Achieve Greater Consistency in Your Trading in 3 Simple Steps

October 18, 2007 by admin · Leave a Comment
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Are you finding that your trading results are not as consistent as you’d like? Are you wanting to more reliably repeat when you hit winners? Of course!

The first goal in trading is profits.

The second is then consistent profits.

Third is steadily increasing profits.

Your trading profits are primarily the result what you do, more so than what the markets do. There are traders making money every single day, so blaming the markets is just an excuse. If you want consistent profits, then get more consistent in what you do in your trading. First thing to understand is that trading is a process, and one that is preferrably systemized as the most basic step in bringing consistency to your trading.

When it comes to making improvements in a process, and particularly when your goal is greater consistency, here are three simple steps you can take to have the biggest impact.

Step 1. Define and Document your system.

One of the biggest mistakes that many traders make, especially when it comes to consistency is that they don’t have their system well-defined and written down.

When you don’t have a procedure for an activity or process documented, it is likely that there will be inconsistencies in how things are done. That is why the military is so big on procedures: they want things to be done in a uniform, reliable and predictable manner. The same thing goes for your trading.

Step 2. Measure your system’s critical aspects.

A wise man once said that in order to improve anything, you must first measure it. How else are you to know if you’re making progress? With trading you have several measurable aspects that make the bottom line what it is, in addition to the all-important profit/loss number at the end of the month.

Businesses in all industries have certain aspects that directly affect the profitability of the business. Smart managers know to monitor those aspects and assign measurables to them. The reason that these are so important is because there are several factors that make your bottom line what it is, and by measuring each of them, you can then see specifically where your opportunities for improving your system are.

Step 3. Make improvements in a controlled manner.

Once you have a detailed analysis of your system, you can now focus on specific facets of your system to make improvements. By having a method for this analysis, you can make changes to the system and test them - without risking money - either through backtesting or in a demo account and see if the change improves or hurts the system’s performance - in the specific area you seek.

For example, say you analyze your system and find that your winning percentage is currently 48%, and you’ve got an idea on how to improve it to 55%, which you “think” would increase your overall returns. You then run the analysis on the system with the change on real market data.

By looking at the results, you can see if this change accomplished it objective, but also if there were trade-offs in other aspects of your system performance, such as a lower profit-to-loss ratio or perhaps a reduced number of trading opportunities. You then can make a calculated and educated decision on whether you should incorporate the change or not.

Conclusion / Summary

Trading is a process from which you wish to have consistent - and reliable - results. Trading your system is an activity that you repeat on a regular basis, so if you want consistent results, focus on making what you do consistent.

Step 1 is to make sure that your system is defined and documented. By clarifying your system and then writing it down, you are more likely to repeat what you do consistently.

Step 2 is to measure your trading for a baseline of where you are now versus where you want to be. This also gives you insight into your opportunities for improvement.

Step 3 is to track your metrics and make improvements in a controlled manner and without risking money un-necessarily.

There are a handful of metrics in your trading business that have substantial impact on your bottom line. By measuring your system’s performance and paying particular attention to these measurables, you give yourself the quickest way to increase your profits and the biggest boost to your ability to consistently produce profits.

Are you wanting to realize greater consistency in your trading? Get a free backtesting guide and an audio on trading system analysis as free bonuses with the Trading Performance Analyzer.

It’s the user-friendly and printer-friendly tool to analyze your trading, get your critical metrics, and track your progress to realize greater profits and consistency.

Go here ==> http://insideouttrading.com/tpa/

Cheers

Brian

P.S. You can also get a powerful report that expands on how to further improve the consistency and reliability of your trading when you get the Trading Performance Analyzer. If profits and consistency are your goals, now is the time to act.

http://insideouttrading.com/tpa/


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Are You Denying Yourself Profits By Not Doing This?

