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10 Minute Toughness

  
  Education
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If you’re looking for a simple program to develop the mental skills necessary to be a successful trader, then check out 10 Minute Toughness – The Mental Training Program for Winning Before the Game Begins. Jason Selk works with many of the worlds top athletes to develop the mental toughness needed for sports success and his program translates perfectly to trading. I’ve been working with the book for a few months now -its easy to read, easy to implement and the program is excellent! As the book says “No psychobabble, no self-help cliches, no touchy feely theories. 10 Minute Toughness is the simple and effective mental-training program to help you get focused, stay on target and find a competitive edge.” The program contains short impactful exercises to help you

  • calm your heart-rate and maintain a relaxed state of mind
  • stay focused on the aspects of your trading that will most help you succeed
  • build confidence
  • perform mental run-throughs that prepare you for the market day

What I particularly find helpful is the emphasis on process goals.  Many of us focus on goal setting in terms of performance goals like making so many points a week. A process goal shifts the focus to concentrate on the specific aspects of trading that will help you achieve the performance you are looking for. It helps you keep your attention each day on the one or two things that will improved your trading. The book is very consistent with what Brett Steenbarger teaches and yet somehow I found it more accessible and easy to implement.  The detailed examples of top athletes, baseball, basketball and football players makes the book fun to read and easy to get. This book will make a great addition to every traders library

Let the market make the decisions, not your ego

  
  Education
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The rules are not hard to understand. Recognizing a profit from a loss is simple. If the rules are easy to grasp and a profit is distinguishable from a loss, where does the problem lie? What makes it so hard to apply the rules? There is something within each of us that has a power over our minds that prevents our acting according to what we have agreed is the proper course of action. That something is present in all of us and is very powerful, more powerful than anything I know. Let’s call it ego. Until we learn to get rid of our ego, we will never make money in the market consistently. Those who haven’t identified the ego’s ways will eventually be destroyed in the market because of their ego’s tendencies. It is just that powerful. The market rewards those who have subdued their egos. Those who rid themselves of their egos are rewarded greatly. They are the superstars of their fields. In the market, rewards come in the form of profits. In the world of art, masterpieces are the results. In sports, the players are all-stars and command enormous salaries. Every pursuit has its own manifestation of victory over the ego.

CONCENTRATE ON EXECUTION

  
  Education
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Trade execution is very important.  It is the same in sports – you can have a good team, a very talented team that you put on the field.  But if they don’t execute the plays like they’re trained to, the team will probably not win.  It’s a simple fact of life.  You’ve got to be able to execute.  Tiger Woods can have a game plan when he hits that course, but if he doesn’t execute and follow through his game plan, no matter how talented he is, the competition is going to beat him.  This is a very important factor in trading a portfolio of technical or priced based strategies that is grossly overlooked. You need to get the execution of trades correctly day in and day out, because there’s just one or two missed opportunities which get away that could have made your month or there can be mistakes that can take away weeks and weeks of profitable work.  This is where the use of good automated trading software can control some of these variables. 

Cataclysmic Errors

  
  Education
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Do or die: “Drawing is not a dirty word and neither is defeat. Play to win, but take a draw, or even a defeat, and wait for another day. That’s the name of the game.”

A Doubting Thomas: “If you want to be certain of your position, you must begin by doubting it.”

Confidence Game: “in order to win, you must have plenty of confidence, and that’s fine unless it becomes conceit.”

Your Manuscript: “You will need a blank book: plus a pen or pencil. And something just as important: an eraser.”

Defeat: “In many losses, especially among masters, it is the one fatal move that breaks the camel’s back.”

Stroke of Luck: “With luck, students may win a game or two. But with knowledge and work, they may win many games, and even become masters. Stick to your last.”

Ambition: “You have to burn the midnight oil if you want to set the world on fire.”

What's The Price of Your Dreams ? MAKE THE GAME WINNABLE

  
  Education
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  • “There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.”  -Paulo Coelho
  • You win by living on your own terms–as well and as fully as you can, for as long as you can.
  • If you’re chasing someone else’s goal, you always lose.
  • Most people overestimate what they can do in a year, and they massively underestimate what they can accomplish in a decade or two.

What golf teaches us about trading- 14 Points

  
  Education
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1. Each golf shot/trade is a learning opportunity. 

2. In golf you play the ball where it lies.  You can hit a great shot and find it in a divot and you must play from there.  In trading you can make a good trade, find yourself underwater in losses, and must trade out of the position. 

3. Golf is an individual sport and trading is an individual occupation, which you must learn to accept.  

4. In golf/trading you must eliminate big numbers. 

5. Golf/trading are skills based sports.  How well you play/trade is determined by your skill level, which you only develop over time. 

6. You, and only you, are responsible for your mistakes. 

7. You will hit bad shots and make bad trades.  You must learn to forgive yourself. 

8. Golf is a game you will never and can never master.  There is a just a continual journey to improve.  Kinda sounds like trading to me. 

9. There are ebbs and flows to the game of golf, where you play well and poorly.  For most, the same is true of trading.  You will have stretches where you trade and see screens well and periods where you trade like a hacker. 

10. The best golfers grind. The best traders grind it out.

11. In golf you are challenged to contain your emotions.  In trading you must contain your emotions.  

12. In golf ever great player has a pre-shot routine.  Every great trader has a process to find excellent trade setups that are best for them. 

13. Golfers visualize success.  Traders should visualize pulling the trigger on good trades. 

14. Practice, practice, practice. Are you willing to put in the work to become great?  

In Trading :Difference Between Playing Offense & Defense

  
  Education
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The sooner traders learn to carefully manage risk the better off they will be. So many new traders come in with only the thoughts of profits dancing in their heads. This is equivalent to a football team only focusing on scoring points and not planning their defense.In trading you must play both sides of the ball. You have to be able to score points against the market and not allow the market to score back those points on you.

Your entries are your offense and your exits are your defense.

Letting a winner run is your offense, cutting your loser short is your defense.

Your automatic buy stop is your offense and your automatic stop loss is your defense.

Buying a monster stock is an offensive move, planning on how you will exit with your profits is your defensive move.

Identifying a trend is your offensive play creating a trading plan on how to trade it is your defensive play. (more…)

MOST IMPORTANT RULE OF TRADING

  
  Education
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The most important rule of trading is to play great defense, not great offense. Every day I assume every position I have is wrong. I know where my stop risk points are going to be. I do that so I can define my maximum possible drawdown. Hopefully, I spend the rest of the day enjoying positions that are going my direction. If they are going against me, then I have a game plan for getting out. – Paul Tudor Jones

Most important rule of trading

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