AT THE CLOSE
Be your own trading coach!
I've never quite understood the concept of a trading coach. For one thing, I could never afford a top-of-the-line one, so I just bought their products and had to be satisfied with that. And I’ve been hesitant to hire a lesser-known one ever since I overheard one say at a forex conference that they had recently blown out their personal trading account and was looking to pick up some coaching clients so they could replenish their trading funds.
Before you can use your trading plan to self-coach, you need to have a well-written one.At the other end of the spectrum are those accomplished traders who generously give their time and insights to help newbies become better traders. They may be trading room moderators or other senior traders who want to give back but have no desire to become full-time trading coaches. They wouldn’t want to take the pay cut!
Your trading plan
So using the guidance of accomplished traders, what I’ve tried to develop is a method to coach yourself using your own written trading plan as your guiding force. You do have a written trading plan, don’t you? Unfortunately, most traders do not. And if they do have something written down, it is probably nothing much, meaning someone else couldn’t take the plan and execute a trade according to the author’s desires. Or maybe the plan sits in a drawer unused. Most traders have heard they need to have a written trading plan, so they will write something down, maybe some market theories and generalities, and call it a trading plan so they can say they have one if asked.
Not so fast! For a trading plan to be effective and for our self-coaching needs, it has to have specific if-then rules for entries, exits, and trade management. The acid test for an effective written trading plan is to hand it over to a fellow trader and see if they can correctly execute trades using just your written rules.