Straight Talk about Trading: Why Its so Important to Get on With it

Now, here's the thing. So many, so many traders make the mistake of, oh, I just want to make money. I just want to make money. And so that's where they keep all their focuses on the markets and make trying to make a profit and, you know, finding the right strategy. If I could just find a good strategy, if I can, you know, just make my strategy a little better. And they're focusing on things outside of themselves, and that's why it takes forever, because they're constantly chasing things outside of themselves. And that's not where the answer is. So today we're going to talk about why it is so incredibly important for you to, you know, be impatient right now. Seriously, you want to be impatient. You don't want to have infinite patience when it comes to trading. You really want to make sure that you're, you're, are, you know, that you want to get there. I'm not talking about, you know, a frantic kind of, oh, you know, I just want to start making money. But we're talking about, I want to get there as, you know, as a trader. I want to get to the point where I'm a skilled trader and I know what I'm doing and I've got the skill set, I've got the competence where, yeah, I'm solid and I'm not trading, you know, in anxiety or fear or uncertainty or doubt and all that kind of stuff. But again, you want to, you really want to be, you know, getting after it as far as getting yourself skilled up, leveled up as a trader, because it all comes down to you. It really does. It's not your strategy. Strategy is important, no doubt. You have to have a decent strategy. That's not the most important thing. You are the most important thing in your trading. And, and this is where you really need to be focusing your efforts. The cool thing about it is when you level up and you get yourself skilled up, everything else gets easier. It really does. Making money gets easier. Finding a good strategy gets easier. Managing your trading business gets easier. Scaling up your account gets easier. Everything gets easier as you develop as a trader. Now, here's the thing. So many, so many traders make the mistake of, oh, I just want to make money, I just want to make money. And so that's where they keep all their focuses on, on the markets and trying to make a profit and, you know, finding the right strategy. If I could just find a good strategy, if I can, you know, just make my strategy a little better. And they're focusing on things outside of themselves, and that's why it takes forever because they're constantly chasing things outside of themselves. And that's not where the answer is. Okay, so what am I talking about? Well, again, getting yourself skilled up trading requires more skill than just being able to log onto a platform and place trades. You know this. I mean, does it require that skill? Yes, of course. You have to be able to run the vehicle, but you have to, you have to also understand a lot of other things. You have to know how to get yourself organized. You have to know how to, how to lay out a plan, a game plan for your trading. You have to be able to lay out a good game plan for your strategy. You know, look at looking out over the next weeks and months, maybe even, you know, year or two or three, you know what you want to have happen with your trading. That's a skill set. Managing that, that you know that plan and executing it. Being able to pick the right strategy for you, acquiring the capital, making sure you're properly capitalized, planning out your hours when you're going to trade, what your money management plan is going to be, what your risk management plan is going to be. Finding a good strategy, knowing how to find the right strategy, knowing how to evaluate it both functionally and performance wise, how to deal with it when things aren't working, how to build out your playbook. Like I said, there's a whole pile of skill sets to go with being a trader. Now don't let that intimidate you. It's just, you have to learn, you have to understand. Okay, yes, this is a true profession. It does require that I treat it like a business, that I act like a professional and I skill myself up. So yes, I can fulfill all the roles that go with this. And the thing is, you don't want to just continually chase profits to continually underestimate this and have it take forever. Here's what I'm talking about. There is a huge price tag that comes with letting this take way longer than it should. Here's some, some tangible numbers. How long is too long, honestly, for you to learn the skills that go with trading? To learn the skills in the first place takes a few months, about six months to have, you know, a pretty decent handle on it, cover all the different skills. But at the end of six months, if you're getting the right training and the right guidance, yeah, from, from the time you start trading to, you know, six months later, you should be pretty, you should be pretty well confident. You should be like 80, 80 to 90% of the way. There's if it's gone past six months and you're still struggling and you're still feeling kind of lost, okay, what you need to do is stop and say, wait a minute, I need, I need a different game plan because I obviously am missing some things here. There, you know, there's some stuff about this that nobody bothered to tell me and I need to know because otherwise