Optimal Trading Environment

In order to ensure longevity within your trading career you need to surround yourself with the right people and have a trading environment that is conducive to constant progression and improvement. Without either of these two aspects you will learn bad habits and your learning curve will plateau. The markets are ever changing, albeit they may be subject to a sort of cyclical nature, they are nevertheless, ever changing.

What trading environment is best conducive to success?

Without a doubt the best environment you can surround yourself in is a professional trading environment and more specifically a proprietary trading environment. I have personally experienced the drastic changes to trading part-time alongside full-time work to full-time on a proprietary trading floor learning from those with 5+ years as professional traders in the financial markets. From the daily routines, to personal development and organisation it was eye opening to see. It may not be possible for you to experience this full-time but with the information within these blog posts it will hopefully allow you to have a better understanding of what is necessary and vital to have success within this industry.

Of course, in-person teaching is extremely valuable but it isn’t essential, it will speed up your learning curve exponentially but that isn’t to say it’s not possible without it. Having experienced professional traders available to you at a click of a button is, however, essential. If you’re not already a member of the KB Community or another trading community then I would strongly recommend that this is something you invest in. It will enable you to see the day-to-day life of the full-time traders and ask any questions you have that you may not be able to easily find online. Within the KB Community & Analysis Pass  you also gain access to all shared documents including daily plans, backtesting templates and stat gathering templates, all of which are invaluable to building a consistently profitable strategy.

A huge part of the many benefits included with the KB pass is the daily live streams, this will allow you to see how the professional traders break down the live markets and allows you to gain that experience of the full-time environment of a prop trader without actually being there in person.

Whether you are able to surround yourself with professional traders or not, a consistent place of study/ work is essential to building consistency, if you take control over the simple aspects to your process this will lead to consistency within your trading. What do I mean by this? If you ensure you are analysing the same markets each day, at the same time, in the same place and with the same approach then consistent results within your trading are more likely to follow suit.

The next area to explore would be what do I need for a perfect trading environment?

The stereotypical image of a trader is someone sitting in a chair with four keyboards in front of them and eight screens, is this really essential?

In all honesty, it depends, if you’re trading a 10-million-dollar account then maybe, yes. However, it is by no means essential to have so many screens. All you really need is either a laptop or a computer with an internet connection, it really is as simple as that. Multiple screens will allow for an easier flow between spreadsheets and the markets but isn’t something that you must have in order to be profitable.

A final key point to note is how important it is to have a good quality broker. What constitutes a good broker?

The following two points constitute a good quality broker:

• A broker that is regulated by a financial body such as the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), this simply means that the broker treats all consumers in compliance with the strict criteria laid out by the FCA and means you can trade safely.
• Reliable customer service, this is paramount, you need to be able to easily contact your broker should any issues arise.

At KB we would recommend Admiral Markets as this is the broker we all use and trust.

Until next week, safe trading!

Jake