we will fall victim to impulsive decision-making.
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10/5/2025 - No amount of changing your bait, casting your fishing rod differently, and improving your mental outlook will help you catch fish if you're fishing in the wrong body of water. Many traders experience frustration in their work, not because of any intrinsic emotional problems and not because they need to tweak their entries/exits, but because they are not focusing their trading on the areas of greatest opportunity. If what you're trading isn't moving much, no switching of technical indicators, trading styles, or psychological exercises will help you make significant returns.Consider the U.S. stock market this past month. Look at returns in semiconductor stocks (SMH) over that period; then look at returns in consumer staples shares (XLP) over the same period; and then look at regional banking shares (KRE). Participants in those markets were fishing in very different ponds.
A major source of movement in the stock market comes from rotation from one group of sectors to others, as institutions pursue investment themes. Catching these rotations is a great way to find the best fishing ponds. It's important to make sure we're playing the right games before we work on improving the game we're playing.
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