discipline in trading – 2nd Skies Trading

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Trading Psychology: 5 Unique Insights from 10,000 Mantras

4 hours in, sweat on my forehead, a sore left knee and one feeling of exhilaration, I completed the 10,000^th mantra.

Yes, for over 240 minutes (minus the necessary 1 minute ‘loo break’) I chanted the same 9 Tibetan words 10,000 times in a row.

Personally, I thought it would be a tad easier, but the reality (and surprise) was much more challenging vs. how it appeared ‘conceptually’.

What I learned from sitting on my derrière, all 240+ minutes, reflected back some gems about trading and the mindset of breaking through.

Here are the 5 unique insights I got about trading psychology chanting 10,000 mantras in one sitting.

#1: 2,000 Punches & 1 Month of Meals

I recently started martial arts again (which I’ll be writing about in more detail soon), but am taking Wing Chun classes.

I am NOT taking martial arts because I want to be able to fight well, nor am I taking Wing Chun because I want to be Ip Man 😮

Photo of Ip Man training Bruce Lee

I’m taking it as a mind-body training with the goal of elevating both to the next level.

In my first class, I was practicing the basic punch and it looked sloppy (that’s putting it mildly).

The senior student helping me (who is awesome) said this while working on my punch, “to really get this down, you’ll want to do a lot of punches, like 2,000 punches until the muscle memory is fully wired in.”

It is pretty easy to balk at feeling like you have to do 2,000 punches before you can throw that sucker well.

But if that is what it takes, I’ll do it, and I’ll use the One Month of Meals Method which goes like this:

If you were to walk into your kitchen right now, and right in front of you was all the food you’d eat for an entire month, you wouldn’t feel hungry.

The irony is, you’ll eat that amount of food every month, and already have been for decades. Yet done one meal at a time, it’s quite workable.

And that is how you should approach big projects which require tons of reps.

Trading is no different. I often give my students homework on what they should practice.

One such method is to practice a trading strategy, or even a price action skill to hone their trading and improve their performance.

For this, I suggest Forex Tester 2, which is like the driving range for traders. Below is a good video explaining some basic methods of how you can use Forex Tester 2.

For those interested in getting a discount on Forex Tester 2 – click here.

Now consider the following – most professional golfers hit about 300-500 golf balls a day, either on the course or a driving range.

With that piece of info in your brain, how many reps and practices are you doing per day?

For a good article on what it means to trade like a sniper – click on that link.

Getting back to the practice, while doing my 10,000 mantras, I grouped them into 5 groups of 2,100. This was much more manageable because I’ve done rounds of 2,100 before.

Why 2,100?

When you do a mantra practice like this with high reps, you have what is called a ‘mala’ which is like prayer beads you see in many religions. Below are a couple of mine.

Normally in my tradition, they have 108 beads as do the two on the right (108 being a special number).

I have a smaller mala (blue one on the left) which has 21 beads on it. So for each round of 108 on my main practice mala, I turned the 21 bead mala 1x. Once I completed a full round on that mala, I knew I did 2,100.

Five rotations later, I did 10,500, but only counted 10K because I’m guessing I didn’t do a few quite so well.

If I was counting down, that would be like looking at an entire month of food in front of me.

But breaking it into smaller meals made it more digestible.

So whatever your goal is with trading, break it down into smaller bite-sized chunks, then shoot for those as they become much more manageable.

#2: You Must Challenge Your Self-image to Grow

Your self-image is the overall corpus of how you see yourself. It is the sum of your habits, attitudes and beliefs. It is essentially what you think it is ‘like you’ to do.

Think you’re good at playing basketball? That is part of your self-image.

Think you’re not the best dancer (as I certainly am not)? That is part of your self-image.

Your self-image has boundaries whereby the lower and upper boundaries of your self-image determine your success in trading.

If your self-image was already setup to succeed in trading, you’d already be there.

