Liberty Market Investment
Sponsor
Here's my question to you: are there right or wrong goals when you are trading? Or would it be more correct to say that if you have an achievable goal, it doesn't matter HOW you you achieve it?
The point for me is that unlike many other businesses, you can't really be sure whether your goals are achievable or not. The reason is simple: we never know when the market is going to expand into a good stable trend and when the trend is going to end with a dull sideways market. That's why it doesn't make sense to set targets like "earning 50 points a day" or "having done 100% by the end of the year" Jesse L. Livermore puts it nicely: "There is a lot of kinds fools out there, but there is one special kind - a Wall Street fool who thinks he has to trade every day." We can only contrlol our own risks, but we can't control the market, just like a fisherman cannot force a fish to swallow the bait.
Let me illustrate this by giving you screenshot of one trading day of one of our funded traders.
The bars in the Volfix trading window go green when you've been in a long trade. This the trader was buying the market all day long, making a lot of trades (you can see the list of trades on the left).
However, the market showed a clear downside bias at the beginning of Chicago Session and then went down all day.
So if it makes no sense to set goals for profit and stable daily earnings, what should our goals be like? Maybe we should focus on the trading process itself, but not the targets?
Let's think of some correct goals we can set before ourselves.
1. Reducing the number of wrong/ non-systematic entries per month to 5. (You need to have a set of your own trading rules already in place in order to achieve this goal)
2. Bringing the number of great trades to 80% this year. (The criteria for a correct trade could be, for example – no averaging, the initial stop is clearly defined, trade exits are executed either by a SL or a TP, never increasing your risk for a trade, etc).
3. Keeping the maximum account drawdown at 20%.
4. Keeping personal/family budget separate from your trading deposit and never mixing the two.
5. Reducing the number of total trades to 1-2 per day to stop overtrading.
E.g. This is one of our funded traders who recently made almost $4000 trading Gold by making following this rule.
Wrong targets:
1. Earning 100% in a year, 300 points a day, etc.
2. "I want to make money on this trade to buy a new car"
3. Making consistently 0.5% every day.
I have tried this psychological trick and it worked for me: "My main goal is not making good money, it's making good trades"
How about you? Do you have your own set of goals in trading? If yes, do you reconsider those goals from time to time?
The point for me is that unlike many other businesses, you can't really be sure whether your goals are achievable or not. The reason is simple: we never know when the market is going to expand into a good stable trend and when the trend is going to end with a dull sideways market. That's why it doesn't make sense to set targets like "earning 50 points a day" or "having done 100% by the end of the year" Jesse L. Livermore puts it nicely: "There is a lot of kinds fools out there, but there is one special kind - a Wall Street fool who thinks he has to trade every day." We can only contrlol our own risks, but we can't control the market, just like a fisherman cannot force a fish to swallow the bait.
Let me illustrate this by giving you screenshot of one trading day of one of our funded traders.
The bars in the Volfix trading window go green when you've been in a long trade. This the trader was buying the market all day long, making a lot of trades (you can see the list of trades on the left).
However, the market showed a clear downside bias at the beginning of Chicago Session and then went down all day.
So if it makes no sense to set goals for profit and stable daily earnings, what should our goals be like? Maybe we should focus on the trading process itself, but not the targets?
Let's think of some correct goals we can set before ourselves.
1. Reducing the number of wrong/ non-systematic entries per month to 5. (You need to have a set of your own trading rules already in place in order to achieve this goal)
2. Bringing the number of great trades to 80% this year. (The criteria for a correct trade could be, for example – no averaging, the initial stop is clearly defined, trade exits are executed either by a SL or a TP, never increasing your risk for a trade, etc).
3. Keeping the maximum account drawdown at 20%.
4. Keeping personal/family budget separate from your trading deposit and never mixing the two.
5. Reducing the number of total trades to 1-2 per day to stop overtrading.
E.g. This is one of our funded traders who recently made almost $4000 trading Gold by making following this rule.
Wrong targets:
1. Earning 100% in a year, 300 points a day, etc.
2. "I want to make money on this trade to buy a new car"
3. Making consistently 0.5% every day.
I have tried this psychological trick and it worked for me: "My main goal is not making good money, it's making good trades"
How about you? Do you have your own set of goals in trading? If yes, do you reconsider those goals from time to time?
