Starting out

My trading journey started in 2020 when I was trapped at home during the pandemic. Financial markets have always been a never ending puzzle for me. They seem so random, but yet they follow patterns of human behavior.

I love finding patterns and learning new things, so I dove in head first.

As part of that, I kept thinking that if I only knew a few more things about the markets, I would be a better trader. A few more metrics. A few more indicators. A few more strategies.

None of it helped.

Psychology

I started reading about trading psychology. (You can dig through my trading shelf on Goodreads.) There are so many great authors out there who have written about the psychology of trading.

I started to realize that I was over-complicating things and that was limiting my success:

pro_retail.png “I come across many traders who fall into a learning black hole. They think if they know more, want it more and work harder, this will give them an edge to make it. More often than not this borders on obsession and gives people a form of trading snow blindness. They have learnt so much that everything starts to conflict. With so much knowledge of what should happen they can’t deal with the reality when it does or doesn’t happen exactly as they have been taught.”

Knowing everything about macroeconomics and the markets doesn’t mean much when you don’t have the mental fortitude to open a trade, manage it, and close it. Curtis Faith’s book, Way of the Turtle, talked a lot about how simple the Turtle Trading strategy was.

At a high level, two experienced and wealthy traders made a bet about whether you could take regular people off the street and turn them into successful traders. They hired people without much (or any!) financial experience and gave them a trading strategy with very clear rules and a simple set of indicators. Entry and exit points were clearly defined by the owners of the firm. The strategy wasn’t unique, but it required discipline to follow the rules. Very few traders followed the rules precisely and they didn’t last long at the firm.

Today

My new goal is to keep things simple. I have some weaknesses to work on, including the following:

  • Zooming out on charts to follow the longer time frames.
  • Reducing indicators to the bare minimum that can be fully understood.
  • Setting stops (automatically exiting trades) that are based on a technical level rather than a percentage.

I’ll share some of my wins and losses here as I work through these changes. Hopefully you’ll come along on this journey with me. 🧗‍♂️