How To Trade Better - One of The Absolute Best Things You Can Do For Your Trading

Hi, Brian McAvoy with Inside Out Trading here. And you're about to discover the one thing that you can do for your trading that will. That is probably the best thing you can do for your trading. It'll affect virtually every aspect of your trading, and best of all, doesn't cost you a thing. This is really cool. Okay, so what are we talking about? Well, I have. People come to me all the time for the last almost 12 years now. People come to me all the time and saying, brian, I'm struggling with my consistency, you know, my confidence. I just really having a tough time. And of course, you know, my results, they're not where I want to be. You know, it seems like I'm, you know, make money for a little while, and I just give it all right back if I make any money. And it's just really frustrating, and I just can't seem to break this cycle. What can I do? And so, you know, I, of course, ask some diagnostic questions, you know, figure out what's going on, you know, hear what their situation is, you know, what their history, what they're doing, what they've tried, what they're running into, all this kind of stuff. And it's funny because the one thing, and it's such a simple solution that almost everybody seems to overlook, that really is a trait of the grades. It's so wonderfully simple, and it's right there, and again, it's free. So, I mean, Nicholas Darvis, the guy that wrote the book, you know, back in 58, I think it was, you know, how I made $2 million in stock market. And it was his story of how he took $3,000 account up to over $2 million in just a short period of time, just a few years. And this was back when overseas communication was via cable. They didn't even have phones back then. One of the things that he did that I thought was absolutely amazing, when I was working on a project with a colleague of mine, he asked me to help him with this Darbis project. At that time, I hadn't heard of Nicholas Darbis, but anyway, so we're doing this project about Nicholas Darbis and his famous box method. And what I thought was cool was as he was developing his method, he would practice it because, I mean, he would have his cable communications once a week or once every few days or however often with his. He was traveling the world and he would communicate via cable back to his broker here in the States. In between things, as, again, he's developing his method, he would practice it. He'd have an idea and he'd look through the different charts and he'd see, okay, I got this and this and this. I'm seeing it repeatedly and okay, here's how I can apply my method to it or make tweaks to it. And then he would practice it and he would practice it and he would practice it. And this only makes absolute sense. I mean, trading is a performance activity. It's one that requires skill. It's not just an automated chimp can do this. No, it requires skill. And your confidence comes from developing that skill and establishing success. And so what so many traders forget and what I recommend to them, and it's part of my trading system mastery course. Part of the benefits of manual back testing is you get practice with your system. I'm not talking about the kind of goof around that a lot of people do when they first start trading. The very first SIM account they get where they basically just go over to the SIM account, the broker association will open up a SIM account for you and give you $50,000 play money to mess around with. We're not talking about that kind of practicing. We're talking about where you get your method good and clear, well defined, and then you take it to your SIM account and you practice trading with it. Now again, back testing. One of the fantastic benefits of it is you get practice with your system. Focusing on the system. Now, I like to use the golf analogy because golf is another game. It's very straightforward, very straightforward. A three year old can understand the game and what you're supposed to do. Doing it is the whole challenge. Doing it consistently, trading, same thing. So if you wanted to be a competition golfer, if you're going to be golfing for money, you're going to be spending time on the driving range, on the par threes and the putting grains so that you're developing your skills so that you know, yeah, when it comes time to tee off, you're hitting the ball where you want and you do it consistently. Getting on the green, you're doing it consistently. And as far as two putting, you're doing it consistently. You're going to go to these other practice areas between money times and practice so that you get good. You can do the exact same thing in your trading. Instead of looking for a new system or just focusing on being more disciplined. No practice, you can go into a totally safe environment. You can screw up all you want and you practice it until you get good. And here's the thing, it's focused practice. It's not Practicing to make money. It's practicing on your method that's observing how the trades play out as you're practicing again when you're back testing. This is manual backtesting. Wonderful example of yes. This is so fantastic for everything about your trading because you can go in and you can focus on your execution, you can focus on the system, you can focus on the process, really getting it good, really getting it dialed in, repeatable and getting good at it. Plus, not only do you get the measurable results to see how well it performs, the other thing about backtesting manually is you get to watch all the trades play out so that you pick up information that you wouldn't with an automated back tester. Automated backtest will give you the results, but it doesn't show you the things that are happening around the trade and as a trade progresses that aren't in the numbers. And the cool thing about it is when you see what's going on around the trade, the different things that aren't necessarily going to show up in the numbers specifically, that's where it really comes in handy for troubleshooting your system. If you want to make improvements to it, if there's something that's not performing well about it or an opportunity to just make it