Keep Your Trading Simple

After a six month sabbatical, I must say that I am truly excited to be back to writing articles for the weekly Lesson From the Pros offering.

Before I get straight into my subject for this week, I would firstly like to extend a huge thanks to the brilliant Rick Wright who kindly stepped up to the plate and took over writing duties for me while I was on my extended break and getting married (if you were wondering where I have been!).

Choose the Best Forex Brokers Right Now!

http://www.topforexbrokerscomparison.com

In fact, Rick has done such an amazing job, that we decided to share the writing duties from now on and you will find us taking on alternate weeks from this article on. It’s great to be working with you, Rick, and thanks again for your support.

Since returning to my teaching duties with Online Trading Academy, I have been constantly asked by my students in the classroom and during the ongoing Extended Learning Track (XLT) online program if my trading has evolved since I went away, or if I have learned anything new about my trading which I could share with them. Of course, being in instructor, I am always more than happy to pass on my findings to the graduates; however, interestingly enough, I felt that my response was not quite exactly what the guys really wanted to hear from me! Let me explain.

You see, as well as taking some time off to get married, I was also keen to just focus on my own trading for a while and get right back into taking things up a notch with my personal goals and with the funds I manage. Don’t get me wrong, I love teaching, but to be the best instructor I can be for my students, I also need to be in good shape both mentally and physically and I felt that a little time-out from instructing would allow me to recharge my teaching batteries as well as focus on schooling myself for a change. One thing I learned about myself many years ago is that when I take too much on at once, I then seem to find it very difficult do anything well at all. It was time to strip back, take stock and refuel. Essentially, I was embarking on a little “re-discovery” journey and I was truly fired up for the ride ahead.

As many of you already know, trading the money markets is perhaps one of the most challenging endeavors any person can take on. I have always said that trading itself is essentially simple, but not easy, meaning that the actual process of placing trades and finding opportunities on your charts does not require a mathematical degree or diploma, but rather it really only needs objective analysis and confident execution skills. The real challenge in taking and managing a trade comes from keeping one’s emotions and biases out of the equation, which is perhaps the greatest challenge of all considering that most people in the world today have very strong feelings about their money and finances. Combine that with a conditioning that being right is good and being wrong is bad, and it is pretty clear why most individuals struggle with maintaining consistency in their trading activities. Indeed the concept of trading may well be simple in its nature, but it is the actual process of trading which is not always easy for the fragile human psyche.

So, why am I reminding you of this? Well, as great a job as trading can be, it can also be one of the loneliest careers around as well. After taking a break from nearly two years of regular interaction with students and colleagues within the Online Trading Academy, I found myself pretty much with just my cat and my PC for company most days, as my wife was out working on her new business, leaving me to trade and get on with things at home. At first, it was cool and very relaxed, with no deadlines for articles and no schedules to worry about for classes. I could just get up in the morning, get to my screen and trade for the day. However, as fun as that may sound, let me tell you, it also comes with its problems as well. After a few months, it actually changed my trading habits as well, believe it or not. Now I have been in the markets and doing this for a long time and my trading methodology has not changed for years. I really do think my students get sick of hearing me talk about the same things over and over again (even though they say they don’t) – I am like a CD on repeat! Yet there is a reason why I have taught and traded like this and that is simply because it works for me. I have not changed the way I have traded very much for around four years now and why would I? As the saying goes, if it works then why fix it? I had lived my life by this rule for a long time now, but suddenly it was about to potentially change.

Trust me, being stuck on your own with very little else to think about or interact with can easily provoke the mind to wander if left unchecked and that is exactly what happened to me. Even after years of trading consistently, I too became a victim of change. I spent more time at the screen each day, started looking at markets I don’t usually trade and I experimented (albeit only a little) with techniques I have not used since I was first getting into trading. Don’t get me wrong, things were different for me this time around as I was not searching for an answer I didn’t already have like before when I was a novice and actually believed there was some secret to success in the market! Instead, I got bored and felt that while I had more time on my hands to trade, I may as well use it to “branch out” as such and try out new ideas. The result I got turned out to be the complete opposite of what I was looking for in the first place.

To summarize, I was looking to enhance my trading further by taking on more markets and some additional strategies with the extra time I had on my hands. The end result, however, was by no means reflective of my original intentions. I actually hit a brick wall where the extra analysis I was creating for myself diverted my attention from the core of what I needed to do to remain consistent in my trading and which had taken me this far in the first place. More markets meant more trades. More strategies meant more trades. More trades meant more time at the screen. More time at the screen meant less time doing other things in my life. Suddenly, my “break” had transformed into an even bigger workload than I had before, only this time it was in front of a computer screen and in isolation – not fun!

So, the whole “let’s take my trading to another level” idea lasted about a month and I quickly went back to what I did best. Placing my Swing trades and set and forgets in the background and no more than two hours a day dedicated to Intraday setups. I ended up using my spare time to take a up a few extra hobbies, got fit and started working out more and devoted more of my hours to working with my wife on her growing business. As for the trading – well, that’s just ticking over nicely as it was before. In fact, less time at the screen has actually helped my trading, as I enjoy it more because it takes up even less time than it did before the break!

I realized very quickly that we all have good intentions with our goals, but sometimes it may take a few attempts to reach them as the course we plotted in the first instance can often lead us down the wrong path. It’s not a bad thing by any means, it’s just life. For a very short time, I forgot why I became a trader in the first place: To have more time to do the things in life that I want to do. Trading for me is a means to an end and I find that sharing my time with others, especially through teaching is what really gives me a kick. I am a simple guy and I need to keep things in my life simple. That’s who I am and that’s how I work best. So, when my students asked if I had learned anything new about trading during my time away, I simply told them that I learned that doing things differently didn’t work for me. I had to get back to the basics to get back to being the trader I was all along.

My one bit of advice to any aspiring trader reading this article right now and hoping to trade the Forex markets profitably in the future is that you shouldn’t make the mistake of believing that the more work you do or the more you know about the markets will help you get to where you want to be. Master the basics and then you can strive to master yourself. In two weeks time, I will be back with the second part of the article, where I will be sharing my 3 Golden Rules for keeping your trading simple and your performance consistent.

Choose the Best Forex Brokers Right Now.