It’s December now, the homestretch of 2018 and 2019 is right around the corner.

Now you remember Ebeneezer Scrooge and how he got visits from the 3 ghosts of Christmas, right?

And how that exercise wound up changing his life substantially for the better?

Well, here’s how you can give yourself the same gift

Are you doing these 3 things to prepare for 2019, to make sure you get the year off to a solid and profitable start?

1. Looking back
   1. Have you summarized the metrics for your year in a table that let’s you look at the entire year month by month?
   2. Have you summarized your notes from each month regarding what went well and what didn’t?
   3. Did you take a look at the different things you tried and the effectiveness of each to see what was a good investment of time and/or money and what wasn’t?
2. Looking at the present
   1. How is your trading going right now? If you were to rate it on a scale from 1 to 10, with 10 being as good as you can imagine, how would you rate your current experience of trading?
   2. What habits, patterns and mindsets do you bring to your trading every day now? 
   3. How are each working out for you?
3. Looking to the future
   1. What things did you have in place that worked well and are ones that you’d like to carry forward into next year?
   2. Based on the past and the present, in what areas do you see that you need to improve to ‘move the needle’ in your trading?
      1. Focus?
      2. Direction?
      3. Emotional management?
      4. Consistency?
      5. Getting organized and settled down?
      6. Stop losing money?
   3. Which 2 or 3 of these would you say are the most important?
   4. What have you tried in the past or are currently trying to attend to them?
   5. Is what you’re doing working?
   6. How much more time and/or money are you willing to invest in your current strategies to move your trading forward?
   7. At what point would it be time to cut your losses and consider a different approach?

I’m sure that no matter how good or bad 2018 has been, you’d like for 2019 to be better

Taking a little time to focus consciously on making that happen is an effort that is sure to have a very nice return

You still have some time before the holidays are here to make things happen before New Year’s Eve, so get started now. 

You’ll be glad you did

Cheers

Brian

P.S. Yes, I know that I didn’t list ‘discipline’ on the possible areas needing improvement and there is a very specific reason why.

If you are relying on discipline to stick to your system, or more specifically willpower,

…if you don’t naturally and comfortably execute properly and consistently without it regularly being a struggle,

…then you need to understand that this is a symptom of a more serious problem

Until you address the root cause, this is a matter that will continue to cost you both money, time, regret, confidence and all sorts of ‘psychological capital’

When your house is in order so to speak, trading profitably and consistently are the norm and are NOT a struggle

Consistent, reliable and solid performance come easily when you have a process to make it happen If you haven’t seen it, or at least not lately, then you should check out the online training, “The Science of Consistency Applied to Trading”