Thinking you might want to know about this financial success story, I urge you to read on.
One Day Trader’s History:
Like you, trying to make money in the markets, I had a bad time of it. Bringing to my new career as a trader what I learned as a manager and owner of several successful businesses - banking, real estate consulting, executive consulting - didn’t bring me the success I anticipated as a day trader.
Neither did relying on any of the investor and day trader experts I worked with over the years – books, workshops, courses, and various Web based advisories and systems.
Sure, there were times when I had brief winning streaks, and other times when I had big winners. But, overall what I had learned with all this work, I felt, left me more vulnerable to losing, and often times losing big.
So I was a loser. I was frequently trading like a jerk, an incompetent - draining my energy and funds in the process.
During the 80s and 90s, I was an executive consultant. I specialized for many years in helping senior executives manage their mood and energy (along with underlying issues of stress, effectiveness, and producing results) - for them to energize their relationships, careers, and their businesses.
For me to continuously lose my composure and money in this new endeavor as a day trader was for me incomprehensible and very difficult to accept (emotionally and financially). Losing like this, I became as stressed as anyone could possibly be without the need for medical attention. Don’t laugh.
I got angry with myself, the markets, and all trading systems and approaches I tried with dead end results. I was resentful, often arguing with the markets, questioning just about everything I was trying that resulted with failure.
At times, I felt both hopeless and helpless. I even got angry with other traders for taking my money. You name it; I was letting just about every aspect of trading sap my energy. I was far too frequently upset and too often felt exhausted at market close.
Friends stopping by found my behavior hilarious. Knowing how effective I was at helping them deal with their problems and stress, they couldn’t believe the state I was in. At the end of the trading day, when the dust settled and I/we did what was needed for me to regain my composure and energy, I too began to laugh at myself.
I would then say to others I shared these experiences with – never again. Never again would I allow myself to be so out of control. Never again would I end the day feeling like a foolish loser, depleted of my energy, dignity, and money.
No matter my intentions, as days and weeks followed, I was unable to turn my performance and results around.
I usually found myself at the effect of the same limitations, day after day. Overall I behaved like a victim with whatever I tried and failed. Yet I trudged on. All my investing and day trading research and study was now in question.
All the books I’ve read and reread, all the state of the art trading courses I took, and all the so called mentors I trusted (trying to learn all and everything I could to become more competent day trader) – failed me. Thinking back about those times now, I find it both funny and sad.
A Time for Change:
Confused and lost in a web of continuous losses, my trading capital was shrinking fast. I came close to quitting. I don’t ever recall quitting when faced with other career setbacks. I wasn’t about to start now. I declared quitting was not an option.
I also decided that being a day trader was the final career of my life. No matter what it took (like my other careers - banking, real estate consulting, and executive consulting) - I was going to make this career work.
As the first step, I completely stopped trading and put on my consulting hat – it was time to consult myself. Not trading was the only way I could survive financially. Not trading, I could more objectively observe the market and my trading approach - to find a way to win.
I was committed to revealing whatever was missing, that if provided, would finally bring me trading success. As an observer, I was now able to carefully look at my poor trading performance - both personally and financially – to fix it, to change it, or to reinvent it.
I began to focus nearly all my time and attention on one simple question - how can anyone (home based traders like me, institutional fund manager, hedge fund traders - anyone in the market) make a success of day trading – in control and consistently profitable?
It finally occurred to me that something about this business of trading was very different from all other businesses I had experienced. Revealing that difference became the project and challenge of each and every day – of my life.
Traditional Business:
I thought about what I already know about successful businesses. In any business, not day trading, you want new ideas, carefully crafted plans to bring the ideas (valuable products and services) to a ready market, along with talented people to execute the plan for growth, development, and ongoing innovation.
With research and innovative development geared toward ever changing customer/client needs and wants and by sincerely focusing in on their continued satisfaction with what you offer, your business can both survive and thrive.
The Business of Day Trading:
It’s not quite the same with the business of day trading. Sure, as a trader you need a trading plan and a market. And, yes, ongoing research for new ideas, skills, and systems as the times and markets change.
What about people – customers, management, and workers?
Other than your accountant, a good brokerage outfit with great software, and a good computer guy, you don’t need people. You are essentially on your own usually in your own home – answering to no one. You’re running solo.
