@_masterinvestor I seen you put these 2 post up, recently…. Not sure if you’re hinting at a higher VIX or we’re in a buy area. So much noise out here 🤦♂️
A valuable framework for reviewing your trades is to separate your performance from the outcomes.
Instead of judging a trading day, week, or month solely by whether you made or lost money, focus on the quality of your inputs and processes A profitable trading period (green days/weeks/months) doesn’t necessarily mean you traded well.
You might have made mistakes but still ended up in profit due to luck or favorable market conditions. A losing trading period (red days/weeks/months) doesn’t necessarily mean you traded poorly. You could have followed your strategy perfectly but faced unavoidable market conditions that resulted in losses.
Focus on your INPUTS vs OUTCOMES. Focus on what you can control. We can't control our outcomes in trading, only our inputs are in our control.
Inputs are:
1. Trade execution: Did you follow your game plans? Did you follow your entry and exit criteria?
2. Risk management: Did you follow your stop? Is your risk managabel on trades? If any of your trades hit its risk, would you be in a BIG drawdown?
3. Market Prep: How good were your daily game plans? Were you able to read market conditions?
4. Emotional and mental: did you tilt? did you overtrade? did you revenge trade? did you give away profits due to losing control?
5. What playbooks worked? which ones didnt? why?
6. Is your trading repeatable next month
The reason its important to look at the following questions is because you will have RED months where your inputs were good and if you inputs stay good, you will not blow your account in the long run. But if your inputs are bad but outcome once or twice is good, then sooner or later you will face a huge drawdown.
Becoming a better trader is simple. Follow a consistent process. Example:
- Prep 30 mins before market opens/ or when you start trading your session
- Write out your thought process for the day. Could be your levels, scenarios you believe will happen (it’s okay to be wrong that’s the point)
- Have daily max loss amounts set, time periods you’re allowed to trade, max size in place. Basically have rules and follow them.
- execute
- compare execution to game plan and do a full end of day write up on it
- did you follow game plan? If not why? If you made adjustments then were they good adjustments? Any new information came to the market? Did you follow your risk settings? Did you execute will? Did you miss anything? How off was your game plan scenarios to what happened
Refine. Learn. Repeat.
You will automatically become a 10x better trading doing this —> Every. Single. Session.
I have over 1000+ notes in @TradeZella of my sessions and I religiously do daily write ups/ recaps. Even 11+ years later.
Start even with a piece of paper. Just start.