WINNING IDEAS FOR 2017
DOING MORE OF WHAT WORKS AND LESS OF WHAT DOESN'T WORK
AUDIT YOUR PERFORMANCE
In your trading, make an annual ritual of conducting an audit of the trades made during the past year, focusing on the winners as well as the losers. If you not trading, substitute ' trading' for whatever you are doing.
From the audit of the winners, try to identify what you did right: what was working for you during this year ie 'Your success profile.' These become the basis for “trading solutions” that you consciously attempt to implement in the coming 2017.
The idea is to create your own model of trading success, but also to build the model from your own experience rather than borrow it from a trading guru.
Before each trading day, rehearse elements of this model in your trading diary. This consistent rehearsal helps you to internalize the trading solutions so that they become an automatic part of the trading arsenal.
The 'doing of more that works and less that doesn't work' method appears to work for much the same reason that evolution works. When there are random mutations within a gene pool, some of these prove highly adaptive and improve a species’ survival rate. Over time, this selective pressure increases the representation of the mutation within the gene pool, until it becomes dominant.
Similarly, we can view our trades as a set of mutations within the total pool of our trading behaviors. By emphasizing the successful trades and paying particular attention to these—constructing them as solutions—we exercise our own selective pressure and increase the representation of those behaviors in our repertoires.
Conversely, when we are problem focused—paying more attention to our deficient behaviors than our successful ones—we unwittingly reinforce these and create a kind of devolution.
Auditing worst trades can also be useful, especially in eliminating those few trades that often create a large share of one’s annual losses.
The doing of more that works and less of what doesn't work approach, is unique in its ability to help you become your own coach. By requiring you to find your own successes and create models built on these. Empowering you to become your own trading guru rather than fostering an unhealthy depedance on others.
