One of our traders went from flagged for underperformance, to Most Improved, to one of our better traders. How did he do this?
Hey Bella,
One of the things that has really helped me has been going back and studying the charts of all of my winning trades and finding similarities in the chart patterns and taking a more technical analysis approach to my trading using 10/15min candlesticks. For example, one of the things I noticed was that whatever chart pattern I traded 80+% of my winning trades were made above/below the previous days trading range, so now I almost never take trades that are not above/below the previous days trading range. I also really paid attention to the structure of the chart leading to the breakout/breakdown of the chart pattern I am trading. For example, if I’m watching a stock for a morning breakout trade through highs then some of the things I would look for in determining whether or not to take the trade are
- is it trading above yesterdays high
- the candle that printed the current high of the day, did it close there or did it leave a long upper tail/wick
- how far did the stock pull back off morning highs before attempting to breakout again; 25%, 50%, more than 50%
- do any inside bars get printed in upper 30% of the morning range indicating consolidation near highs just before breakout
- the inside bars that get printed do they close at highs or leave tails/wicks
- how far is the candle in relation to 5ema, is there support from the rising moving ave
I definitely feel that paying attention to these small little details have really made all the difference in my trading recently. Let me know if you would also like some actual trading examples.
You can be better tomorrow than you are today!
Mike Bellafiore
No relevant positions
7 Comments on “From Bad to Great: a Trader’s Steps to Improve Performance”
Thanks for sharing.I love trading!
Mike,
Great post. Reminds me of the Trader X blog. Are you familiar with him? Tons of charts and the setups fit the parameters set out in this post.
http://traderx.blogspot.com/
TonyB
Of course we’d like to see some examples!!
Could you show or send some examples please
I will ask the trader to do so. Thxs for reading!
What a great example of what keeping a journal of trades can do for a trader. With this the trader was able to look back and thoroughly analyze the setups and what the losing trades had in common. Great job in identifying a way to find a structure that works. I personally like the 15min chart so especially thanks for sharing setup and structure.
As I tell our new traders it is hard for me to take you seriously if you cannot keep a journal consistently.