It is always good to review your trades to learn from your mistakes. Sometimes it can be absolutely painful to review them but well worth it. I highly recommend all traders have a trading journal or use Profitly to analyze your trades.
In learning your own patterns you can hopefully correct them. Sometimes it can be a slap in your ego’s face to see where you went wrong. However as in life when you swallow your pride and see your weaknesses you can improve.
The changes to improve are not always obvious or easy. I won’t lie this month was rough for me. Going from averaging about $5K a week in profits to $9K in a month is a change. I felt bad and had a bunch of distractions within the house with renovations that really acted as hinderances to me.
In looking at my trading each day and seeing when I made poor choices it was easier to step away to take time for life instead of letting life interfere with trading.
The market will always be there, but sometimes life comes first.
The difference of making $9K in a month versus $20K was worrisome to me because I thought I had lost my mojo. However the past two days have instilled confidence again.
In reviewing my trades for the past month, my amendment to my rules are as follows.
- How am I feeling today in terms of health? Anything distracting me mentally? i.e.. my daughter, home renovations, or maybe a personal disagreement (this all affects your trading)
- Is this the best entry? Set a stop to protect myself if it is not!
- Try to get better at moving stops while the profit is running to give it wiggle room. All profits are great, but try to let the runners run more.
This Friday is Canada Day for us and our daughter will be home from daycare, so I will not be trading at my desk. I look forward to starting July off with fireworks and I hope you do as well.
The end of June will wrap up the majority of our home renovations and distractions, so I’m very much looking forward to July. My hubby will be paper trading after watching some of Tim’s DVDs and I’m excited for him to get a feel for the real price action.
Every trade, Every day we are all students and can only strive to get better. When we beat ourselves up or let others beat us up mentally over errors it will affect your trading. Stay positive and take the lessons from all your errors. Hopefully you are humble enough to learn and improve. If you are you and your trading will benefit.
As always I love hearing feedback from you. It makes my trading more personal and I like to hear how I can help you. If you have questions or comments you can contact me here or on Profitly, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook.
This blog is for information purposes I am not a registered securities broker-dealer or an investment advisor. The information here is not intended as securities brokerage, investment or as an offer or solicitation of an offer to sell or buy, or as an endorsement, recommendation or sponsorship of any company, security or fund.
Jane – Just watched the Digital Stock interview. I continue to be inspired by your journey! Congrats! Starting with Tim’s DVDs and had a quick question. Do you recommend them in any order?
Mark I highly recommend how to make millions as it is a full synopsis of the information. There is definitely way more to learn after that DVD but for the value and knowing the proceeds go to charity it is a win win. And thank you I’m very happy to inspire others to study and learn how to become self sufficient as well.
I highly recommend How to Make Millions as it is fairly expansive and covers a lot. All the proceeds go to charity as well so you can help yourself while helping others. I also like Triforce traders dvd and Trading Tickers.
Jane – Thanks for sharing. I’ll check out the others you recommend as well.
Hello Jane! I’ve been following you from profitably and now on your blog page. I love that you share what’s going on in your mind from personal to trading, it feels very relatable!
I have a question… would you say that it is best to get into a trade in anticipation that a reversal can happen? Or get in a trade after a morning panic after having a theory of a reversal? Or just getting into a trade once there’s confirmation? I just find that once there’s confirmation I’m just too late to take a nice profit. Any insight would be great!
Nilsa it is always better to get in with confirmation of the movement. If not you need to be prepared for a loss before a win. Thank you I try to keep it all real as trading is a part of life and other aspects can and do affect your trading as we are all human. Computers do a great job of weeding out emotions, but as humans we have to keep them in check. Hope that helps.
Hi Jane,
You are an inspiration! Love your blog and I am following your journey 🙂
I have been trading for a while and not having a breakthrough… Think I may have to re examine my steps and do a good paper trading. Can you advice how you did your paper trading?
Cheers
Jennifer
Hi Jane,
You are an inspiration and I love your blog!!
I am a trader as well but still not having a breakthrough. I think I gotta re visit my strategy and redo my paper trading. Can you advice on how do you do it? I read somewhere that you did the traditional way (Paper and pen). Can you give more details on that?
Cheers
Jam
Thank you Jen,
When I did my paper trading I use a pen and paper. That was after I already blew up a 6k account. I think it is really important to actually paper trade electronically because learning how to enter the trades is part of the learning curve. If you don’t know what you are doing you will lose money. If you don’t know what the types of orders are ie. Limit, market, stop, trailing stop, stop limit, trailing stop limit then practice electronically. The more you practice with fake money the better you will be when time for the real money. You can never recreate the emotions of trading with your own money but it will give you an edge to understand charts, timing of price action and confidence.
I would write down my entries and time of day and price and exits. Like an execution confirmation from a broker. That way I could review my trade later once the market was closed and see when I traded in relation to the chart.
Thanks Jane!
Ok I will do electronic practise 1st.