To change your self-image requires it to be challenged, and it has to be done so via a new self-image which is in direct conflict with your current one.

If you haven’t had the experience of consistently profiting from trading, then currently it is not in your self-image to trade successfully.

GOOD NEWS – YOU CAN CHANGE YOUR SELF-IMAGE!

How do you change your self-image? By challenging it, by finding its limit, by building experiences of going beyond what your self-image thinks it’s ‘like you’ to do.

If you think you cannot do 300 push-ups in a row right now, you’ll need to build up to that. Only until you’ve done it several times will your self-image think it is ‘like you’ to do it.

That is where testing yourself enters the picture.

The self-image will only grow (think expand) in terms of what it can do, through testing & challenging it.

Whatever thoughts enter your mind, whatever doubts, fears, worries, excuses, or moments where you want to quit – that is your current self-image resisting.

It will resist change and want to stay where it is, and this is what you have to fight against.

Hence the formula is simple – if your current self-image doesn’t fully know it is ‘like you’ to trade profitably, you’ll need to expand it till it knows it inside and out.

NOTE: For those wanting to learn strategies and techniques to grow a self-image for successful trading, check out my advanced traders mindset course.

#3: Concentration Oscillates, Coming Back is Key

Go for any long run, or do 1,000’s of reps of anything in a row, and your mind will wander.

Shoot, let’s be honest here – how many paragraphs or lines in this article did you read before you got distracted and thought of something else?

This Sunday, while chanting the mantras, it became appallingly clear an imperfectly trained mind will result in an oscillating level of concentration.

During the 4hr chanting bonanza, my mind cycled across a giant spectrum of concentration, between a zen like focus while walking across a tight-rope 1,000 feet in the air vs. a monkey on crack after eating 9 tablespoons of sugar!

And of course everything in between.

There were definitely periods of being highly focused while others of barely being there.

The point being – unless your mind is perfectly trained, your ability to concentrate will oscillate.

What’s important to note is, the periods of focus aren’t a problem. It’s when you are highly unfocused that the worries, fears and doubts creep in.

Your brain on average produces between 50,000-70,000 thoughts per day. If you aren’t focused or controlling that mental activity, then it is controlling you and coming from your unconscious mind.

Ever been in a trade you initially felt great about, yet all of a sudden, it’s only moved a few pips against you and you feel under a death grip of worry it’s going to stop you out?

That is your unconscious and limiting beliefs taking over your conscious mind, and if you don’t correct it quickly, or know how to deal with it, it will take you underwater.

The key lesson here is to keep coming back. If you have a plan to bring your mind back when it wanders, some sort of mental cue you engage, that method will pay dividends in building this muscle.

By coming back, you train your mind to develop stronger and stronger levels of concentration.

And make no mistake, the science is clear – those who have greater focus and clarity form better memories and make more calculated decisions.

If you practice mindfulness meditation, even after a short period of time, it can re-wire your brain, and improve your concentration.

Better memories = greater pattern recognition while trading and the results from more calculated decisions are obvious to any trader.

Want to increase your edge and profits while trading? Keep coming back.

#4: My Ass Hurts & Why That’s A Good Thing

Ever sit on your rump in one place for 4 hours in a row, moving only once? Doesn’t feel good, eh?

At the end of the 4hrs of chanting mantras, my ass hurt, but in many ways, it was a badge of honor and a good thing.

There is a great story about a Buddhist master and his ass:

******
He was at a riverbank saying goodbye to his greatest student with whom he shared everything he knew, experienced and understood.

After a final embrace, he bid his student farewell, who then picked up his backpack, and walked away over a stone bridge to the other side of the river.

Just before the student was finally gone from sight or sound, his teacher called him back.

Walking back to find out why, his teacher’s eyes were clear and penetrating while he said the following, “You being a special student deserve one of my greatest teachings of all. Make sure you cherish this one deeply and never forget it.”

