As you know, it’s the end of the year. This means that now is the time to take stock of your trading activities over the past year and honestly tell yourself what you did right and what you didn’t. As a trader, I prefer to take the last week or two of the year off. I don’t trade at all at this time. Instead, I use this time to connect with my family more, as well as reflect on my trading results from the past year and adjust my trading plan for the coming year. I believe that every trader would benefit from adopting a similar approach towards the end of the year.
Here are some tips to help you end this trading year on a high note and prepare for all the new opportunities the market will offer in the new year.
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Take time to reflect on your trading performance
I have found that taking a week or two off the market can often be the exact “cure” many traders need to refill their objectivity and “logical reservoirs” to help them get back on track. After all, if this year has been marked for you by huge emotional ups and downs in the market, and huge ups and downs in the trading account (these things usually go hand in hand), there is nothing better than just spending some time. fell off the charts for a while.
As long as you have downtime when you are not actively analyzing the markets and looking for trades, you will be in the right mental state to take an objective look at your trading results over the past year. The main thing is to be honest with yourself about yourself. In other words, ask yourself some tough questions and give yourself honest answers to those questions. If you have emptied your trading account this year, take responsibility and ask yourself what you did to make it happen.
It’s easy to blame the market, your broker, or a “tip” you got from some “guru” on the internet. But, as a rule, you yourself are to blame for your trading losses, and until you realize and admit this, you will never move on and begin to make a profit in the market.
Ask tough questions to improve your trading performance
Here is an exercise to help you see where you went wrong and what you need to fix to improve your trading in the new year. I want you to take a pen and paper and really do it, otherwise it won’t work.
Answer the following questions about your trading over the past year, answer them honestly:
- How often did I overtrade? That is, how often have I entered trades that were not obvious confluent price action setups?
- What timeframe had the most of my trades? Did I have a lot of losing trades due to trading on short timeframes, where there was more “noise” and less significant price movement?
- How often have I unnecessarily interfered with my live trades, resulting in losses?
- Did I manage my risk correctly on every trade, or did I overdo my account and risk too much, resulting in a bigger loss than I would have liked?
- Did I stick to my trading strategy/trading plan or was I just playing the market?
- Do I have an effective trading strategy that I have mastered?
These shouldn’t be the only questions you ask yourself, although they are a good start. You should definitely add to this list what you think is necessary. Once you have a list of questions, print them out and then write your HONEST answers underneath them. Gather all your honest answers and compare them and you’ll find out what you did mostly wrong in your trading. Based on this, you can formulate your action plan for the next year and decide how you will move forward without making the same trading mistakes that you did.
Prepare for the New Trading Year in Advance
If you answered the questions above honestly, then you now have a good idea of what you need to focus on in order to improve your trading results in the new year. Many people get into trading thinking that they will succeed very quickly. However, trading success usually comes through trial and error over time. Eventually, after making enough mistakes and making a lot of the same mistakes over and over again, you’ll either “figure it out” or give up altogether. This is the general progress of any person as a trader.
The point of this year-end trading introspection is to try to get ahead in your trading by doing some simple trial and error. “Did my trading approach work well this year? If not, how can I fix it? What did I do right and what did I do wrong?
For those of you who are dedicated to “figuring it out” rather than giving up, you should listen to what I’m trying to tell you in this article and my other Forex trading articles because the insight and wisdom I share is the result of what I have learned in my personal trading journey. In 14+ years of trading, I literally experienced it all, I did trial and error and learned from my mistakes. This blog is a testament to that and I hope that during this year the lessons I have shared with you have helped you avoid wasting money in the market and set you on the path to trading success.
For most, this is not a quick or easy path, but if you want it badly enough, you can become a successful trader. Just be honest with yourself by honestly answering the “hard questions” I mentioned above, and never assume you know everything because you don’t. No one does this, trading is not about “knowing everything”, it’s about choosing an effective trading strategy like the price action method that I teach in my trading course and having the patience to stick with it without overtrading or using excessive leverage. your account. If you do this, your trading performance in the coming year will be much better than in the previous year.
Happy New Year and welcome the fresh start and new trading opportunities that the new year is sure to bring.
— Niall Fuller
