I thought I'd do a little video about what I've been thinking about today.
so, my thought of the day is all about how you achieve a successful trading career over the long term.
So, I think if you ask most people what they want to achieve with
their trading they're probably going to say that they want to be successful over
a longer period of time they don't just want to be successful in the short term
and then not be able to repeat it and replicate it again they want to be able
to do it consistently over the long term to make a career out of it. So when we
think about that when we think about having a long term successful career in
trading what are the ingredients that are going to help us to achieve that?
What's going to help us get there. Of course you need to know how to trade you
need to have a good system probably be able to optimize and improve all the
time because when the markets are changing you need to make sure your
strategies adapting and always improving as well. But as we know when it comes to
trading it gets quoted all the time that it's about 80% of something psychological.
Like whatever percentage you want to put on it the majority of the ingredients
for success in trading come down to psychological factors. Now of course you
can think about things like you know being having the discipline to wait for
the right trades being patient and not having the fear of missing out and not
closing trades to early not getting too nervous the whole greed fear complex and
everything like that but actually I think it comes down to a lot more than
just those things. I think that you have to have the mental toughness to be able
to replicate exactly what you're doing again and again and again that's what
takes real discipline the discipline isn't in waiting for an individual
trade the discipline is in being able to do the same thing day after day after day.
I mean it was the difference between making 300 pounds in the next three
months and making 10,000 pounds in a year from your trading? Now of course
there are differences like maybe you would approach it differently with
different trades maybe different position sizes maybe different starting
capital but there's one thing that's not going to be different between these two
different scenarios and with practically any scenario in trading is that you have
to take it one trade at a time so therefore the the sort of key to success
in trading and having a long term career is being able to just focus on one trade
at a time.
Now those of you that have been watching this channel for a while
know that I take inspiration and lesson from other fields outside of trading and
finance I think that a lot of time we have blinkers on and think of trading as
something that's unique and unlike anything else when the reality is when
you're learning to trade and when you're trading it's very similar to other
skills and activities so looking at other areas where we can learn something
from that and adapt it for our trading I decided to take a look at tennis
because in tennis you have to have that steely determination it's just you and
your opponent you're on your own you haven't got this support network around
you when you're playing and therefore if we look at people who have been
successful over the long term in tennis you're looking at people like Roger
Federer Serena Williams and so on and in fact I saw an interview with Serena
Williams where she was talking about the mental toughness it takes to have a
successful career in tennis. Now surprisingly considering tennis is so
physical and you've got to have like athletic ability as well as cognitive
ability and so on she actually said that she believes tennis is 80% psychological
and 20% about the skill and she put a massive emphasis on the mental toughness
she said that there have been situations where she's down in the game five love
and she says the only way you can come back from losing in a match is to focus
on one point at a time.
If you're behind focus on one point at a time don't focus
on the score don't focus on anything else just focus on that sole point and
then the next one and then the next one only as they come.
If you start thinking
about how far you're down then you're never going to have the mental
toughness to come back you're going to just give in so she takes it one point
at a time and in fact she told a story about this one time that she was losing
and it was in the final she was the number one seed in the world at that
time and someone shouted from the crowd something like you know deserved to be
number one and so she stopped and looked at him and said because of you now I'm
going to win this match and she won every single point after that it was
just focusing on one point at a time and I think this is important with our
trading is that we don't get carried away when I talk to people like those
someone was talking to this week and they're talking about their trading they
know who they are they were saying that they weren't for a period where they
were winning a lot and I thought trading is easy then the very next week they got
Slams they lost out and it was just kind of continued after that and it's these
source streaks of winning trades and then you sort of carry on like get
complacent and think it's continue and then you have your losing
trade moments where then you start getting nervous things do nothing right
it's because you're focusing on the performance of that period of time
rather than each individual trade at the end of the day where if your last trade
was a losing one or a winning one your next trade is all that matters
every time next trade next trade next trade and so I think if you've got the
mental toughness to be able to focus on one trade at a time for the next ten
years then you're going to be successful in your trading and whatever it is that
you're wanting to make thousands of pounds a month or thousands of pounds a
year or whatever it is you're only going to get there one
trade at a time so that's what your focus got to be on every single day so
the question is do you have the discipline and the mental toughness to
actually do that and make that a reality so that's my little thoughts of the day
that's what I think is an underlying factor in success in trading hope you
take it on board and use it to your advantage to have a great success for
daily trading and then think about it for next week's you have a great week
then take care guys