Hi Mike,
It is short program in 10 weeks and I don’t want it ever to stop. The details provided in the material is precisely what is needed for anyone serious about this trading business. I am one of those who is reliant on recorded mentoring lessons and the flexibility of learning due to time zone difference and work-related responsibilities.
@mikebellafiore
Your trading brain doesn’t make the distinction between trading live and thinking about your trading. You can build the circuitry in your trading brain by doing a series of rehearsal techniques after the markets close. These rehearsals are as effective at building trading skill as trading live, says the science literature on performance. This helps the new and developing trader speed up their learning curve. I wrote about turning one trading day into ten in One Good Trade. I also dug up an interview with my friend Charles Kirk of The Kirk Report, which covered this topic.
Kirk: I couldn’t agree with this more. For example, my personal experience in mentoring others suggests there is no other best way to achieve high performance. However, beyond world-class coaching which is out of the reach of many, in your experience is there any real way to shorten the long and challenging learning curve that all traders must successfully navigate?
Mike Bellafiore: Yes, yes, yes. And this is supported by the modern science of elite performance. Purposeful practice, what we call turning one trading day into ten, will speed your learning curve. At SMB we have developed a proprietary practice trading simulator, called Secret Project X. Our traders can trade specific set ups like Flag Patterns or Support Plays unlimitedly. New traders perform poorly not because they are not smart but because they haven’t developed their trading skills. It takes ten thousand hours of purposeful practice to master anything, as Malcolm Gladwell shared in Outliers.
If you are trying to get better at breakout trades you might sit all day and trade just one. Traders need a system to simulate their trading so they can turn that one day of experience into ten. We demand that our traders do the following each day to turn one day of trading experience into ten:
- Keep a detailed trading journal
- Talk trading with the desk
- Think about their trades after the close
- Watch video tape of their trading
- Watch video tape of their trading with critical feedback from the partners
- Perform visualization exercises
- Talk with their mentor one-on-one about their trades
- Practice on our simulator
You can read my complete Kirk Report interview here.
Related blog posts:
Film Time
Know Yourself!
You can be better tomorrow than you are today!
Mike Bellafiore