Last week we looked at a session that caused me some troubles. See here if you missed it – Good Trading Isn't Just About Winning Trades.
It wasn't a losing day. A "bad" day isn't necessarily a losing day. This one profited. Cycling from negative to positive and back again to negative and then to positive, before I finally called it a day.
What makes it a "bad" day was my poor performance.
My poor decision making. My poor execution.
It happens. I just wasn't with it that day.
Sometimes I can brush it off easily. Especially when it didn't lose.
Laugh at myself. Get over it. And move on.
But other times… like this time… that's not so easy.
Perhaps it's the ongoing COVID-19 isolation fatigue? Who knows?
All I know is that I can't let it infect the next session.
So here's the plan for "The Day After a Bad Performance Day":
I can't do anything to influence the market, obviously. So the focus needs to be on me and on my interaction with the market. The things that I can control.
Fixing your Mindset
The problem here is simply that the mind is "stuck". It's anchored to the negative outcome from one single session.
We can fix this with two steps:
(1) Let's shift the mind from its current negative feelings to something more positive.
I recommend you keep a folder containing printouts (charts, trades, stats, whatever) that show examples of you at your absolute best. A "highlights" folder. Best trades. Best sessions. Equity curves overcoming drawdown.
And most importantly for our current situation, include at least one example covering two sessions where poor performance in the first session was followed by good performance in the second.
Keep this in your trading room. It will become your GO-TO tool for shifting focus quickly.
A reminder that the performance yesterday was an aberration. And that you are capable of so much more – because you've done it before.
And if you haven't done it before, then make it up. Because you WILL in time. You just haven't done it yet. Perhaps two printouts of yesterday's performance, one showing actual results and one showing ideal performance. It's something you may not have achieved yet but you know you damn well can next time.
A "highlights" folder. Create one if you don't have one.
And then use it.
(2) Let's shift the mind away from its single-session focus.
Yesterday was one day. If all goes well, I'll be trading a few thousand more days over coming decades. Yesterday is insignificant.
Take a calendar or diary covering at least a year into the future. And skim forward in time and have a look at a whole lot of days to come. And ask yourself, given all those days available to improve on your recent performance, does yesterday really matter?
And then turn today's page. This is the only day that matters now. And it's a blank sheet. And it offers a perfect opportunity to create a new entry in your "highlights" folder, as you follow up yesterday's poor performance with an example of you trading at your best.
Planning your Interaction with The Market
The aim here is to simply ensure you get the session off to a good start. That doesn't necessarily mean a winning trade. The outcome is somewhat out of our control. But it means A GOOD TRADE.
However you define them. An A+ Trade.
One that you would be happy to print and put on your wall. One that you would be happy to screenshot and send to me.
Even if it loses. A trade that you know that you HAD to take. It had edge. It was the right thing to do at that time and that place.
To give yourself the best chance of achieving this, you need to slow down. Be comfortable with no trades at all, until sufficient structure is in place such that you have a GOOD READ on the market and are completely in sync with the price movement. No trades at all, until you find one that you'd be happy to take if you were only allowed to take one trade this day.
That's all you need:
- Focus on the positives by skimming through your "highlights" folder.
- Recognise yesterday as insignificant in the context of a multiple-decade career. And see today as an opportunity to add to your "highlights" folder.
- And then slow yourself down. Commit to no trades, until the market is screaming out to be traded with an A+ trade opportunity.
So let's trade…
Moving forward a few minutes… and compressing the data slightly so that I can fit more price action…
There were no real secrets here in managing my performance, on the day after a bad performance day. Just a short process to get my mindset right. And to take my time, happy with no trades at all if conditions were poor. Waiting and watching until a trade set up that I knew I could look back upon in the post-session and say with 100% certainty that it's a good trade. Win or lose, it wouldn't matter.
I guess the obvious comment is: "Shouldn't all trades be like that? And shouldn't all sessions be traded with this patience?"
Yeah, sure!
But let's be real.
They're not all like that. There are always going to be some that are a bit questionable.
The aim on a day after a bad performance day, is to just slow down a little and make sure that the first trades today are NOT questionable at all.
Three simple steps:
- Focus on the positives by skimming through your "highlights" folder.
- Recognise yesterday as insignificant in the context of a multiple-decade career. And see today as an opportunity to add to your "highlights" folder.
- And then slow yourself down. Commit to no trades, until the market is screaming out to be traded with an A+ trade opportunity.
Happy trading,
Lance Beggs