Documenting is the Cure for Over Trading

I’m feeling lucky and grateful. I really mean it. Not only I’m getting to have the job I’ve just dreamed of just a few years ago but I’ve also been given the opportunity to serve this amazing community by sharing every single piece of knowledge I’m learning as I go down to this path of being a day trader.

Having a constant interaction with thousands of other traders give a real edge to its members if they decide to take the best lessons out of the countless great pieces of advice that are being shared day in and day out. The main objective of my articles is to go a little deeper in analyzing the most debated arguments in the chat-room because that’s where I think more traders may get some added value from.

Today, I want to go a little further into a topic that affects the vast majority of unsuccessful traders. This is over trading. As a matter of fact, in life we get used to think that the more we work, the more we gain. And I do think that’s exactly the same for trading. You know why? Because the actual execution of the trades is just a small part of a life of a successful trader.

Successful traders almost never over trade. Does that mean they need little work to succeed? If you think that’s true, think again. It may be true that at some point just a few hours per-day are required to get satisfactory results but the great amount of effort to get there is too easily forgotten.  

Evaluate having your own trading journal

So, once the concept of being a great trader is getting disconnected from the actual number of executed trades and it actually seems to have an inversed correlation (usually the less trades we take, the best results we have), the question is: how do we invest all the rest of the plenty of time we’ve been given?

Assuming we already have solid education fundamentals like the ones offered by the Warrior Pro program (more details here) and made all those concepts really our own which is the absolute and unavoidable first big step in the right direction, the question become the following. What should we do next (beyond the execution of actual trades)?

Documenting the journey is the answer! Yesterday, we’ve had another deeply meaningful discussion into the Inner Circle chat-room (more info about how to apply for it are available here) where one of our members shared his own trading journal he is producing on a daily basis and that contains so much valuable information about the technical and the thought process behind every trade, including screenshots of charts, entry and exit points and much more.

Even a simple thing like having a daily journal would have multiple benefits to any trader. First and foremost, it allows to come up with some sort of trading plan on each day. Then, it forces to go in deep into what has actually triggered the execution of the plan including valuable information such as stop distance, target, sizing and exposure. Also, it reinforces the importance of the psychology into trading.

Did emotions have an influence into the execution of the plan? Did they affect the decision-making process and how? All of this kind of information are usually not debated enough within ourselves, so that corrective actions aren’t created and that’s why we tend to commit the same mistakes over and over again. So, let’s consider this journal the ultimate tool for continuous improvement.

So, the other ultimate effect is to avoid over trading. Would you take too many trades if you know you’ve to document and justify everything you did? I’ve found this work really fascinating and, although it requires hard work, I strongly believe that it actually pays off in the long run. That’s ultimately why overworking is the answer to over trading. So, from now on, just trade the best and leave the rest!

“Working hard becomes a habit, a serious kind of fun. You get self-satisfaction from pushing yourself to the limit, knowing that all the effort is going to pay off.” – Mary Lou Retton

See you in chat-room.

Trade safe,

Roberto Barbaro