The Journey
Success in trading does not come from a Holy Grail strategy that you simply implement with discipline. You can’t just GET a trading system or strategy; you have to BECOME a trader. It’s a journey of trial and error; of two steps forward and one step back; of growth and development.
It’s the infinite variations on the patterns, within an environment of uncertainty, being executed and managed by a trader, handicapped by fear based heuristics, biases and flawed decision making processes, that make this game so hard.
Key to your is your personal journey
I can’t give you a solution – its journey that you have to take; a process of growth and development. All I can do is point you in the right direction.
Learn to read the price action with volume. Determine the market environment. Learn to place current price action volume into the context of the larger timeframe price action.
Identify areas of opportunity within that environment. Find a low risk entry position. Get in. Manage the hell out of the trade, in order to firstly minimize risk and secondly maximize opportunity.
Make a ton of mistakes. Review them. Learn from them. Repeat them over and over until it finally sinks in. Grow and improve.
It’s not about simple, objective entry and exit rules. It’s about knowing when to take the setup and when to avoid it (based on context and the current nature of price action volume).
It’s about knowing when to use a pullback entry or when to take a breakout entry. It’s about knowing when to scratch a trade, rather than hold on hoping for it to reach the target.
It’s about learning to be ok with being wrong. It’s about learning to TRUST yourself. It’s about learning to TRUST the strategy.
It’s about forgiving yourself when you make mistakes. Again and again and again!
It’s about being ok with losses, and with stopping out to the tick before the market moves on without you, because you’ve seen this enough times to know that it’s just part of the game, and you can simply move on to the next setup secure in the knowledge that new equity highs are just around the corner.
This all takes time – exposure to the markets – exposure to the process of making decisions and taking action – exposure to error.
It’s not about certainty. It’s about becoming comfortable operating in an environment of uncertainty. Knowing that you don’t know what’s going to happen next, and being ok with that.
Knowing that even though you don’t know where price will go next, you have proven through experience that you have the skills, knowledge and attitude required to manage the opportunity appropriately to minimize risk or maximize gain, regardless of which eventuates.
Learning to trade is NOT learning a price action volume setup. It is a process of BECOMING a trader.
It is a journey of growth and development – developing your perceptual abilities; developing your awareness of risk; developing your decision making abilities; developing your tolerance for uncertainty.
Learning to trade is a process of Trader Development.
Until you accept that, you’ll never make it. You’ll be stuck in the search for the simple trading system or strategy.
The analysis process in “Module 3 : MARKETS & MARKET ANALYSIS” and the strategy in “Module 4 : TRADING STRATEGY” simply provided you with the tools for interacting with the market. Now you have to learn how to trade them.
It’s not easy. But me and others have made it and so can you.
The following articles will help you along your journey.
Article 93 will provide you with the tools and techniques to ensure you progress as fast as possible. And article 94 will get you started on your first steps, laying out a roadmap for the journey ahead.