With his student attentive, ready to receive such a great and profound teaching, the master turned around, pulled up his robe, showed his bare ass and said “LOOK!”

“You see this ass? The one with lumps on it from sitting and meditating all these years? You now know what I have gone through to realize what I did – all through persistence.

You need this mindset! This is the essence of what I have taught. Practice without stopping, and it is only a matter of time. Exert yourself with mental toughness and the no-obstacle mindset. Do this until you’ve mastered what you set out to do.”

The first time I read this story, my initial response was laughter wondering what this student was thinking when he saw his master lift up his robe and show his full moon.

But after that moment of humor and imagination, I realized any high level of skill I’ve built in my life has been through tons of practice.

Watch a professional athlete today and you’ll see them practicing more than they are playing. Football players play one game a week and practice for 5-6 days. Basketball players practice at least 3-4x for every game they play.

“The ratio is clear – always practice (and train) more than you perform, no matter what the skill.”

Discipline and an unrelenting practice builds mental toughness, along with a mind that only knows success. Do this and it is only a matter of time before you find the pot of gold waiting for you.

At the end of my 4hr session, my ass hurt. However, in my mind, that was a good thing as it was working towards my commitment and goal.

Hence the question has to be asked – is your ass hurting today?

#5: You’re Either Committed to Succeeding, or Quitting

The stats suggest about 7.5% of all traders accounts at the end of this year will be larger than what they started with.

That may seem daunting, and the number is not exactly enticing. I think one of the problems is there are many people telling you it’s ‘easy’.

Anyone telling you it’s ‘easy’, or portraying images of people sitting on beaches with their ever so light laptops, hands folded behind their backs as they smile with glee, enjoying the lifestyle of a professional trader from some remote beach isn’t being honest.

They are selling a dream, and targeting those of you who do not want to work for it, who want it easy. Essentially they are looking for (no pun intended) easy prey.

Trading is a mental performance discipline, and by default will challenge your mind, brain and mindset to go beyond what it already knows and what habits you already have.

Anytime you push yourself to go beyond what you can easily do now, you’ll run into a little voice, and it’s often a naysayer type voice (negative).

It’s the one that tells you why you cannot, should not, and will not do it. It is great at coming up with excuses, finding reasons why you should take the next off-ramp, how there really is no benefit in crossing the finish line.

The difference between those who break through vs. those who break down, is the former group fights back against that little negative voice.

The latter individual listens to this voice, believes it, and gives into it.

I’ve never met anyone who feels confident about themselves, while continually NOT finishing what they started.

“The strength, confidence and rewards go to those who punch through, who test themselves, experience their limits, and keep going.”

I’ll be completely frank, I had anywhere between 10-20+ moments of that voice popping up in my head, like a dude wearing lederhosen in the middle of the New York Stock exchange, clearly standing out, trying to get my attention.

And let me tell you, he did a pretty convincing dance.

But regardless of what that voice in my 10lb dome said, my mind was resolved from the beginning – that is part of becoming successful.

If you listen to that voice and believe what it’s saying, it will win.

And it is an expert at weeding out half-hearted commitments.

What it really comes down to is – you’re either committed to succeeding, or quitting.

In Conclusion

There is nothing easy about becoming a professional in any skill, let alone trading.

The path to a successful trading psychology and mindset come only through training.

My guess is if you incorporate some (if not all) of these 5 insights into your trading practice (and life), you’ll see the benefits to your performance and profits.

For those wanting to train your mindset, build up your self-image and learn how to pull the trigger, check out my advanced traders mindset course where I teach you how to do this successfully.

With that being said – is your ass hurting today? Are you committed to succeeding?

Please make sure to comment below and share this with anyone you know can benefit from it.

What You’ll Learn From Becoming A Successful Trader

“What does being a trader mean to me… it means the key to financial and personal freedom.” – From a former bank trader.

