Kardec Trader argues that setting monetary profit targets like "make $10,000 this month" causes overtrading and bad decisions. Instead, focus on skill goals: refine your edge, improve entries and exits, gradually increase position size, and manage winners and losers better.
So imagine you set out a goal to make $10,000 this month but this month the market is dead. It's flat. There's not a lot of opportunity. Now mentally you get wired to put on trades, put on size to hit your goal and that leads to taking on bad trades, that leads to over trading, oversizing and so on which puts you at a disadvantage. The one thing I recommend is do not have profit goals. Instead have goals such as I want to refine my edge, I want to get better at entries, I want to get better at exit, I want to slowly increase my size. I to add another strategy to my playbooks. I cannot tend to cut losers, I cannot tend to hold winners. Make that your focus of goals. This is what I am focused on. These are my goals not money related. Money related goals in trading just end up coming to hurt us.