it's going to take forever. You'd be amazed how many traders have been trading for 4, 5, 8, 10, 15 years and they're still struggling the same as they were at the end of year one. They're still fighting all the, you know, pretty much all the same problems and they're still not making money. And it's still more of a burden and a liability on their life than it is an asset and something that is adding to the quality of their life. If you don't get the skills, it can take forever. Some people, they quit after 10 or 15 years and they walk away empty handed. It's not like, hey, if you just put in the time, you know, some it's not like, you know, hey, you hit the five year mark and somebody's going to come along, you know, some, you know, magic fairy and hit you with a wand, praying you're a successful trader. It doesn't work that way. You actually have to acquire the skills. You have to level yourself up and become the professional trader that gets paid like a professional, that can run the business like a professional. And again, you don't want it to take forever in dollars and cents. Here's what it, here's what it, here's what we're talking about from a strictly a financial standpoint. Here's why you don't want to wait. Here's why you don't want to coast and just let things take forever. From, from a financial perspective, let's say you're trading with a $25,000 account. For you to be making a 10% monthly return on that $25,000 is very reasonable. If you're day trading or swing trading, even if you're longer term trading, it gets it. The longer your horizon, it can get a little more challenging. But if you're day trading, okay, to make 10% on your account is very reasonable. And here's why the numbers of trading work just like any other business. How much revenue does the, does the business bring in? How many transactions are you processing in a given month? What's the value of those transactions? The product of those two is your revenue. So if you're day trading if you're placing, say, you know, two to five trades a day, that's, you know, that's what, 10 to 25 trades a week, that's 40 to 100 trades a month you can make, you can be making, you know, a relatively small profit, but now you're getting the number of trades in to actually be pulling in pretty decent revenue. Okay? So to hit 10% is not that difficult. It's not. To make a half percent on a, you know, on average for, you know, your trades is not unreasonable. It's not, it's very reasonable thing to expect. And so, okay, if you're not making 10%, that's on a $25,000 account, that means as long as you're running at break even or losing, it's costing you $2,500 a month that you should be making. Because 10% on 25 grand is $2,500. That's how much you should be making. Okay? And then let's say you're working with a prop firm's money, okay? And you're making, let's say you got an 80% cut of the, you know, the profit when you trade profitably in the prop firm. And again, you're on a $25,000 account, okay, 10%, which is what they want you to shoot for, okay, $2,500. Eighty percent of that is two grand. Well, two grand a month. If you're not making that on an annual basis, that's $24,000 a year that you're not getting paid because you haven't gotten skilled up yet. If you're trading your own money, you're getting 100% of the profits, 2,500amonth times 12 months, that's $30,000 that you're not making, that you should be making. If you get into this, you get trained up, you get skilled up, you get to where you're bringing your game, the game that you need to bring to be profitable, and you're making that 10%. Yeah, that's 30 grand a year. Let's say you only do half of that, that's $15,000 a year that it's costing you to coast. And that's not what you want. Now understand, I'm not trying to get you all, you know, mouth watering for the money and everything. I'm just letting you understand when, when you're not getting, when you're not making the money, when you're just cruising along a break even or losing money, there is a huge price tag that goes with this that's the price tag is what you're not making that you should be making. It's just like if you took a job and you said, okay, well, I'm not, I'm not going to take a paycheck from the job I'm doing for six months or a year or two years or five years. I'm just going to work for free. No, you wouldn't do that. So don't do it to yourself. With trading, get, get the training that you need so that you bring in the game so you're making the money that you should. 10% a month is not unreasonable. It's not crazy, you know, Suit, it's. I'm not, you know, saying double your account every month. 