Avoid living in the “should be” world. Live in the “is” world. That will keep your feet planted in reality for your profitable stock trading or profitable futures trading efforts.
If anyone is magically going to appear and just suddenly make your trading life better, you have to know the only person that can perform that miracle is you! That’s going to take some work on your part.
Successful Futures trading or successful Stock trading comes from trading in the REAL world. Plan and place your trades from the inside out, not the outside in. Make the “is world” where you live and place your efforts.
You have absolutely no control over what’s going to unfold in the markets. You can never know. The question is what do you have control over? You and you alone. Learning how to communicate honestly with yourself takes a lot of practice.
We all grasp for certainty. The solution to increasing your trading profits is trade planning. There are things you can plan for. Admittedly the trade rarely matches the plan. Without a plan there’s no way to measure the outcome. Invest your time planning the kind of trade that gives you the sense of safety you need. Make friends with reality but surrender your ego to the uncertainty.
You can only control your actions and never the outcome. Also always remember just because something works in this trade doesn’t guarantee it will work in the next trade. There are no guarantees!
The real work is on ourselves not on the markets. Commit to doing that work. Constantly ask yourself what is and what isn’t within your control. That way you’ll increase your tolerance for the uncertainty when you trade the markets.
Crediting an old trader who is a stock trading hero of mine and remains relevant over all these the years: “The best way to learn a trading strategy is to live it trade, by trade, by trade – day by day, by day, or signal, by signal, by signal. Because looking at the chart in one fell swoop will lead you to say things that you would not have done had you been living in the moment. It’s easy to look at the chart like this and say I would have bought over here and taken profits here. I would have been short over here and so forth. That’s not effective because in the moment you make different decisions when you’re emotional. There’s nothing in the world that can make you more emotional than a relationship with a person or with the markets.” Jake Bernstein
And what does Jake Bernstein have to say about successful stock trading> Trade one method in one market. What do you do with mixed signals? Stay flat. Be strict and follow the method you’re using. Old fashioned and still totally fundamentally sound advice.