Consistent profits in trading - why is it so tough to achieve?

Hi, Brian Macavoy here with Inside Out Trading. And today we're talking about consistency, which is really cool. When you have consistency, I mean, everything gets so much better. Your anxiety level goes down because now. Yeah, what's anxiety? Fear of the unknown. Well, when things are known, when you have consistency, things are unknown, you know, because you're consistent, you have consistent process. What you do is consistent. You have that consistency. You have a whole lot fewer unknowns to deal with. So, yeah, you're going to sleep better, you feel more relaxed in your training. You'll have a whole lot more confidence in it. Man, when you don't have that consistency, you can have the most cleverest system on the planet. But when you don't know or really have a solid idea or your results are just consistent kind of all over the place, it sucks because, yeah, it's real stressful. It's like, look like a good setup. But, man, this system does not produce consistent results. They're all great setups. Half the time I'm thinking, you know, I got a winner in my hands and it blows up in my face and I'm taking a beating again. So consistency, really, I mean, in any business, consistency is key. That's why in quality, and my background is quality insurance, that's why I love quality, because it's like, when you understand how to make consistency happen, life gets a whole lot better. I mean, things become known, you know what's going to happen. And quality assurance, that's why they call it quality assurance instead of quality control, where you're just running, making your product, and you got an inspector down on the line, you know, kicking off the stuff that's crap and, you know, passing the stuff that's okay. And hopefully your inspector's catching everything. He's paying attention and he knows what he's doing. And with quality assurance, we attend to the process so that we know what's going down the line is good. And it's a whole different mode of operation. And kind of the same thing in trading, you know, you can play quality control. You know, hopefully you're, you know, catching the bad trades in time before they hurt you real bad. You know, the trades are go bad before they hurt you real bad. Quality assurance, it's like, no, we got everything well in hand. We know what to expect. And that's really, really cool. I mean, when money's online, that's the last place you really want to have the unknowns. It's like, cool. Yeah. If you're in Vegas and it's just the thrill of, you know, gambling. But yeah, that's not what you're into trading for. You're into trading because you want high yield investing. You want to be able to put your money over here and know that you're getting a good return, not hoping that you get a good return. You want to know that, yeah, what I'm doing over here, it works and I can expect a pretty decent return and you know, what kind of return to expect. Not just I'm hoping to get a good return, you know, and it's really cool. Now, some of the mistakes that people make and don't feel bad if this is you, I've made it myself. Lots of people do. I mean, consistency is not something they teach in school. It's not. Again, that's one of the things that I loved about quality is. I mean, I got my degree in mechanical engineering and it was hilarious because, you know, you can lay out the best plan design, you can build the most fantastic machine. You throw people in the mix, all bets are off. You don't know what you're going to get with quality. It's like no, quality is how you take your great plant layout or your great machine and now you have people in the mix and this is how you get consistent results. That's cool. And that's what I loved about it is when you factor people into it and some of the other variables don't work, which is straight up mechanical engineering. So anyway, some of the mistakes that people make when they're looking for consistency, everybody wants consistency. You want that reliability. You don't want the stress of hoping you're not going to take another loss. You want the knowing. But a lot of people don't realize. You can't just wish for it. You can't just say, well, I need to be more disciplined. Discipline is an important matter. Yeah, you can't be sloppy in what you're doing. You still have to show up and do your job and follow your rules. But the problem is there are other factors that come into play besides your discipline. There are lots of very well disciplined traders. You're probably a reasonably disciplined person yourself. So it's not that you're just a wild. I'm just bucking the system. I'm going to go rogue over here and break the rules for fun kind of person. You're sincere about wanting to make money, so you're doing your best, stick to your rules. That's one thing. There are other factors that come into play and this is where a lot of people get Screwed up. One of the biggest mistakes in eliminating inconsistencies is people don't think to challenge their system. They think, oh, somebody handed me this system, or I came up with this system. So it's automatically a good system and it's going to produce consistent results. Unless somebody comes along and shows you here, these are the problems that can create inconsistencies here. This, this, and this is creating opportunities for error. Until somebody shows you what to look for. You know, it's kind of a crapshoot as to whether or not you're going to see them. You'll experience them. You know, you'll experience the frustration of the losses. You'll experience the anxiety of not knowing how things are going to turn out. But again, it's knowing how to take what you're doing and make it so that it lends itself comfortably and easily to consistent performance and consistent results. And then, you know, making it solid and knowing how to make sure that, you know, that it works and it works satisfactorily. Just because something makes money, even if it makes 20 bucks a year, that ain't good enough. It's profitable, but it's not good enough. So, you know, this is some of the things that I teach people is, well, first of all, don't just rely on discipline, because the best system on the planet does not fail if you can just stick to it. Buy low, sell high. I know it sounds sarcastic, but you know, there are other systems out there that really