By Mike Bellafiore
What is one of the biggest differences between a Consistently Profitable Trader and lesser traders? The Consistently Profitable Trader doesn’t care if he is right.
In One Good Trade I urged new and developing traders to focus on the process of their trades and not the result. I wrote that if a trader followed 7 Fundamentals for a trade then he/she had made One Good Trade. This is your job as a trader. In short, One Good Trade, One Good Trade, One Good Trade.
In The PlayBook I went one step further. I argued traders must develop a PlayBook of their favorite setups and trade them bigger and more frequently. Before the end of each trading day, traders should archive a setup that made the most sense to them for their PlayBook. (Learn how here.) Give your trades a name. Write down the variables of those trades in detail. Start the process of internalizing your best setups so you can trade them bigger and better in real-time. And then stick to these setups.
To provide a real-life trader role model I introduce Shark, a consistently profitable trader my firm trained from scratch. Shark, better than almost all traders, cares less about being right in a trade. What do most traders do when in a trading position? They root. They root for their positions to work. Shark just does the right thing. He just intakes the data that the market is providing and makes the best trade decision. He trades in a state of equanimity, as I explain in the video below:
If you can learn to make fundamentally sound trades, One Good Trade, and take setups where you have a verifiable edge, Your PlayBook, then you can learn how good you can be as a trader.
If you are not there yet, no worries. Even former-seven-figure traders make trades that are not fundamentally sound as I share in this anecdote below:
As I end The PlayBook, and sharing trading’s greatest reward, “You can be better tomorrow than you are today!”
Mike Bellafiore is the Co-Founder of SMB Capital and SMBU, which provides trading education in stocks, options, forex and futures. He welcomes your trading questions at mbellafiore@smbcap.com. Follow Mike on Twitter: @MikeBellafiore
No position in any of the mentioned securities at the time of publication. Any opinions expressed herein are solely those of the author, and do not in any way represent the views or opinions of any other person or entity.
