Trading Success Shortcuts

When you're climbing the learning ladder to success (see my article called "The Futures Trading Success Ladder"), that last step is a huge leap!

You may find yourself at the "conscious competence" level for a very long time before everything becomes so practiced and so ingrained that you reach "unconscious competence" and start trading in the zone as a master trader. Even when you're in the groove and really working it, it takes time and practice, practice, practice before your routine and technique click to autopilot and using your system becomes automatic and effortless.

Here are some shortcuts you can use to make that last step up the ladder of success more quickly.

1. Hard wire your response

Through constant, consistent repetition, you can hard wire action patterns in your brain. If you always follow the same pre-trade checklist; if you always use the same colors, same indicators and same set up in your charts; if you always follow the same post-trade checklist; you program your brain to elicit the same response every time.

2. Don't get discouraged

Automating a response may take 10,000 or 30,000 or even 50,000 repetitions. Don't give up. Achieving mastery of anything takes practice and usually a lot of it. Think of all the hours you spent playing catch with your dad, all the "strikes" it took before you could consistently hit the ball, all the long boring hours in right field until you finally developed the skills to play shortstop -- it takes a lot of practice to learn to do anything well.

3. Practice makes perfect

Before you put your money where your mouth is, I highly recommend using SimBroker to practice. Trading in the virtual world will teach you to recognize and react appropriately to your trading signals. Carefully monitor your win-loss ratio, profitability and consistency. When you can reliably win trading in the virtual world, you're ready to put your cash on the line.

4. Show me the money

Use SimBroker to practice your money management until you automate your response. By mastering and automating your money management skills, you are two-thirds of the way to a successful trade. Learn to master your emotions and you're home free.

5. Watch the clock

You can have great success with time of day trading. There are certain time periods during the day that are generally more volatile than others. Watching your indicators at these prime time points can help you pinpoint profitable trades.

The plateau between conscious and unconscious competence can seem like it goes on forever, but the very fact that you've reached that level at all means you've already realized some pretty fair successes and that's not a bad place to be.