aren't that far off base. And it's kind of the same thing. You know, it's follow the trend, get in at the beginning of the trend and get out at the end. Easier said than done. Just like buy low so high, pick tops and bottoms, you know, get in at the market. Reversals, you know, trade the ranks. There's all your strategies. You know, they're essentially buy low, sell high. So it's how well they let you and direct you to do that is how good of a system they're going to be. The strategies, I mean, it's important. But if the strategy is how you're thinking about getting in and out, your system is how you're going to do it repeatedly in the dynamic environment of the markets where it's not the same every day, you're not looking at the same chart every day. So you have to be able to be consistent and get consistent results with what you're doing with a dynamic, ever changing environment. And so anyway, like I said, discipline is one part of it. It's kind Of a given though, no matter what you're doing, no matter what kind of a job you're in, you have to be disciplined and consistent in what you're doing. You know, showing up and doing your job. But the tools that you're given, like your system, your rules, your indicators, all that kind of stuff, how well those are put together has a load to do with how well you're going to be able to, you know, get consistent results. In the years that I've been helping traders, I've surveyed and run the numbers and 98.2% of the people that come to me looking for help, whether it's helpless discipline or sticking to the rules or hesitation or the whole variety of things, almost everybody, when we take a look at their system, their system has functional flaws that create opportunities for inconsistency, opportunities for error. When we go through and fix their system, it helps their results tremendously, it helps their confidence tremendously. And so, you know, you have to look at your system and challenge your system and know how to challenge it. Anyway, like I said, the thing is consistency. It's like in quality. One of the funny things about it, I think it's funny because it's the same thing in trading. Your focus and your desire is consistent results. You have to make sure that what you're doing lends itself to consistency and facilitates consistent results. But there's a whole lot of energy and effort that goes into eliminating inconsistencies and opportunities for error. And there are tools for that. And of course you want to do things in a measured fashion. You know, when you go through and you think you're fixing stuff, you don't want to just, you know, do it willy nilly and trial and error, that kind of stuff, you want to do it in an organized approach. But the thing is, when you apply the tools and you focus on not just the consistency, but hey, how can I attend to the inconsistencies, that's when you're going to see some really good gains on your consistency. And that's cool. So anyway, as far as, you know, avoiding losing money, making sure that the odds are in your favor of making it focus on consistency. Of course, keep your discipline in mind. But again, you know, your system is how you, that's how you facilitate inconsistency. That's why you have a system in the first place. Instead of just trading off the top of your head in hunches, you have a system, but your system needs to be proper. And you need to also be aware of the causes of Inconsistency and opportunities for error and how to address those. When you do both sides of that, like I said, your output is going to be much better, your stress level is going to go down, your confidence will go up, your results will be better because you're taking the unknowns and you're making them knowns and that's cool. Now part of the reason that I'm putting these videos together is because I've been getting emails from people asking for help, asking certain questions when that happens, which it does from time to time, especially like end of the year, beginning of the year, a lot of people are wanting to get their trading fixed, New Year's resolutions, want to make this year better than last and understandably so. I want to help you out. Now as far as how I help you, there are different ways we can go about this. So if you would down in the comments, let me know. Would you prefer like in an afternoon workshop that's one to three hours and we attend to a very specific issue, like maybe going through your system and other people's systems and as a group, like on a group call, we're just kind of going through systems and I'm showing you, I'm teaching you how to spot the inconsistencies and the causes for inconsistency, the opportunities for error and how to fix a system. Or are you looking for something more substantial where you and I work one on one and it's over a period of time and we get more into that the more of what you've got going on and not just fixing what's functionally wrong with your system, but working with you overall help you overcome some of the stresses, the bad experiences that you've already had, making sure that you got your whole operation pretty well organized, just in general, a more involved process where it's maybe over four to six weeks, but when you come out of it, you're really solid, you got your whole operation together, you got your, your system straightened out, you know, it's solid, you know you're going to make money and mentally, you know, you got yourself together where, yeah, you can go trade with confidence and poise and stick to your system pretty easily. So again, you know, just let me know which would work better for you right now in the comments. You know, just say, you know, like afternoon workshop or no, you know, one on one work over a few weeks. So if you would just like I said down in the comments, let me know, you know, afternoon workshop or you know, one on one over a few weeks. So let me know. And again, I hope this has been helpful. If it has, give me a like Share with your friends. Subscribe to my channel. Got other videos coming. We're going to talk about different aspects of, you know, making money and not losing it. As a trader, importantly, you focus on both. Everybody wants to make money, but you got to focus on avoiding losing it, too. And that's some of the stuff that we're going to be talking about. So hope it's been helpful. We'll talk to you soon. Cheers.