I read a lot of blogs. And lately a popular topic has been goals for 09. Personally I prefer to concentrate on finishing out the year strongly rather than spending any energy thinking about 09. I will do that when the month ends. Also, we don’t do a whole lot of big speeches at SMB. I don’t believe in that. And at this time of the year I am sure there are a lot of speeches being given about next year. And about how great a year 09 will be. Yada yada yada. I have never seen anyone become a great trader after a speech. Inspirational words aren’t enough. Though sometimes a trader just needs to be reassured of their talents. Telling entertaining stories won’t do the trick. Though after you trade for over a decade you compile some really great stories. Buying pizza for the desk isn’t the answer (though we seem to buy an awful lot of pizza for our traders these days). So what will?
The reason why new traders struggle is because their trading skills are not good enough. They need to work on skill development. 09 is not going to be a great year for a new trader because you tell yourself it will be. 09 will be a great year if you develop better trading skills. One of the things I can’t stand is watching a coach yell at one of his players during a game. Almost always the player made a mistake because his skills are not good enough. For the next many months work on that skill development with that player. Create drills to work on his weaknesses. If he is dogging it during practice drills then calling him out is necessary. But screaming at him during the game is not going to help. Spending the time working with him will.
We had a review last week of our traders. Each of them is different. Each of them has different skill levels. But we ask them to focus on skill development. There is a specific list of things that we ask them to do each day so they are improving everyday. We provide a teaching environment that ensures SMB traders are working on their skill development each day. We want SMB traders to experience the benefits of compounded learning. Today they will learn a little more because of what they learned the day before and tomorrow they will learn a little more because of what they learned today. And then pretty soon after concentrated and consistent work a well rounded trader develops.
So make your list of goals for 09. But make sure it focuses on skill development. Setting a goal to make 2k a day is unhelpful if it discludes working on a necessary skill. For example suppose your biggest weakness is aggressiveness. For whatever reason sometimes you do not pull the trigger when you see your setup. And suppose a median day is $600 for you. Your goals for 09 should start with visualization exercises of 15 minutes each day where you work on this mental weakness. You can write down that 2k goal everyday for all the market cares, but you are not going to pull out 2k until your overcome that mental weakness. And that mental weakness is not going to go away unless you work on it everyday.
Best of luck with your trading!
Please check out the following video http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4667942n (5:30-6:55 relate to my blog above)
