High self efficacy beliefs are key to trading success

"Learning would be exceedingly laborious, not to mention hazardous, if people had to rely solely on the effects of their own actions to inform them what to do. Fortunately, most human behavior is learned observationally through modeling: from observing others one forms an idea of how new behaviors are performed, and on later occasions this coded information serves as a guide for action."

-Albert Bandura, Social Learning Theory, 1977

The most important determinant of your success in trading or in your personal life is your self efficacy beliefs.

People and families with high self efficacy beliefs build successful life and are happy.

If you talk to successful traders and interacted with them on regular basis ( and many are members of Stockbee site), one of the most compelling reason why they are successful is they have high self efficacy beliefs.

Because of their high self efficacy beliefs they figured out profitable ways to trade. No one gave them a 1000 pages manual on trading or held their hands when they were taking baby steps in trading. They figured out things for themselves.

Almost every successful trader I know of has developed their unique style because the changed their self efficacy beliefs.

The days, the months , and the years they spent trying out different things and failing at it or losing money further enhanced their beliefs in their own capabilities.

When you commit to certain thing and surround yourself with like minded people your self efficacy get enhanced.

People's conceptions about themselves and the nature of things are developed and verified through four different processes: direct experience of the effects produced by their actions, vicarious experience of the effects produced by somebody else's actions, judgments voiced by others, and derivation of further knowledge from what they already know by using rules of inference. (Albert Bandura)

This you will find to be true in all walks of your life. If you surround yourself with highly motivated and high self efficacy belief holding people you will find your own belief in your own capabilities get enhanced.

If you work in a group dedicated to enhancing self efficacy beliefs you will often be surprised at how much you can accomplish in short period of time.

The most important determinant of your trading success will be your self efficacy beliefs. It might take some few days to understand that and some years. But once your self efficacy beliefs about trading change things start to happen.

Once that is in place your self talk will change to "hey I can do this", "hey I don't have all the answers but I am confident of finding the answers", "hey I know how to bounce back from setbacks" .

When you attempt trading some find early success and some find early setbacks. That experience sets your self efficacy beliefs.

Some people give up believing markets are too difficult or manipulated or beyond my understanding . Their self efficacy beliefs dictate their behavior.

Self efficacy beliefs are task specific. In trading implication of that is your self efficacy beliefs are setup specific. that is why you will find a trader successful in one style or time frame can often struggle on another setup or style.

Once your self efficacy beliefs specific to trading a setup change you will start experiencing success. That does not mean you will not have setbacks. If you have high self efficacy you will find a method. If you don't have it, even the most profitable method will not work for you and you will keep finding faults with methods.

Self efficacy beliefs is the biggest determinant of your trading success. Unless you work on self efficacy you will find many inhibitors and will be constantly dissatisfied with any method, guides, videos, or instructions, or site. You will constantly chase new methods, new scans, new claims, new gurus, new newsletters, and so on.

Psychologist have found that self-efficacy beliefs help determine how much effort people will expend on an activity, how long they will persevere when confronting obstacles, and how resilient they will be in the face of adverse situations. The higher the sense of efficacy, the greater the effort, persistence, and resilience.

Profitable trading involves all these challenges. You need to put in lot of effort to understand and internalize key concepts like equity selection, entries, exits, risk, risk/reward and then put it all together. In the process you will have several setbacks and false starts. If you have enhanced self efficacy beliefs you will persist in face of such adversities. If you have high sense of self efficacy beliefs then you will spend time mastering trading software, and mastering trading setups and make them work. Absent that you will abandon your effort at first hint of failure.

The research on self efficacy belief shows that self efficacy beliefs can be quickly enhanced by vicariously experiencing others perform a task. This is very important thing to understand in group settings. If you find like minded group you can save years of experimentation and struggle by watching others do things successfully.

Everyday think of how you can enhance your trading related self efficacy beliefs. Surround yourself with people with high self efficacy beliefs. Cut ties with whiners and low self efficacy belief people.

This works for trading as well as for personal and family life.

This Thanksgiving think about this and work on increasing your own and your families self efficacy beliefs. The greatest gift you can give your child is high self efficacy beliefs.