Placing too much emphasis on money is never a wise approach.
Similarly, obsessing over the outcomes of your trades can be counterproductive. Instead, it’s important to focus on building a solid framework around your trading. Each trade presents an opportunity to either build or destroy your Empire.
I’m not talking about the $ outcome of each single trade. I’m talking about the analysis, execution and follow-up analysis of each trade. When you trade for a living, without any other sources of income, your trading outcomes may eventually have a direct impact on your life. It's important to stay grounded and not let the pressure take hold. Thankfully, I have learned how to manage this pressure and maintain a clear mindset while trading. Most of the time.
However, I recently discovered that I unconsciously do overthink about:
Helping my parents;
Creating lifelong memories with my friends;
Offering the life that my fiancé deserves.
This should be a source of motivation, not stress. I also realize that time passes quickly. The 25 to 30 years old went so much quicker than the 20 to 25 years old. And now, 32 is around the corner. How is that even possible?
Whilst I spend quite some time working on my trading, I realize I could have been more efficient on a 3 specific items that I ranked by opportunity cost ($):
Flipflopping: I struggle too much switching between shorts and longs. This mistake costs me thousands of dollars each month. It’s my number one priority to fix. I still take profit too early and then switch to the other side. I need to keep in mind “Who is in control?”.
Programming: I’m a good data scientist, but I’m not using my full potential. I spend too much time writing “fun” and educative articles on this Substack and not enough building proper tools to help me in real-time. This is changing from today.
Energy: I stop trading Globex. I’ll keep trading the pre-market IF the volatility is here, based on volume-based parameters. My new trading hours will be 09:00 AM to 03:30PM. I’ll run my daily statistical reports from 08:00 to 09:00am and prepare the day.
The goal is to get more results for less efforts. I kind of lost myself with this Substack/Twitter thing. I have some much progress to do in my trading, that I can’t afford spending 6-8h a week writing educational article. This is not a good risk/reward ‘trade’.
From now on, this Substack will be much more focused on my process, trade reviews, journaling and analysis I use to trade $NQ.
One of my latest work has been analyzing some type of days and categorizing them into 3 categories. Here’s one below, with the behavior of the intra-day price over the last 3 years for each of the day in the said category.
I’m also raising my yearly profit goal from $80k to $250k. I’m currently sitting at c. $44k after slightly more than 3 months. Execution is more important than $, but still, the $ amount is a good proxy of performance for someone who takes thousands trades in a year. Let’s not forget that.
To help me with that, I took advantage of the promotion and bought 10 $50k Apex evaluation that I’ll add to the trade copier. Less leverage per account. More accounts.
I will share updates of these accounts. This week has been a big bounce of confidence. I managed to have a much cleaner trading, alternating scalping and day trading.
Here are my two best entries (after sharing my worst entries last week on Twitter).
Best long entry at the low of the week:
Best short entry at the high of the week:
I mismanaged the above position, shame as it was my cleanest entry in a while. No points in complaining, I fucked up and it was a big mistake. Not again.
It’s time to be more focused on the process and ambitious. I’m going to war, and I’ll give all I have. It’s you vs. you. Always has been. I love this game.
Speak soon.
- Retail
That’s amazing RC, good luck. I’ll be working on establishing some goals for my trading as well but since everyone has a different starting base, it would be better to set a % (instead of $) target. Was wondering if you could share your % target (for 80k / 250k).
Thank you! I can't wait to see your progress on the 10 Apex accounts! Good luck! I know you got this!