October 16, 2007 by admin · Leave a Comment
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You’re in trading to make money and if you’re not doing this one thing, then you are denying yourself profits every month. You are leaving money on the table, losing money and missing great opportunities to maximize your profits.

If you are already profitable in your trading, you still want the most you can make. If you’re only marginally profitable or if you’re losing money, you want to get in the black and and in the biggest way possible.

The traders that are making the kind of living that you want have a high level of confidence and they make the discipline part of trading look easy. It’s not that they necessarily have a better system than you do. It is in their confidence and their discipline.

That’s where their true edge is in trading - they have the confidence to enter the good trades and let them run, and the discipline to get out of the bad trades to keep their losses small.

So how do they have this fearlessness and cool-headed discipline? They measure and track the critical aspects of their trading system on a regular basis. It is absolutely amazing what a difference this makes.

Here’s how it costs you when you don’t analyze your system and track your metrics:

* you’ll stay in good trades too long and wind up giving back profits you already had in hand
* you’ll stay in bad trades too long and turn small losses into big losses
* you’ll hesitate to pull the trigger when your system says “go”, and you’ll time your entries poorly
* you’ll second guess your system and enter trades that you never should
* you’ll make changes and “tweaks” to your system that reduce its profitability
* you’ll keep adding indicators and rules until your system becomes confusing and difficult to follow
* you’ll jump from one system to the next, “hoping” that it will make you more money
* your fears will get the best of you on a regular basis, causing you to make all sorts of mistakes

Great traders also don’t try to trade five or ten different systems. Most often they trade only one system and get very good with it by knowing it inside and out.

They have as many choices as you do regarding which system to use, but among their choices, they determine which one is best through analyzing the metrics with real market data. They don’t just go on trial and error. They let the metrics tell them where the money is.

When they hear about a new system, strategy or indicator, they analyze it in a demo account before putting money at risk to see if it is worth pursuing. If the metrics are better, then great! If not, they pass and stick with what the their analysis tells them works.

They key is in knowing what metrics to use, testing the system with real market data, and then evaluating those critical metrics.

When you know the strengths and weaknesses of your system, you can have the confidence to trade it well. This includes having the discipline to stick to it when the market does its thing, regardless of what it does.

If you aren’t testing your system, then you are denying yourself the greatest and most powerful tool you can have. You’re also extremely likely to be leaving money on the table that could be in your account instead.

Even if you are backtesting, are you doing it correctly? Could you still be missing out on more money to be made with your system if you had better information to work with?

Are you looking only at the bottom line each month, or do you know what measurables you need to know to truly maximize your system and your profits?

Here’s what I use in my trading to have total confidence and easy discipline.

==> The Trading Performance Analyzer

It is very user-friendly and printer friendly, plus it gives you the critical metrics you need without overwhelming you with un-necessary information.

You can get a free backtesting guide and a powerful report to eliminate your anxiety as bonuses with the Analyzer.

Go here now and stop denying yourself profits => http://insideouttrading.com/tpa/

Cheers to greater profits!

Brian

P.S. Every trade you place, every week and month you trade without knowing your metrics, you are severely at risk of hurting your bottom line. Act now. Don’t wait or think about it!

http://insideouttrading.com/tpa/


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Trading as business - one of the greatest benefits

October 12, 2007 by admin · Leave a Comment
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I just posted a new video for you on YouTube and
it is about one of the wonderful advantages of
treating your trading as a business.

Even if you’re already aware of this aspect, this
is a good reminder at this time of year, so check it
out at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXVMSLcL9o8

Feel free to share this video with your friends
and colleagues, and make sure to subscribe to my
videos.

I hope you have a great weekend!

Cheers

Brian

P.S. Are you taking the time on the weekends to
“stop and smell the flowers”? Make sure that you
take a count of all the blessings in your life -
one of the best things about the weekends is having
the time to appreciate all that you work so hard for
during the week. :-)


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The Single Best Way to Eliminate Fear From Your Trading

October 9, 2007 by admin · Leave a Comment
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Traders have many challenges, but of all of them, fear is
one of the greatest. Here are three of the biggies.

