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Your trading progress can be easily tracked.  In fact, it is black and white, right in front of you all the time.  As tempting as it is to track every trade, like balancing a checkbook, it will work against your long term goal of unemotional, decisive, and successful trading.

Think macro, not micro.

One of the biggest challenges we face as traders is the reining of our emotions in times of decision.  Trading is a statistics game and emotional trading is far from logical and almost always costly.  That being said, evaluating your progress is, naturally, going to generate some emotions.

Let me give you an example.  You think you are doing pretty well.  You have made 5 trades so far in the day and each one turned out in your favor.  Just to give yourself a big ole pat on the back, you decide to tally up the day.  So what if it is only 3 hours into the trading day, you may have made enough to sit back the rest of the day and relax.  So against your better judgment (and our staunch advice) you tally up your trading profits.

Scenario #1 – You did great.  You made even more than you thought you did.  Logically, you know that you should continue using your system and be even more disciplined because it has done so well for you.  But you are feeling good!  Endorphins are surging in your blood and you start thinking you are darn good at this trading stuff.  So on your next trade, you take a little more risk that you might have normally because it feels right.  You get a little careless.  You see it in every movie.  Pride cometh before a fall.

Can you see where we are going with this?

Scenario #2 – You didn’t do as well as you thought you did.  It seemed like the day was productive but when looking back your profits were mediocre.  Not bad, but not that great either.  “Hmmm,” you think, “I have time to make up for this mediocre morning.”  After all, you want to hit that daily goal and at this conservative rate, you may not.  You let loose the reins just enough to squeak in an extra trade or two – so what if they are not ideal circumstances.

Can you see where we are going with this?

Bottom line is, tallying up your progress is something best done when your results will not affect that way you trade.  If you have a system that works 70% of the time (more if you are in our chat rooms), you will end up ahead no matter when you tally up.  Preferably, you should sit down and graph out your progress at the end of each month but we know how much restraint and patience that requires.  If you must, tally up weekly on Friday afternoon AFTER YOUR TRADING DAY IS OVER!

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The MSP Team