What about success? Success as a day trader has special requirements. Trading requires the attitude and performance of a well-trained and conditioned athlete in a sport, like a champion tennis player – not so much the skills of a successful manager.
And don’t let me forget – no champion makes it to the top without a good consultant and coach to help develop a winning approach, the skills, and the competence of a master player. Let me explain.
Success - Winning like an Athlete:
Tennis, as you know, deals with individual players who have finely tuned their skills over years of practice from youth, learning to lose with dignity, learning to win with humility - all the while, aspiring to play as a pro, then as a world class champion.
In tennis there are no customers, there are no clients, in the traditional business sense – except, for yourself, your coach, and, if you’re fortunate enough, your growing list of sponsors and, of course, your fans.
The real point of the game, by the way, isn’t the money; it’s to win - at any cost. It’s pretty simple. You win when you outperform your opponent – much like a trader, outperforming other stock market participants.
But, as most great tennis players discover, consistently winning requires careful and ongoing attention to managing your energy (physical, emotional, and intuitive), mood (arrogance, fear, anger) and, all the while looking for opportunities to take advantage of your opponent – to win.
One other required element for the champion – finding a great tennis coach available with a champion approach for winning.
You need a trusted and respected performance coach to guide you through the distractions and mine fields, so you can focus only on what matters - learning to consistently win. Not always win, but win consistently enough to become a pro, then, if you are real fortunate, to become a champion class tennis player.
Day Trading - My Observations:
To win at trading, like an athlete learns to perform as a champion, seemed remote for me – given what I experienced. As I said, applying all I’ve learned about business and day trading success (not paying too much attention to my mood and energy, not really knowing what was going on in the market), I thought my trading turned out to be a waste of my time and resources.
I considered myself a failure both personally and professionally.
Personally, I was ignoring, for the most part, what it took to win at the game of trading. Not only did I need to manage my money/trading, I needed to learn to trade like a professional, not so focused on the money, but completely focused on winning, one play at a time.
I didn’t know how to win as an investor or a day trader. I wasn’t doing very well managing any of the critical elements for winning – energy, mood, and finding opportunities that panned out.
As a result, my trading was exhausting, anger filled, and embarrassing. I listened to far too many other “expert” traders and systems for my setups, entering the trade too early, waiting for what seemed like forever for a move. Or I was in too late, wondering how others found the movers in time to win. I was making too many untimely, unrewarding entries and exits.
To become a professional (stop the losing and begin to win more than lose) trader, I knew I must learn to manage my energy (physical, emotional, and intuitive energy), my moods (fear and greed), develop finely tuned skills, while looking for opportunities to develop an approach and the competence to win.
What I Learned:
My Losing Ways (I often found six problems present when trading):
1. Context – focus more on the money, not winning,
2. Obsolescence – relying on old school systems and day trading approaches,
3. Arrogance – having all the answers - certainty about the outcome,
4. Timing - usually trading too early or too late,
5. Hope – lacking the technique and the discipline to exit losers,
6. Blind & Bored – watching stocks that might move, rather than movers,
Voila! I now had something to work with as a consultant.
What I Discovered:
I noticed consistencies and, more so, inconsistencies with stock price movements.
Yes, volume, trends, pivots, candlestick patterns and all the other support and resistance studies like Stocastics, MACD, Fibonacci, are important signs for price change or continued movement.
Real trading power, I found, comes from finding and observing movers. Well, that sounds pretty easy. Not.
Knowing what to look for and what not to look for with the perspective and approach of a winner is an art form that is learned, over time, like winning moves in tennis. With coaching, practice, and more coaching, this skill eventually happens intuitively. How to execute a trade effectively and profitably is also an art form that is learned with coaching and practice.
All the while, you also need to learn to manage your mood and energy. You guessed it. This also requires a winning perspective, approach, and skills developed with a coach and lots of practice.
I’m not talking about the traditional approaches to trading you read or hear about, although that information is important to be aware of and build on as that’s what most of your opponents use.
It’s not about luck, or “skillfully” guessing what might happen tomorrow with stock that seem to be “set up”, or about forecasting and entering trades in hope for the move that may, or may never, come.
I was expecting others to make me successful:
There are experts in the industry that claim to have exactly what I needed to be a successful day trader.
I tried them all with resulting failure.
These so called experts have successfully capitalized on their trading experiences (as investors or day traders in the past – few trade anymore) writing investor and day trading books, offering seminars and courses, and developing web sites that offer these and a variety of other services including software with filtering databases that produce the “picks of the day”.