I actually find this quote above to be a dime a dozen statement. Anyone can parse out such a blatantly obvious and banal sentiment.

If offers no unique insights into trading, let alone an original perspective.

How about the ‘Get out of the 9-5 grind‘ – Cut and Paste. ‘Be your own boss‘ – Carbon Copy.

Any old (or young) bloke can write such waste.

Have I read/seen/heard any good ones? A few interesting reflections for sure. You can tell they’ve dug past the outermost crust, reached through the thick mantle & arrived at a rich core.

Coming from a buddhist, trader and 20 year student of neuroscience, here are 5 things I’ve learned from my 15 years of the markets.

#1: Money is Liquid

Most people work for a company (i.e. someone else). If that is you, you most likely get paid a fixed amount on fixed dates (neither are your choosing).

And it’s X amount of dollars on such fixed dates (barring an infrequent bonus). This causes us to relate to money in a very fixed & solid way.

Trading changes that completely. When each pip for or against you is $1000, your wealth is changing in real time constantly.

This forces you to see money in a completely different way.

Relating to money in a very fixed way doesn’t produce creativity, nor develop new neural networks in the brain. It doesn’t lead to challenging your ideas & looking at things from a different perspective.

It leads you to believe you are stuck and dis-empowered. Innovation and creativity do not arise in a fixed mindset, or a brain that isn’t growing.

When people start to trade for the first time and see how their money can grow, it changes something in your brain.

The limits are lifted and you start to see new possibilities (that money is liquid). This is a healthy thing for the growth and development of your brain and trading mindset.

#2: Novelty Helps the Brain Grow

Ever work in a warehouse? I did in high school.

It sucked. Great pay, but I would have preferred the Iron Maiden. Repeating the same motion every day 500x a day took me about…ohhh…2.5 days for me to say ‘F-THIS’.

Lamentably, most jobs keep you doing relatively the same things. Novelty in the workplace is not a commonality, but a rare commodity.

Trading changes that completely. No trading day is ever the same. The markets are in constant flux.

When I started in 2001, the market could move 100 pips on the first tick from an NFP announcement. Today…maybe 20-50 pips.

The GBPJPY (used to be called ‘the beast’) would move 250-450 pips a day on average. Now it boasts a whopping 109 pips on the daily ATR.

Markets present you with an ever flowing river of unpredictability and novelty.

How does this help your dome?

Novelty stimulates the brain. It helps excite dopamine production which is helpful for building new memories, learning, and creating new neural pathways.

Novelty also increases the activity in the pre-frontal cortex (PFC), which helps you build greater insight, empathy, and self-control.

The novelty of the markets is simply good for your brain.

#3: Markets Are A Giant Mirror To Your Mind

Perhaps you’ve realized it, but the markets are a place for self-discovery. Regardless of the market you trade or where you are trading from, it is always one giant mirror to your mind and trading mindset.

Every action and thought you have affects your performance.

“The markets completely reflect back your mind to you, making it painfully obvious what your psychological strengths and weaknesses are.”

If you are disciplined in trading or not in the face of uncertainty, the markets will let you know.

It is completely unbiased and untainted how it reflects these things back to you.

The market does not judge you, and will mirror something back whether you are George Soros, a middle aged bank trader, or a young 20-something just starting out.

Any flaws you have will be brought to the surface and available to see whether you want to or not.

What person do you know that can so accurately reflect such things back to you without judgment, bias or an agenda?

What entity do you know out there, that every moment you engage it is constantly reminding you to observe your own mental, emotional and physical condition?

The markets are a giant mirror for your mind and mindset, and a fantastic place for self-discovery and growth.

#4: Understanding Risk vs. Reward

Recently my partner and I started looking at new homes. We met with a Sotheby’s agent as they had a few good listings in our area.

After talking with them about the numbers, my trading brain started to go off.

The law here requires non-permanent residents to put a minimum of 35% down on the house. Assuming a house value of $1 million, that comes out to $350K.

