How to Stay Consistent with Your Trades

 The key for trading is to make sure that your effort is consistent. Obviously, if you want to be a full-time portfolio manager or trader, then you can’t work on it two hours per week. You need to be putting in the hours and effort in order to make it happen. Of course, in order to do that, you need to make sure that you have the right amount of time to give. If you have too many commitments or activities, then you need to pare them down so as to give you the time to devote to proper preparation. You are going to be active in the market alongside people who are devoting 60+ hours/week to studying the markets, researching investments and preparing, so you want to have at least the minimum preparation necessary to hold your own. When you get up in the morning When you get to the office—esp. if you are a professional, full-time When you get home in the evening When you finish dinner When you hit a certain hour of the day, e.g. 10AM or 6PM This has to be the first step. Remove all the noise, opinions and confusion from your trading. You have to understand that you have to stop changing trading strategies. Once you have chosen your system, create a set of rules that determine the way you pick entries, set stops/targets and manage trades. A set of rules will help you make more consistent trades because you are less likely to break the rules. And once you start taking the same trades over and over again, you will start seeing patterns. You will notice what works and what doesn’t. Then you can make small adjustments and slowly turn yourself int0 a professional trader.