It takes purposeful practice AND 10,000 hours to become great at anything, says this latest blog from Barking Up the Wrong Tree.  I write about one way to practice purposefully in my next book  The PlayBook (which you can preorder), by creating your PlayBook.  I have written about other ways extensively on this blog (some examples below).

• Improving Our Performance By Watching
• Seek the Master Coaches
• So You Say You Want to be a Pro Trader
• The Future of Trader Education

SMB is about to announce a joint venture, JV, for our new midtown office.  As such I have spent a great deal of time with experienced traders, sifting through records of experienced traders, chatting with experienced traders, and asking and thinking about underperforming experienced traders, who can be better.  Also I was asked to speak recently in front of a crowd of bank, prop and hedge fund traders about the future of discretionary prop trading.  My conclusion?  Too many experienced traders do not have a methodology to build from their strengths.

There is so much goodness in their trading (profitable trades) but they are not keeping enough of it, building from it, nor best understanding their strengths to improve their P&L.  They are not engaging in purposeful practice.  Too many experienced traders are over-relying on their intuition and not tapping into the power of purposeful practice.  Said more specifically, they do not have, nor are they building a PlayBook, of their best setups.   This is a mistake as confirmed by the performance studies above.

Have you built a PlayBook of your best setups?  Are you archiving new ones every day?  Are you taking the most risk on your favorite setups so you are scalable?  Are you learning which trades are not worth your financial, intellectual and emotional capital?

More about our new JV, The PlayBook, and building your PlayBook to come in the near future.

Trade well!

Mike Bellafiore

The PlayBook

One Good Trade