The first is fear of loss. It doesn’t take long in one’s
trading career before this gets re-phrased to “Fear of
another loss”. The losses that come in trading can be
very hard to deal with.

Right along with the fear of loss is the fear of the
unknown. The fact that the markets are not predictable
fill most days in trading with extreme anxiety for many
traders.

Fear of Failure. Because they’ve been let down by their
systems in the past (or so it seems), many traders also
develop the fear of failure to stick to their system. Most
call it a lack of discipline, but it is really the fear
that their system will not do its job of providing the
proper direction on what to do.

Most fears come from a lack of confidence, and fortunately
these can be alleviated rather easily.

The fear of loss comes from lacking the confidence that
you can adequately handle a trade that goes against you.
This is what your system is supposed to do - provide good
trading opportunities, but more importantly protect you from
large losses.

This is why having a proven trading system is so important,
plus knowing the strengths and weaknesses of the system
that you’re working with.

The fear of the unknown is also best dealt with through
having a robust trading system. Now just knowing that the
system is “proven” based on the claims of someone else will
likely leave you still open to the fear of the unknown.

You have to prove the system to yourself through proper
system analysis such as back-testing and forward-testing
and looking at the aspects of the system that make it
reliable. This establishes the baseline of what you can
expect that system to produce for you.

The fear of failure in particular comes from a lack of
confidence in your system. If you’ve analyzed the metrics
of your system and proven it to yourself with real market
data, then you can much more easily have the discipline to
stick with it, even through one or more losing trades.

When you have a system that you’ve analyzed and proven to
yourself, you give yourself the knowledge to minimize and
possibly eliminate the three biggest fears that keep you
from reaching your goal of consistently profitable trading.

A good trading system will protect you from large losses
if used properly and if you’ll follow it. Your job is to
stick to the system. This becomes easy once you’ve
demonstrated its strengths and weaknesses with real market
data through analysis of the critical metrics.

By knowing the metrics that make your trading system a
winner and one you can count on, your fears and discipline
issues will go away.

Once you’ve eliminated your fears in your trading, the next
step is to track your metrics and make calculated and
measured improvements to your system to further increase
your profits.

Here’s what I use ==> The Trading Performance Analyzer

It gives me a crystal clear look at my trading system so that
I can be confident and have peace of mind, plus it makes it
easy to track all my critical metrics over a year to make sure
I’m always improving.

To see videos on how user-friendly this is, go to

http://insideouttrading.com/tpa/

I hope this post has helped you understand some of your
challenges better and shown you a simple step you can take
to alleviate your stress.

Cheers

Brian

P.S. I almost forgot, there’s a powerful report that comes with
the Analyzer that gives you a very specific method for dealing
with the uncertainty of the markets. I haven’t seen this solution
presented ANYWHERE in all the material I’ve read on trading.

http://insideouttrading.com/tpa/


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Free Download For You - "The Trap"

October 5, 2007 by admin · Leave a Comment
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If you are struggling in your trading with profits, consistency,
fear, anxiety, confidence, discipline or any of the other challenges,
this free download may help shed some light on WHY you’re
having difficulties.

http://insideouttrading.com/TheTrapChapter.pdf

The Subtle Trap of Trading is the book that I wrote to help
first and second wave traders understand what’s happened to
them and one of the key chapters in the book is “The Trap”.

That’s what is here for you today - for free.

http://insideouttrading.com/TheTrapChapter.pdf

The Introduction to the book and the chapter “The Trap” are included.

I hope you enjoy the reading and find it beneficial.

Have a great weekend!

Cheers

Brian

P.S. Don’t overlook this just because it’s free.

http://insideouttrading.com/TheTrapChapter.pdf

Also, do share this link with your associates and friends!

P.P.S. To get the entire book, go to http://subtletrap.com


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