As soon as I started to hear the numbers, my trading brain went to work. Last year the market here gained about 4.5%.

Assuming a similar return, I’m putting down $350K to gain $45K on the overall property value (4.5% on $1M).

Now is that the most efficient use of my capital? I could put $350K into the markets and confidently get a 20% return. That would = a $70K return vs. my $45K on the house.

Considering I am not far away from my permanent residence status, when evaluating the risk vs. reward of the situation, it is actually more expensive and less profitable for me to put this money into a down payment.

Most people would never go through this line of thinking. Most wouldn’t do the math, or particularly evaluate situations from a risk vs. reward perspective.

This is a highly valuable skill in life beyond the numbers.

We will always encounter situations in life that will require us to understand, evaluate and assess the risk vs. the reward.

Simply put – the things we learn in trading are valuable for us in life.

#5: Learning How & When to Take Risks

Speaking of risk, one thing you’ll get intimately familiar and comfortable with via trading is taking risks.

Whether we want to acknowledge it or not, in life you have to take risks. It is not only good for your brain, but is a governing factor behind what you achieve.

Those who don’t take risks never get ahead. They live the same run of the mill life & never leave their comfort zone.

Yet leaving our comfort zone is often where the most growth is. It is where most successful traders and people spend their time.

By and large,

“successful traders & people in all fields have taken risks, oftentimes large ones for big payoffs that last them a lifetime.”

That is one thing you’ll get an instinctual feel for when trading, because it’s a part of your every day work and passion.

Learning how and when to take risks is a highly valuable skill which can pay dividends well beyond the charts.

It can literally define the direction you take and the trend of your life. Hence what you learn from trading can enrich your mind and life in ways most jobs never will.

Did you find this lesson useful? Please make sure to like, share and tweet it below.

Also I’d love to hear what ‘aha‘ moments you had by sharing your comments and thoughts below.

Featured Article, Forex Strategies, Trading Mindset & Risk Management

Discipline = Freedom + Success for Traders

I wanted to share a unique lesson this week, one that is different from any of my other ones.
Recently I was at a meditation retreat with my teacher. As many of you know, I have been practicing meditation and buddhism every day for 15+ years now. For 14 of those 15 years, I’ve been working with one teacher.
Who I was 15 years ago is not even recognizable to the person I am today, and my teacher is the biggest reason behind that.
She guides, challenges and helps me grow in all aspects of my life. Her in-exhaustable wisdom, penetrating insight and poignant clarity continue to amaze me every time I am with her.
It is a relationship I am ever grateful for.
Back to the Retreat
During a private moment with the senior members, she was taking questions from the group, when one of the students asked a question about discipline.

I wanted to share her response because it speaks to the heart of what discipline, training and taking things to the next level is really about (in trading, and life).
I’ve changed a few words to make it more tailored towards trading, but the message is the same, and all the credit remains with her for this message below.
Without further adieu, here is her thoughts on discipline & training.
Discipline Is Not the Anti-thesis of Freedom
“I’ve often seen in people this idea, or framework of thinking, that force, rigidity, and intensity in one’s work is the antithesis of freedom & creativity, and it’s absolutely not.
One pattern that revolves around discipline is people floating around from one system to another, and another, and another, but what people end up doing is spinning their wheels and never going deep.
They’ll let go of one system because they think it is ‘under-performing‘ for that week or month, all according to our wants and needs to succeed ‘now’.
What we are really doing is playing out our conditioned scripts and never breaking through.
Breaking the Cycle
The only way to break out of this cycle is to harness the power of habit in a positive direction. That requires discipline, it requires a focused training.
There will be a level of force and unhappiness that comes with this sandwich. But for anything that requires us to succeed, we have to go deep, and that takes discipline & training. We have to develop this habit and power.

