One of the necessary things they didn't tell you...

Hi, Brian McAvoy here with Inside Out Trading. And today we're going to talk about something very, very, very important in your trading with regards to saving you tons of wasted time, probably money and just plain aggravation. And what we're talking about today is setting objectives. Now everybody should have within their trading business specific objectives as far as how many trades you're looking to make, how much money you're looking to make, what your goals are percentage wise, what your return on your trading capital is. Those kind of goals, you'll have those objectives. But even more important than those are your personal and financial objectives. Before you got into trading. See, a lot of people, they'll get into trading because they want to make money. Because you know you want stuff, you want to be able to travel, you want to be able to take your spouse out and enjoy nice things, live in a nice house, drive nice cars, do good things for other people. So you know you want the money, of course, but it's really important to get at least some kind of clarity on the money that you want. But more importantly is also your time involvement with trading. And here's why. If you don't have any idea how you want to be involved with trading, because this is something that's long term, this is something you're not going to trade for 30 days, 90 days, and then say, well, I'm done by plan. Especially if you are making money. No, this is something that you're looking to do long term. So it's important that you get into it. Just like any other long term commitment where you're getting into it in a fashion that really does suit what you really want. And time wise, it's really important. Some people, they're really not suited to active, involved investing. Passive investing is much better. And you can do that in trading if you want to just have it be pretty much totally passive. Yes, you can put your money into a managed account and have a professional trader trade it for you and you really don't have to worry about it and do a whole lot. You just keep an eye on your fund manager, check in once in a while. So you've got that end of the extreme where it's almost totally passive. Clear over to the other extreme on the Forex where you can trade 24 hours a day all the time, you can live and breathe and never peel your eyes off the computer kind of trading and you've got everything in between. Now if you're just chasing money and you don't have a clue as far as how you want to be involved in trading, you haven't thought it through, then here's what can happen. You'll get into it and you'll keep chasing wherever it sounds like the most money is being made. And you may or may not, probably not find success if you're just chasing profits. If you're just chasing them, what you want to do is you want to have an idea of, in the end of it, when you've reached that point that you want where you say yes, now I'm a successful trader, you've got to have some idea of what that is going to look like. Are you going to be an end of day trader? Are you going to be a long term position trader, A trend follower? Are you going to be a day trader? Are you just going to put your money into it? How involved do you want to be with your trading? It's important because if you've got a lot of things that you want to do, maybe you have a business or two or five that you want to run in addition to trading, maybe you're very active with your family or your community and you have other things that you want to be committing your time to. Well, it probably wouldn't be so wise for you to look into day trading, particularly in Forex where the time is wide open. You would want to look to a different strategy that suits what you really want. Now the reason I'm posting all this out here for you, I had a conversation with a trader overseas just the other day and he was very frustrated because for a number of years he was a reasonably successful futures trader. End of day trader, enjoyed it, was making money at it and somewhere along the way one of his colleagues or associates had kind of talked him into making the switch to Forex and getting into day trading because that's supposedly where the future of trading is and that's where a lot of money is being made. So this guy, he made the switch and he's frustrated because he did well as an end of day trader and as a day trader he's finding now that he's too worried about it and it's too available and he's too available and so he's, he's spending too much time overthinking and overanalyzing and second guessing when he should just be leaving it alone. End of day trading suited him and he did well with it and now he's not doing so well and he'd like to get back to being an end of day trader. Well, he never should have left and that's my whole point is if he had decided that a long time ago and yes, end of day trading, this works for me. I have other things that I want to do during the day. To come in at the end of the day, please. Of my trades, set them the night before and I don't look at it until the next evening. That worked great for him. But another opportunity came along and it sounded good, sounded like more money. So he was swayed into doing it because he hadn't thought it through and just set that for himself. So he didn't say no when he should have. See, that's really where the big opportunity is. Because once you understand that your opportunities are there in multitudes, there are just tons of opportunities, especially in trading. You can trade a hundred different ways if you know what it is you want. Like I said, as far as time, involvement and manner of trading, if that really suits really what you want as far as your lifestyle, the other opportunities come along, they can be great opportunities. Who cares if somebody's making twice as much money over here if it doesn't suit you, if it's going to eat up your time and throw your life out of whack, you say no. And that's wonderful because if you just stick with what you're doing, you say, no, thank you. No sounds good. But what I'm doing is working for me and it continues to make you money and you enjoy it. That really is what you want. But you got to somewhere along the way, you got to figure out what it is that you want to know it when you've got it and to be able to set your sights on it and pursue that direction and not deviate way off course. That's what today's lesson is about. If you're tired of being frustrated in your trading and you really like to get things on the right track, find out what are some of the other things that they didn't tell you when you first got into trading? Well, swing on by my site InsideOutTrading.com and check out the subtle trap of trading. There's a lot of things that you weren't told when you got into trading. And you really do need to know them before. I mean, you will know them. You'll have to get to know them before you reach that point of consistently profitable and comfortable trading. So again, swinging by my site InsideOutTrading.com it's Brian McAvoy. Cheer.