Well, after years of losing with these systems, I discovered the hard way they don’t work.
They may have worked before I started trading, but not any more – they have been rendered obsolete.
Why?
Two primary reasons: they don’t keep up with today instantaneous (electronic) markets, and they rely on yesterday’s results to forecast today’s action.
To make money in today’s markets you need a different trading perspective, a winning approach, tools, and skills. The DTTW approach I developed over the past year has just what day traders have been looking for to replace the obsolete, losing systems to have a current market approach to consistently win.
The Day Traders Win approach:
Our trading approach is about a very different way of trading personally and professionally.
I’m talking about an approach to trading that quickly stops your losing, gets you winning more than losing (as a professional) and eventually winning at a masterful and intuitive level (like a champion tennis player) - building the competence and winning performance to build wealth beyond what you thought possible as either an investor or day trader.
As there was nothing available for me to stop losing and start winning, I did what I had to do to develop a fresh, new, simplified, and far more effective way of observing the markets, the movers, and finding opportunities for winning.
I was no longer relying on other’s preconceived (arrogant) notions of what might happen with the markets or the stocks (picks of the day).
Carefully and objectively observing markets and stock price movement, still not trading, I got bursts of insight as to what was really important for any trader to know and not know to win. I also discovered what was just noise and what kept most traders distracted from winning.
Real opportunities, I found, are not so obvious – for a variety of reasons, preconceived notions being on the top of the list. I learned to find hidden opportunities to win - real time, any time of the day.
As you know, there are both fundamental and technical influences, news items, and a wide range of market trickery by the participants that moves stocks prices.
Whatever is going on in any of these areas, I learned how to:
· Find the movers - opportunities,
· When to be in and when to stay out - timing, and
· How to get in and out effectively to consistently win – execution.
I was quickly finding new ways of observing and trading to win – day after day, every trading day; any time the market is open for trading.
I learned to win pre and post market, midday, during the summer and holiday week doldrums, and when the markets are either range bound or trending.
I organized what I was observing about the markets, certain stocks, and my trading perspective, approach, and skills to develop a fresh, simplified, and effective plan and way of trading I call Day Trading to Win.
Promising – but not proven:
I had my doubts and lots of questions. Was it just an extended run of luck? Or was I onto something solid here? This kind of success potential seemed at first hard to believe, given where I had come from.
It was time to put all this to a test. With renewed energy, a fresh winner’s outlook and new approach to win, I started trading again. At first, I traded cautiously yet, to my surprise, profitably from the first day and have not had one losing day since. For weeks I traded both ways: the standard approach, waiting for picks to develop and the DTTW approach, trading movers real time.
The old approach I found I lacked control, I was stressed for longer periods of time, hoping prices would go my way and still experiencing losses that out weighed the gains.
The DTTW approach won hands down. Most of the day I was in full control, focused and energized, and prepared to take advantage of any opportunities - confidently and competently. I was in far more winning than losing trades.
Not only did my trading become immediately rewarding financially, I quickly learned what was missing to be in full control both personally and professionally to be a consistent winner.
I began to displace my losing ways with the thinking and performance of a winner. While trading, I was again surprised to discover my attention was on winning each and every trade - not so much on the money.
Was I surprised with the outcome of my research? You bet. Who wouldn’t be? I was trading much more in control of my thoughts and feelings before, during, and after each trade.
My energy and mood were no longer issues, my stress minimized. And, of course, I was happy with my newfound way of winning - consistently winning. I was trading effectively and profitably and frequently, as athletes say, in the zone - winning with ease.
The DTTW approach helps us trade at these winning levels. For me professionally, the DTTW approach allowed me to reengage my career as a consultant and coach – not for executives and businesses this time, but for day traders who aspire to trade like pros, winning far more than losing, then as champions – consistently winning.
The DTTW approach, my consulting and coaching, and my DTTW trading room were designed to produce day trading professionals who eventually (generally within three to six month) become champions who can produce CEO level income - $2,000 to $5,000/day, yes, that’s a potential of from a half to a million dollars per year (trading 46 weeks).
Now I want you to begin thinking about benefiting from this kind of trading. Contact me to talk about your day trading possibilities.
Comments & questions:
Wealth@DayTradersWin.com
More Information - http://www.daytraderscoach.com/
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