Michael Jordan
An Olympic athlete doesn’t always feel like getting up that day and training for hours on end each day.
I’m pretty sure Michael Jordan didn’t always feel like practicing or training hard. But he did it anyway, and that communicated something to his self-image.
To transcend our current limits, we have to go beyond what we feel like. We have to transform this feeling of constantly wanting to do what we feel like, and then making excuses in trading and why we aren’t performing the way we want to.
There is so much energy out there today about doing what you feel like, doing whatever you want.

Taking Things to the Next Level
But if the goal is to take your skills, awareness and mind to the next level…if your goal is to be something, do something, perform a skill at a higher level than you are now, then you need to start working on those hidden levels, in those areas of your sub-conscious and unconscious mind where we have some heavy conditioning in place.
So if you want to go beyond the level of success, performance and the mindset you have now, that takes training, that takes discipline, that takes force, even when we don’t feel like doing it.
Discipline = Freedom
I too have moments like that, where I ‘don’t feel like it‘. But what I remember in those moments is that discipline will give me freedom.
If I do the practice and train whether I feel like it or not, this very action repeated many times, will lead to an accumulation of skills, wisdom and knowledge that will allow me to transcend my current limits.
Part of what is happening for me in those moments is my nervous system is reaching its limit to participate, act and execute in a particular way.
In that state of duress, in that level of concentration, what is being challenged is our limits, and it is only there that we can learn to expand that.
We can’t expand our limits while ‘doing what we want‘, or ‘being a lazy trader‘, or spending < an hour in front of the charts and then being on vacation the rest of the time.
That is an illusion, and no-high level professional works like that in any field.
Discipline = Power
There is a huge power to doing things we don’t feel like, and that power is called discipline.
Perhaps though discipline isn’t the best word, because we can easily associate it with some form or punitive measure or experience. But the reality is, discipline is our potency.
If we cannot have it, if we cannot hit the mat every day, or keep playing the guitar when Jimi Hendrix isn’t coming out of our strings, if we don’t push up against those limits, against that inertia, then we won’t grow.
We’ll remain shallow, and we’ll just end up repeating the same mistakes over and over and over again. If that is your experience, then you know the variables and recipe behind said experience.
Habitual Momentum
There is so much momentum to repeating our habits and cultural scripts. They have incredible momentum and energy behind them.
To establish another direction, to challenge and go against it, we will feel it, and that will not always be comfortable. Yet in those moments, there is a huge power available to us, to make discipline our habit.
Those Who Really Develop
If we look at the defining moment of someone who matures, develops and takes things to the next level vs. someone who doesn’t, it’s their capacity to stretch beyond what they don’t feel like doing.
It’s their ability to hold a discipline.
If discipline isn’t our strongest point, that’s ok, we can start with where we are. We can go to that limit, stretch the envelope a little bit each time in a controlled growth way. Discipline is a super power we have.
If you can tolerate insecurity, tolerate discomfort, and go against what you feel like doing, hold that discipline and train – there is no limit to how much you can grow, develop and succeed.
That is a great power we have, and for those who take this on, it is only a matter of time before you climb that mountain and have a successful trading mindset.

Netflix + Video Games
I certainly have moments where I exert beyond what I think is possible, and many times after that I need to rest my body and mind.
It’s usually in these times when we start to have those fantasies of laying on a beach for days on end, or just lying on the couch watching movies. I’ve done that.
Recently after some graduate school exams, someone told me after their finally done, that they just watch netflix and play video games for 3 days to decompress.
I heard that and thought ‘oh wow, that sounds like heaven‘. So I tried that, literally watching Breaking Bad from beginning to end, playing video games for long hours.