better, better if it is doing okay or when things change. Again, this information, it just comes in so helpful. Plus the practice, the practice is amazing. What it does for your results, what it does for your confidence. And it's just, it's so cool because you can do it for free in the real world. It's not like it's, you know, some BS sim account where it's a computer simulation. You can do it in the real market. And that's absolutely wonderful. So you can do back testing, manual back testing. Fantastic. Because then you can also compress time or you can forward test in your demo account, your SIM account, and you do it all risk free. You get your practice. I mean, you practice in, you get your skills up, you get your confidence up, you get where you're at, you're just dialed in and you're nailing it all the time. I have so many clients, they say, Brian, this has been absolutely huge. I can't believe I wasn't doing it before. And it's so simple. And again, a lot of people, they just don't think to do it. So take time to practice with your system. Now, a couple of caveats here. Bad practice is not going to make your game a whole lot better. That just kind of goes without saying. But I'm reminding you. Anyway, this is where the SIM account really gets a lot of traders into trouble. They're working with a system that really isn't solid, it's not well defined, it's not well documented, if it's documented at all. So they're essentially over here practicing sloppy trading or they're over here in the SIM account and they're trying to make money on the SIM account and subsequently practicing emotional, not disciplined trading. So you want to make sure that when you go into, when you take this into the SIM account and you're doing your practice, whether it's back testing or forward testing, you want to make sure. First of all, it's absolutely vital. Remember, trading is a decision making process. You have to have your decision making process well defined and properly defined so that it's easy to trade, it's easy to execute and do so repeat. That's where you get a good process that's going to give you the consistency that you want. Now this turns out to be a huge obstacle for a lot of traders because defining a process, not something that comes naturally to most people, especially a trading process. This is where my years in quality really pay off for traders. A lot of my job there was defining, documenting processes for people to use and in all kinds of different capacities. Especially in trading, it's absolutely critical. If you don't do it right, what you're going to wind up with is a system that is difficult to trade or at least difficult to trade consistently. And again, consistency is one of the primary objectives. To be able to do what you're doing consistently so that you're not just another variable. If you're consistent about what you're doing, that kind of negates the uncertainty of the markets or at least counters it considerably. And that's where you get a lot of your security and peace of mind is because even though, yeah, the markets may be uncertain or certain element of uncertainty there, you're not adding to it, what you're doing is consistent, you can respond consistently and that's a lot of where you get your edge. So remember, this is the critical step. You can't skip this if it's not well defined. Almost all the other stuff is a waste of time. A lot of people say, well, you know Brian, I don't want to have it systemized. I still want to have some discretionary in there. I want to have some flexibility. I don't want it to be just all rigid. Again, remember, trading is a decision making process. However you're making your Decisions, whether it's a coin toss or astrology or the charts or your mood that day, whatever, there is a way to systemize it. That's again, this is kind of stuff that I cover in the trading system mastery. And it's really just all about getting good consistency. It's the stuff I bring from my quality experience in manufacturing with other businesses. Quality is all about, first of all, getting good with something, getting dialed in on what you're doing, making sure that you're doing it well. And there's tools to do all that, tools and practices, understandings. So you want to get good at it and then you get consistent. And that's what quality is largely about. That's the whole. I mean that's like the driving force, the engine in quality and you know, making businesses more profitable. Getting good, getting consistent applies to every business, but especially in trading. And that's why my quality experience has been so helpful for so many clients of mine over the years. So anyway, again, take time to practice. If you don't already have a SIM account set up, contact your broker, get a SIM account. There are other places, there are free sites where you can get a SIM account. You can practice your trading, you can practice your process, you can get it dialed in, you can build your skill up, you can build your confidence up. And again, you can do it all for free. It's in the demo account, so you're not really risking money. It's a perfect environment to get good. And that's the whole thing as you get to be a better trader, better and better and better as a trader, your results will reflect that. It's almost an automatic thing. If you enjoyed this video, give it a like down below, of course, subscribe to the channel if you think that this kind of help is going to be good for you and useful in your trading. By all means, if you're on any of the trading social sites, currency or stocktwits or whatever, share this with your colleagues, your friends. Again, if you find it helpful, pay it forward. Feel free to swing by insideouttrading.com I've got all kinds of free resources for you. Got paid courses if you really want to go premium, but all kinds of free stuff. Reports, videos, spreadsheets, tools, online classes. Got all kinds of stuff for you, so feel free to swing on by. I'm here to help you with your trading. I know you're doing this for good purposes. You want to have a better life, you want to provide for others. So I want to help you reach your goals. It's Brian McAvoy with Inside Out Trading. Talk to you soon.