This past week was a great trading week for me personally. And another example of how I have made a jump to the next level as a trader. I put up bigger than normal numbers on a considerably larger than normal share count. But putting my results aside and the volatility seen in the financial stocks, I traded a lot better. You see, I am very consistent with my work. I found a style that fits my personality. And for a while I got stuck unable to make more money. Certainly not what I thought I should have been making.

I do not think I was alone here. It seems that most traders at some point in their career get stuck and can’t make the jump to the next level. In fact, we have a couple of guys on our desk who are very consistent with their work, more so than me, who are currently experiencing that. Take for example ZM. The guy would make the same amount of money with a similar number of shares regardless of the volatility or what the market does that day. He has his system and he sticks to it, but as of late is struggling to make the jump to the next level.

Most would think that the answer to increasing your numbers after finding consistency in your work is to increase your tier size. Shockingly, this is not entirely true, or at least it was not in my case. Increasing my tier size without the proper mindset lead to inconsistency in my work. It was interesting how an increase of just a couple hundred shares threw my mindset off. Such an increase in tier size initially caused me to not hold positions longer or cut losers as quickly as when I traded with a smaller tier size.

The mind is a powerful thing. We are creatures of habit. As traders once we get used to trading with one tier size it is hard to change it. Or once we get used to making X amount of money a day it is hard to make more. Why? I wish I could explain scientifically what is going on here but I don’t think even the most brilliant PhDs have been able to fully understand this. All I know is that the hurdle in my performance was entirely psychological. I noticed that when deviating from my usual parameters I started to get a bit anxious, uncomfortable and was unable to remain focused on the task/trade at hand. I was not ready to trade with more size. And I had to take measures to train myself to trade with more size. Wanting to trade with more size was not enough. I had to develop the ability to trade with more size.

From my experience the first step to finding consistency in my work was identifying the system/style with the proper risk/reward that fit my personality (how exactly this was accomplished is covered in our training program extensively). But being able to remain consistent, accomplishing my goal day in and out was due entirely to my visualization exercises. Making the jump to the next level required me to add a couple more visualization exercises. In particular I wanted to train my mind to feel comfortable trading with more size AND to see myself making more money at the end of the day.

I spent a great part of my vacation in the Outer Banks thinking about this and training my mind to play with more size. It is no surprise to see that I came in this week and smacked around LEH and MER. A 25% increase in my tier size lead to a 32% increase in my performance compared to my prior best week. The same 25% increase in size lead to a staggering 210% increase in my performance from my average week this year.

So now you know it. Increasing your tier size without the proper mindset does not increase your results at the end of the day. If you are part of this group struggling to make the jump to the next level then give the visualization exercises a shot. You won’t make this jump unless you prepare your mind first.