10% is very reasonable as a trader in any business because again, this isn't passive investing. This is where you're investing your time. So you should be making a return on your, on your capital and getting paid for your time, both, not just one. Because if all you're making is a decent return on your investment, but you're working for free, this is not a good strategy for you overall, from an overall game plan standpoint. Because if you could put your money somewhere over here and put your time elsewhere and make more money at the end of the year, that would be a better strategy for you. This is what we're talking about with the opportunity cost of not getting skilled up. Okay? So again, the cool thing about it is if you pursue the training, you get the help that you need to fill the gaps in your skill set. You get your skill set up so where you're bringing the game, you know what you're doing solidly and not just, hey, yeah, I kind of understand the game. But you say, no, I know what I'm doing. I know how to make money with trading. That's the point I want to get to. Not I understand the game, but I know what I'm doing to make money. That's where you want to get to and that's where you want to be real impatient is. Of course, we all want to get making money as soon as possible, but you need to put the focus in the right place. Don't chase the money, chase the skills. The skills will bring the money. Make sense. Okay, so where do you find the skills? I can help you with a lot of it. As far as, you know, the stuff with the system, you know, like I said, there's a whole range of skills that goes with having a system beyond just being able to log into a platform and Place trades. You know this. There's more skills to it. You got to know how to select the right strategy for you. You got to know how to, how to, you know, evaluate it when you're looking at it, how to properly, you know, systemize it, how to deploy it, how to functionally test it, how to test the performance, how to optimize it properly, how to sustain that, how to, how to adapt with market mood, how to build out your playbook. There's a whole long list of skills that go with being a trader, and that's just at the, at the trader level. That's not even counting, like the, you know, investor, owner and manager of your trading business. So that's another skill set that comes along because you have these two primary roles. You're the trader, you're the owner, investor in your business. And the thing is, I'm sharing all this with you. Not to overwhelm you, not to make you feel bad. I'm trying to open your eyes to the realities of it so you can say, okay, yeah, this is the task I have in front of me. I need some help. Now that I kind of understand, you know, what, what's involved, I can identify, you know, where, where I'm at and you know, where I'm lacking. And if you're, if you want some help sorting that out, it's like, okay, yeah, what are you lacking and where can you find the right help? Give me a call. We'll book a training assessment. We can go over your situation, see where you've got gaps, where you need help. And if I can help you, great. If I'm the person to help you, fine. If not, that's okay too. I have lots of colleagues, good people in the space where we can fill the gaps. Like I said, I handle what I handle. I have my area of expertise. I have colleagues that have different areas of expertise. And so whatever you're missing, for you to become that complete and very competent, professionally paid trader, between me and my colleagues, we can get you the help that you need. Now, it's going to require some investment of time on your part, probably some investment of money. That's okay because again, if you're. So long as you're lacking the skills, you're paying the price anyway because you're not making the money that you should. The whole point is you want to look at this, be very impatient in getting yourself to that skill level. That's where you want to be impatient. That's where you want to say, I don't want this to take any longer than it should. Not in chasing the dollars, but in developing yourself. The faster you get yourself there, everything else will come. And that's the cool thing about it. Again, you're the most important thing in your trading. Not your, not your computer, not your charts, not your broker, not your strategy. You're the most important thing. So focus on you. Invest in yourself, get yourself skilled up. Everything else will get easier. And your trade, your trading is extremely likely to become much more profitable as you develop and continue to develop yourself as a trader. So anyway, I hope this been helpful. I really want you to make it. I don't want to. I don't want to have you go through the heartache that is so common when people come to me, you know, like Brian, you know, I've been on your list for eight years but, you know, I haven't really done anything and it's cost me $100,000. I don't want that to happen to you. I want to see you get there and as quickly as possible. And here's the, you know, here's how to do it the right way. Again, focus on you. Don't chase strategies, don't chase money. Focus on you and the rest will come. Book a call with me if you want and like I said, I can help you sort it out. Find out what the gaps are and the best place to get help so that you can get there as quickly as possible and have your trading be what you want it to be. So swing by insideouttrading.com Schedule a trading assessment with me. We'll take care of this. We'll get you on your way. I hope it's been helpful, genuinely do. I hope this has been helpful for you. You know, if it has, give me a like on the, on the video down below. Subscribe to my channel if you want to get lots of videos where I, you know, do stuff like this, just straight talk about trading and you know, share this with your friends. If you have friends who trade, share this with them, you know, because again, I'm here to help you make it. Whether I'm the one to help you or not, I don't care. I want to help you make it. Again. I hope this has been helpful. We'll talk to you soon. Cheers.