THE GROWTH PLAN

“One can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen again and again; fear must be overcome again and again.”
~ Abraham Maslow

Traders are a tenacious bunch.

Stubborn to a fault.

It’s admirable, but something’s missing.

Almost everyone I speak to has no idea what they’re working towards.

They just want to make “some money”.

Whatever the number is, it tends to reflect how much they’ve already lost.

Everyone has financial goals, but their process for getting there seems more like a scheme more than an investment.

More social media than self improvement.
More price action than process.
More dopamine than discipline.

I contrast what I see every week from amateur traders who post tons of charts, clearly enjoy being followed and constantly talk about wins, and pros who talk about the process, the lifelong study of themselves and markets and the sacrifices they’ve made to get to some huge returns.

I’d like to reframe a core belief with you, and it’s this:

Trading isn’t about making money, it’s about learning how to be a trader. 

Anyone can put money in the market and call themselves this or that, but a real trader is a master of themselves and markets.

How many can claim that level of ability?

More importantly, how do you work towards it?

It’s a 1-3 year development process that grows you from beginner to advanced and then expert with a very high income generating skillset. A 1% player in an infinite game.

It makes sense that everyone needs a personal growth plan for getting better, but almost nobody starts off with one.

How you trade is a reflection of how you do everything, so here are three routines to use outside market hours to reach the next level of being a trader.

1) Idea Generation

There are no good ideas in live markets, especially on lower timeframes. Everyone sees the same signals you do, and they’re not as reliable as claimed. In fact, they’re just a concept lacking context.

Context comes from a fully fleshed out trade idea.

Do this on a Friday night.

Create 5-10 ideas for the rest of the month. Even if you’re a day trader, you don’t need a massive watchlist and a new ticker to trade every day. Over the long term, markets have plenty of range on the macro (even when going sideways). The liquidity chess match between buyers and sellers will create enough highs and lows for anyone to be profitable, but you have to focus.

Start with the macro (quarter and month) and select the stocks you can stick with.

Do some fundamental research - what is the story driving the market’s opinion of the stock or index? What is likely to cause the next reaction?

Mark the opening prices, highs and lows and the levels of support and resistance that have been tested several times. These are your points of interest, zones and targets.

2) Preparation

Showing up in the market every morning is about creating mental clarity.

Grab your journal and note down your expectations for the day. What do you think the market will do and which of your ideas are in play (whether you plan to trade that day or not). Is there a news event coming in that week that could shift sentiment?

Get some exercise. Stress levels run extremely high when trading and I’ve observed that traders with poor energy levels tend to outthink themselves and get lost in the vortex of market noise, unable to place themselves in the move.

3) Reviews

Until you are past break even, you HAVE to review every trading day, whether you participated or not.

Forget about patterns. Everyone can see those in hindsight.

Note the closing prices of the stocks in your watchlist and whether any key levels or targets were hit on your ideas.

What is the closing price of the most relevant indices?

Was it a trend day or a consolidation?

Who’s in control of the market, and why do you think that is?

Is there a trade you can plan for the next session, based on levels and the setups you like to trade?

What is your confidence level in this market and how does it compare to your expectations from your preparation routine?

These are just some things you can do to get on the growth path. The trader with good ideas, the clearest mind and most objective view tends to do better than the price action purist with no defined habits.

You’ll figure out the market and yourself by asking better questions and being more patient with the outcomes, understanding that it’s all matter of the right process over enough time.

All successful outcomes are a byproduct of self development.

You have to grow in order to win big.

P.

CONSISTENCY begins on 29th April.

This is the best coaching program for people who have spent enough time in the market to realise it takes a systematic approach to trade for a living.

Busy professionals who hate inefficiency, know they can do this without staring at the screen all day long and want to develop their own ideas and execution strategies without following yet another influencer or learning a new price action approach that falls over more than it works.

Self reliant operators who don’t believe something’s missing, but want to capitalise on what they’ve always done best, in and out of the market.

Students have doubled 5 figure accounts, made 5 figures during the 3 week program and created bigger ideas that work.

More importantly, they’ve taken a business approach to being consistently profitable, turning down the noise of social media and improving the quality of what they do to create scale and enable longer term financial goals.

Accountability and community matters on an ongoing basis, so there is now a free lifetime alumni group for people who have completed the program, where we continue to run education calls and dive deep into what moves markets and how to profit from it.

Information is what most beginners constantly seek, but it’s process and execution that moves the needle of personal growth and separates the professional from the amateur.

Add strategy, accountability and community to that equation and it’s impossible to not get better.