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LEARN TO EXECUTE ORDERS QUICKLY

 Practice your execution skills daily. Create speed drills for yourself. Being fast and light is an advantage that the intraday trader must learn to exploit.

As such, learning to be fast with your orders is a skill that you will have to master.


FINE-TUNE YOUR FOCUS

A bad start is just an opportunity to make a comeback.

CONTROL YOUR EMOTIONS

Active intraday traders deal with rejection more than longer time frame traders. We trade more, so we are wrong more. If a losing trade sets you off, then this can affect your trades going forward. And this is dangerous.

We call this trading on “tilt.” You are in an temporary emotional state where you are not thinking as clearly as you can. You are angry, or frustrated, or disappointed. And then you make decisions that you normally would not. And rips result. In short, you manifest trading data that does not reflect your ability. 

A few days later Notorious Underperformer, a bright Ivy League graduate capable of much better trading results, sent me his list of things that set him off. They were a typical list. One of them was getting upset when he exited for a loss greater than he expected. I suggested the following visualization exercise (shortened considerably below):

Find a quiet area. Breathe deeply in and out for a few minutes until you are calm. Then visualize not getting out of a stock where you expected. In as much detail as possible, remember the last trade like this that set you off. Then expose the logic of getting upset. Something like if I let this upset me, then I will miss easy trades in this stock about to come. Then breathe in and out deeply again until you are calm. Repeat this process a few times.


“Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort.”

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