3/15/2019

Learn to do it yourself

Do not just jump in to trade based on someone else signal.

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Define your setup and trade your "own" setup
Keep things simple. Do not trade too many setups. Do not introduce unwanted elements in your decision making. Do not jump from setup to setup.
Perfect it to level where you are the authority on your setup. Study 5000 plus examples of how that setup has worked in the past.
Above all simplify , simplify, simplify. If a 10 year old can not understand your setup, you are doing something wrong."
"Do the same shit again and again and again , till you become that shit expert. "
Everyone trades same basic kinds of setups like breakout, pullback , pivots or exhaustion. There is nothing new or proprietary in that. Pick one setup idea and go in depth of it.
Do not worry too much about others setup.
Why you need to focus only on one setup is because procedural memory is task specific. Procedural memory is built only if you do same shit hundreds of time. The same process repeated again and again creates that process memory in your brain. Next time you can do the task effortlessly. It becomes automatic task.
Shorter the time frame you trade more refined the procedural memory you need. For scalpers if he is not responding in nano second speed the trade is gone. Same way for day traders they have highly task specific procedural memory. They can quickly identify trade , enter and exit. Knowing their setup alone will not help you till you have developed those quick reflexes. Absent that procedural memory you will be too slow to respond.
Procedural memory is key to trading any setup. Work on your procedural memory development rather than spending your time reading macro shit and bearish porn. As long as human society has existed, there has been only one way to make your living, by developing a procedural memory in a specialized task. Procedural memory makes you money. Knowledge does not."

In nature every animal uses a setup to hunt for food. If you watch National Geographic or Discovery channel a lot you will see each animal has a setup. The tiger waits patiently near the water source hiding, waiting for his prey to show up. Once all conditions line up he instinctively jumps and runs his prey down. He does not chase anything and everything , he waits for a perfect condition. Same way you need to wait for your setup and not worry about what others are doing.

When I see my setup , between identifying the setup and entering it there is less than 10 to 15 seconds gap. If I see a setup, instinctively first thing I do is hit the buy button. In fraction of a second from identifying good setup I am in in all the accounts I trade. Same way for exit. I am watching a stock and feel it is not acting right or reaching target in few seconds I am out.
You can try many setups and many newsletters and many trading mentors and read all the books on trading psychology but unless you develop a procedural memory for a specific setup, nothing much is going to work.

If you want to make millions trading learn setup and processes. 

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Great article Stockbee. I personally think that the '90% of traders who fail' are following guru's trades in day trading chatrooms. Only those who learn to fish for themselves are the '10%' who will eat in abundance for a lifetime.

shyam said...

Very good article!