Deliberate Practice
Table of Contents
Effective Learning
We’ve clearly established earlier that trading success does not come from any special set of rules or indicators.
Rather it comes from an ability to read the price action, identifying signs of strength and weakness, understanding what that means, projecting that forward to identify potential future price action, and being able to take advantage of the areas of wholesale trade opportunity within that action. It’s a dynamic, subjective and largely intuitive process.
Achieving mastery of that process is the result of deliberate practice.
Deliberate Practice
Deliberate practice, also referred to as Deep Practice, is a motivated, solution-focused process of seeking improvement in any performance related activity.
It is practice, over and over again, in which we act, receive feedback on our results, identify potential improvement and then repeat.
As Daniel Coyle says in “The Talent Code”:
“Deep practice is not simply about struggling; it’s about seeking out a particular struggle, which involves a cycle of distinct actions“.
- Pick a target.
- Reach for it.
- Evaluate the gap between the target and the reach.
- Return to setup one.
Essentially, it’s a process of repeated exposure combined with a process of trial and error.
Most people accept that riding a bike is simple. But only because you went through the learning process of trial and error – falling off many times and getting back on.
Trading is the same. Maximize exposure; and learn through a process of trial and error.
The concept of deliberate practice is well demonstrated in this great extract from an SMB Capital blog post:
“… these patterns are most useful if you own them and make them your own. I have trained traders in the past and one of the exercises I had them do was literally to find several hundred examples of support / resistance both holding and failing on daily charts, and then to examine price action on intraday charts around those levels. You really do have to see many hundreds of patterns before you are comfortable with all the variations of holding and failing (and then failures of failures). I do not believe it is constructive, or even possible, to catalog all of the possible variations, but intuition will slowly grow from repeated exposure. Be aware that there is a tremendous difference between understanding patterns and trading, and this is but one of many important elements of price action.”
Refer to “Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Export Performance” by Anders Ericsson for more detailed study, or “The Talent Code” by Daniel Coyle for a great, easy to read introduction.
http://www.smbtraining.com/blog/will-support-hold-or-fail-price-rejection-can-usually-tell-the-tale
Trade–Record–Review-Improve
As professional traders, we aim to implement deliberate practice into our daily routines. Not just during your learning phase, but continuing throughout your whole career. After all, in this game your learning will never end.
We do that through what I refer to as a Trade-Record-Review-Improve cycle.
Trade
Record
Review
Improve
In next article will explore tools and techniques for deliberate practice.