Adrian Reid (founder of Enlightened Stock Trading) gives a short trading-tip video on maintaining momentum while developing trading systems. He advises treating each system investigation like a high-school science experiment: create a dedicated notebook/page (physical or OneNote), write a clear title, hypothesis and method (steps to follow), then execute steps (code, backtests), paste code/results into the notes, record conclusions and, crucially, write the explicit next step so work can resume quickly after interruptions. The approach prevents wasted time, reduces distractions and rabbit-holing, and helps side‑income traders with limited time preserve development momentum.
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Hey, Adrian here, founder of Enlightened Stock Trading. And in this week's Trading Tip of the Week, I want to share with you a conversation I had with a new student in the Trader Success System. We were doing his onboarding session and one of the challenges that this student faced was about maintaining momentum in his trading system development. And maintaining momentum is actually hugely important because the markets don't always give you what you want. Sometimes the market's going to be up, sometimes they're going to be down. And trading can be kind of frustrating if you're just focusing on the money. But if instead of focusing on the money, you focus rather on your development of your trading systems, your portfolio of systems and building that and strengthening it, then that's something that you can control and you can maintain. But the trouble is it's actually quite difficult to maintain real momentum and progress in your trading system development. So how do you do it? Well, my approach is to treat trading system development very much like a high school science experiment. And what you do is, is write notes just like you would lab notes for your science experiment in year 9 or year 10 in high school. So what you do is you get out a notepad. You can use either a physical notebook or I prefer to use Microsoft OneNote. And what I do is for each system that I'm developing, I start a new page in OneNote, and at the top I write the title of the investigation I'm performing. So I'm looking into a mean reversion strategy for the US Stock market, for example, and then I write my hypothesis, what it is I'm actually trying to prove, prove or disprove. So I write that down and then I write my method. What are the steps I'm going to follow? And the steps I follow typically are the steps that I teach in the Expert's Guide to Backtesting Process. But that may vary a little depending on whether I'm doing an investigation into a particular aspect of the markets or a particular part of a trading system. So write down the steps that you're going to follow. This is before you've done anything, before you've opened your backtester, before you've updated your data, before anything. Because the whole point of this is to get your head clear on exactly what it is that you're going to do. So you can go and proceed and do the analysis in a step by step fashion. If you can proceed in a step by step fashion, you don't waste time, you avoid rabbit holes, and you get the system development work Done faster. So you've got your system that you're developing, you've got your method, your hypothesis, you've got your method, the steps you're going to follow. Then what do you do? Start doing the work. Take step one, write a new heading for step one, whatever that is. Do the analysis. So run the back test, do the coding and everything. Then if you've done the coding, paste that code into your notes so that you've got them there along with the rest of your journal or your record of this investigation. Do the analysis or run the backtest, get the results, put them into your notes as well, then draw your conclusion from the first step of the process. You must write down what it is that you concluded. The trouble is, when we get into trading system development, if you're anything like me, what happens is if I'm not documenting it as I go, I get distracted by all of these little shiny lights and different ideas and I go down rabbit holes. Oh, what about this and what about this and what about this? And before I know it, I've run 50 back tests and written nothing down at all. And I've got nothing to show for it apart from I've drained my brain, I'm a bit tired, and I've got 50 new backtests on my computer that I don't really know where they were going or what the conclusions were. So I much prefer to have a step by step process that I've written down. Write the results, record the code, record my conclusions, and then, most importantly, record the next step. If you record the next step after each stage of the journey, what are you going to do next? Then if you have to stop your work, then when you come back to it, you can read the next step, remember where you're up to and move on, maintain that momentum. The big problem most traders have is we're busy. We've got jobs, we've got families, we've got kids, we've got all sorts of things going on in life, all sorts of other priorities. And trading is typically a side hustle for most people. And so if you don't record your analysis well, then by the time you come back to it, you've forgotten what you've done and you have to redo it all over again and you've lost momentum. But if you record your investigations this way, you'll find that the momentum, momentum builds. You know exactly what you've got to do next. When you come and sit down at your computer, you just crack open your notes, look at what the next step was and continue on from there. No wasted time. This is the number one way I've found to accelerate my momentum in trading system development. In any of my testing, this is the way I do it, so keep really good records. Make sure you write down the next steps and you'll find that your momentum improves. 2. What do you think? Have you found any other ways to improve your momentum in trading system development? Comment below if you like this video. If you found it useful, give me a thumbs up so I know that you watched it and you liked it and I'll see you in the next video. Bye for now.
