Top Tips For Consistency!
Welcome to KB’s latest blog posts! I’m hoping these will provide helpful tips and give you some motivation to take your trading to the next level. I will dive into various aspects of trading within these posts. I will also be interviewing the prop traders here on the trading floor over the coming weeks as well so keep your eyes peeled for the ins and outs, the up and downs and some of the sacrifices it takes to become a consistently profitable trader. Enjoy!
In this week’s blog we are going to focus on what it takes to become a consistently profitable trader. This is a mountainous journey that many embark on but few reach the summit, so can we really identify what it takes to achieve the ultimate trading goal in one blog post?
The key to consistency is simplicity. If you make anything in life complicated you will no doubt struggle to achieve the desired result.
There is a great video that explores the deepest and darkest corners of consistency in the KB Advanced Trader Course (Watch a preview here) .
The first aspect to consistency is within your approach, are you approaching the charts in a consistent manner? For example, a top-down approach (Starting on the Higher Time Frame (HTF), Weekly, Daily and then Hourly for example) and are you doing this at the same time each day? At the end of the week are you preparing for the week ahead whilst the markets are shut? This allows you to really take a step back and look at the market structure without being distracted by the markets moving in front of you.
The second aspect I will highlight is routine, how can you expect your trading decisions to become consistent if you are not consistent in the times you trade, the markets you trade and the times you check these markets? For example, if you trade at the close of the hour, you must be checking the charts 5-minutes prior to the top of the hour in order to assess whether you need to make a decision.
A final point to mention is having a trading plan, this will keep you accountable for the trades you are taking. A trading plan should outline the markets you trade and exactly how you are going to trade the setups/ strategies that you have in place. These should be backed up by backtesting data so you can be sure that what you are implementing has at least worked over the past 4-5 years. This is something I could talk about in another post if people want to know the specific ins and outs of a professional traders’ trading plan?
Although this may have only just scratched the surface of consistency within your trading, I hope it has provided at least an introduction into what you can be doing differently to, at a minimum, ensure your approach to the markets is consistent.
If you would like to dive deeper into what it takes to be a professional trader, the KB Advanced Trader course is the natural next step. The education at KB has taken me from trading part-time at home to full-time here on the Glasgow trading floor.
Safe trading!
Jake
