The Secret to Profitable Trading: Consistency Comes First

Hi, Brian Macavoy here with Inside Out Trading. Today we're going to talk about something that's actually really important, even though it sounds insanely simple. But it's so funny because, you know, consistent profits is like the buzzword no matter what website you go to and, you know, that's talking about trading. You know, buy our new strategy and you'll get those consistent profits. You know, fix out, you know, figure out what your childhood trauma was, and you'll get those consistent profits. And it's like everybody's promising cons consistent profits. But I find it ironic that nobody's actually talking about consistency. You know, they talk about strategy, talk about, you know, mental issues, but nobody talks about consistency. And here's why I find it funny. When I graduated college, I got a bachelor's in mechanical engineering. And it was. It was so funny because the biggest frustration for all the engineers was, you know, on paper, man, you could design a perfect machine, a perfect plant, perfect plant layout in a perfect, you know, commercial complex, whatever. On paper, man, you could just lay it out and it would be perfect. But as soon as you throw people in the middle of it, all bets are off. It's like, it's probably not going to work, right? And so that's what I loved about it. When I got into manufacturing and I worked and did all kinds of different stuff, did project management, put the buildings, putting in natural water systems and whole, you know, plants. I worked in production, I worked in maintenance. I got to do all kinds of stuff. But when I got around to working in quality assurance, that's when things got really cool, because that kind of took care of the engineering problem that I had encountered first way back in school. Because quality assurance is all about making things work and work very well with people right in the middle of it. Because the thing is, what is quality assurance really all about? Well, one of the foundational concepts in quality is consistency. It doesn't just happen. And the whole field of quality assurance was established because businesses around the world were fighting consistency issues. Okay, so why is that such a big deal? Well, inconsistencies are costs. And if you don't have a handle on consistency, it doesn't matter what business you're in. If you got inconsistency problems, your business is going to struggle and really struggle to make money. See, the thing is, when you get the consistency issue taken care of, no matter what business you're in, again, when you get. When you can get the consistency taken care of, it improves your bottom line because you're Eliminating all those costs. And for traders, yeah, the inconsistencies are usually what's killing all your profit. Seriously, for almost every trader that comes to me that they're not making money, they're, you know, they're just barely a break even or they're losing money. It's those inconsistencies that are killing you. Now it looks like psychological issues. Yeah, you know, okay. I just can't seem to stick to my strategy. Well, there are other things that contribute to it. And again, being a quality. Well, I'm actually a certified quality engineer. My job title was quality manager. But when I was working in manufacturing, the biggest lesson that came with quality assurance is yes, by focusing on training our people properly on best practices, establishing that consistency in their activities, as well as, you know, the machine stuff where you have spc, statistical process control and stuff like that. But the biggest thing came with the people. And when we got the, when we got the quality assurance applied to the people where we took all the different activities, got them, made them really consistent, got them dialed in for excellent performance and then maintained that consistency, man, we ran and we went from being toward the bottom of the rung as far as quality and profitability. We became the flagship for our company, for our corporation and it was really cool. And it was all because we had the consistency dialed in. Now what comes with that and that consistency is a whole bunch of stuff. Your costs go down, your profits go up, your efficiency goes up, your enjoyment of the work goes up, the security in what you're doing goes way up. Because now you've got a solid handle on, you know that things are running well and that's cool. And it's so perfect for traders. I mean, that's what allowed me to turn my trading around. My first year in trading, I was all over the place. I was basically practicing bad trading all the time. And when I finally got the wake up call, it blew up. My account got the wake up call to take what I was doing in manufacturing and apply it to my trading. Man, everything changed. Everything. And it was so cool because now, yeah, I had a solid process. I knew what the output would be. I knew when I went to the markets every day, I knew what, I knew what the outcome was going to be. Of course, you know, some days are better than others. But the thing is, I had such a solid handle on the process. I was never filled with that anxiety anymore. I didn't have that fear of missing out. I didn't feel like chasing the markets. I was settled down and my emotions were just calm and it was really cool. Simply by focusing on consistency first and understanding that it doesn't just happen, there are specific concepts and practices and tools to put into place when you would do that. Again, coming from quality assurance, which has been proven in every business, every industry around the world, it just plain works. And you get that consistency. And that makes. That can makes a lot of times all the differences to whether or not your company is profitable and you have any security in it. So it's funny because, you know, everybody says consistent profits, but they chase profits first and then try to figure out how to be consistent later. The whole thing is if you get.