Trading Education: Should You Keep Trading Or Should You Stop?
A trader explains when to quit and when to keep going. He covers profitability benchmarks, how long it actually takes to become profitable, and whether coaching might work better than solo trading.
Okay, so the question is, should you keep trading or should you stop? That's really important that you know, if your trading is not going exactly the way you want it to, you know that you stop every now and then and you ask yourself this question, especially, like, now is always a good time to. You just kind of give yourself this gut check. Because here's the thing. More and more time goes by, and if you're not making money, if you know your trading is not progressing to the point that you want, you need to stop and say, hey, is this what I should be doing? Okay, so a couple of really easy ways to tell, you know, should you keep trading or should you stop? Well, first of all, if you're in trading, you're probably trading because you want to make money. Profit is the goal, right? Well, you have trading, and then you have literally thousands of other things that you could be doing with your time and your money, your capital. Seriously, there are literally thousands of other businesses that you could pursue. And if trading isn't the best option for you right now, then maybe you should consider something else. It's called opportunity cost. Now, if you're spending months and months and months and trading's not performing as well as something else that you might put the same time into, do you. I mean, if your goal is money, then you know, you need to pursue it on a financial decision basis. If you just love trading and you don't care if you make money or not, that's a different matter. But if your goal is to be profitable and to make a certain return from your investment, then you need to stop and say, hey, is this making me money? Now, here's an even clearer rule of thumb. Just a common rule of thumb in any business, in any industry is 6%. If you're not making 6% a month, then you're probably less. You're making less than you should. There are tons of other businesses you could pursue, and a lot of them make way more than 6% a month. Seriously, if you're not making 6%, then you're. Financially, it's not a good decision. You need to look at your other options because you have tons of options, literally thousands. Now, the other consideration that you have to take take into account here is, you know, when you first started trading, you probably knew that it wasn't going to be, you know, days, and you're just, you know, set for life making money. You knew that it was going to take a little bit of time. But the question is, you know, as far as whether or not you should stop what you're doing right now, should stop trading and reassess. Is, are you as far along as you thought you would be by now? Because obviously you didn't get into this thinking that it was going to be years to get profitable, that it was going to be, you know, many, many months to get profitable. You probably thought that it was going to happen sooner than that. And that's very reasonable. Trading is not so complex that it should take years to learn. Now, getting good at it, developing the skills, getting really profitable and everything, if you're trying to figure it out by yourself, it's probably going to take years. If you get good help, if you get the right help, you should be getting profitable. Six months tops. Seriously, if it's taking longer than that, your approach is wrong. And you need to think about again, should you keep trading the way you've been doing it and pursuing your development as a trader and your pursuit of getting consistently profitable? If you've been at it for more than six months and you're really not even that close, you probably ought to stop and reassess what you're doing. Is your approach working, is going at it by yourself, you know, going to the webinars, continually buying new systems, getting the psychology books, you know, just jumping around, trying this, that and the other thing, and you're, you're a lot of it, just doing it by yourself. You know, should you continue along this path? Or maybe you say, well, I don't want it to take another year or two or five or ten. I want to get there sooner than that. So you got to change approach. Because if what you've been doing isn't getting you there as quickly as you would like, then you need to stop and say, hey, my approach is not working. I need to find a different approach. Now that said, yeah, there are tons of tons of system sellers out there all, you know, all over the place, and they're sitting there saying, you know, yeah, just buy our strategy. You know, you're set for life because we've cracked the code and all this. And they make it sound like, yeah, you just buy their system and tomorrow you're going to be making ten grand a month. It doesn't work like that. The secret's not in the strategy. The secret is in you as a trader and developing your skills as a trader, developing your consistency. There are dozens of strategies that work and make money and make good money, been around and proven for decades. So the secret's not in the strategy. The secret is in you. Now if you've been trying to figure this out all by yourself, you just been maybe following other people on Reddit or on YouTube if they're not getting you where you want to be, well, maybe you need to think about hiring a coach. Again, a whole different approach to it. Now, here's the difference. You can be following somebody and just listening to, you know, taking in information that's just put out there, or you can work with a life coach where you can have some interaction, and the interaction really is key because the interaction they can. And like, when I'm helping my clients, you know, I mean, when we first start, you know, working together, you know, I ask certain questions to diagnose your situation so that I can give you the best advice moving forward. Well, you know, hey, you know, this isn't working. You need to focus on this. Stop focusing on that. And that's where it really shortens your time curve. So again, if you're making less than 6%, and if it's taking you more than six months to, you know, get profitable, and, you know, ideally to 6% a month, 6% a month is not a lot of money. And if you're not making 6%, you got a whole lot of other options that will make you better money. Now, if you just want to love trading and you want to do it for the rest of your life, that. That begs another question. Do you want to be doing it for free or do you want to be doing it and loving it and making money, or just doing it and loving it, but not making money? So again, you know, what you want to do is shorten the time curve, because time flies. You know, this. I have tons of people come to me. They've been trading for, you know, four or five, eight, 10, 12 years without getting profitable. So it is all too common for months and years to pass by without getting to the point where you want to get to anyway. If it's not working, stop and reassess what you're doing. That's the main thing, because you have choices. You have choices about what you're doing with your time and your money. So, you know, you want to be making the best of it because you don't want just, you know, years to go by or tens of thousands of dollars to be gone without showing results and you getting to where you want to be with your trading, you know, whether it's just for the money or for the love of. The love of trading and the money. But don't just continue on if it isn't working. So I hope this been helpful. If you'd like to talk about your situation, swing by Inside Out Trading, book a call with me. We'll hop on, we'll hop online. We'll have a chat about what you got going on, what your situation is, what your challenges are. You know, what you want to do. We'll set you on the best path if working with me is that cool. If not I'll point you in the right direction. So anyway the main thing is don't just settle forward the status quo if the status quo isn't where you want to be. Again hope this been helpful. Talk to you soon. Cheers. One of the keys to being a successful trader is avoiding making mistakes. So if you'd like to find out what the top psychological mistake is that most traders make, let's just check out this video right here and find out. It's from a golf perspective so you like this and you'll definitely understand it and it'll definitely help you in your trading. You'll like this. Talk to you soon. Cheers.