But after doing that, although there was some rest I caught up on, I can say the overall experience wasn’t truly satisfying. It was helpful to get that rest and down time in, and we need that in certain moments.
But the rest of it wasn’t really satisfying…not in the same way where I can experience the fruits of my discipline, work and what I’ve created.
Shifting the Fantasy
So I’ve shifted to a place now where when I experience those fantasies, that when they come up and I want a ‘vacation of freedom’, a ‘vacation from discipline’…I’ve learned that too much freedom can be just as much a poison as too much discipline, so that’s not the solution.
Hence I remind myself that it is an illusion, and that I don’t want the fruit of that. What I really want is the fruit of taking things to the next level.
Even if it’s painful, even if I don’t like it, I’ve found the fantasy to be limiting. I’ve found that discipline in training yields me a feeling of being regret-less about my time.
I don’t have those regrets of ‘oh, I wish I had done that,’ because I am doing ‘that’, and there is something really gratifying in that experience and knowing.
I am definitely not a master of it. It’s hard, and I have times just like you that I wrestle with it. But I can say that I love what discipline gives me, especially in my meditation and mindfulness practice.
Highly Successful People
When I talk to people of high caliber, people who have a unique perspective and are highly successful, this is totally the difference.
This isn’t someone just doing what they want to do, or feeling what they like all the time.
They definitely aren’t following the fantasy being marketed by people out there that you can just work one hour a day and have all the money and success you want.
They aren’t staying in the little house of their mind, of what their mind wants, or what feels comfortable.
They’ve put themselves in environments that challenge them, that demand from them, and stayed in those environments through discomfort, foraging their way through.
And for those that have had this experience, you’ll see they are of a high caliber and performing at a high level.
The fruits of their work, discipline and training are obvious when you meet and talk with them.

Ultimately, I think time is really precious, and we should question what our cultures teach us about how we should spend our time, and what it is really for.”
Wow is all I have to say to that.
I hope you enjoyed this article and found it insightful, poignant and informative about trading, success and discipline.
Please do share your comments and thoughts as I’m itching to hear your feedback.
Just Released: For those wanting to build a successful trading mindset while re-wiring your brain for success, check out our Advanced Traders Mindset Course, only available till April 2nd.

Forex Strategies, Trading Mindset & Risk Management

How to Keep The Right Perspective When Trading

Without a doubt, the learning process to successful trading is not a short one. It is one that takes time, akin to virtually all other skill based endeavors. Be it sports, playing a musical instruments, or martial arts.

Although we want to become black belt traders, or virtuoso readers of price action in a jiffy, in 99% of the cases, your time line from here to success will likely not be as quick as you’d prefer.
Because of the extended time on our journey from A to B, it is common as bikes in Amsterdam for us to lose perspective, and go off the rails.
Putting Things In Perspective
Take a look at the graph below. What you are seeing is a snapshot of an equity curve from one of the strategies in my price action course.

Upon first glance, it looks incredibly unimpressive…that it loses money. And you would be correct in this assumption…for this period of time.
Now take a look at the second image below, which is the entire equity curve over several years.

What you are now seeing is something totally different.
When you look at its entirety, you are seeing is a price action strategy that made 108% return! This is across only one ONE PAIR, and only ONE TIME FRAME.
Some highlights of the performance are below:
+108.9% profit
Profit Factor of 2.3
Expected Payoff of 112.28
Maximal Drawdown of 14.27%
% Profitable Trades 68.04%
Greatest Win 36% Larger Than Greatest Loss
Max Consecutive Profit Almost 200% Greater than Max Consecutive Loss

Without a doubt, this is a strategy that makes money, consistently, preserves capital, with a balanced risk to reward ratio.

Below is the table from the performance test, showing you the same performance.

Most Un-Successful Traders Make This Mistake
For those who are not trading profitably, most likely when you are in a draw down, you don’t give the strategy enough time to work itself out. You see the equity curve falling, and think something has to be changed.

In reality, there could be nothing wrong with the strategy. Maybe this particular strategy won’t perform well in that market, yet this price action strategy makes money over time.

Now imagine if you changed strategies at the end of the first graph. You would have missed out on over 85% of the entire profit that strategy made. You would have lost several years of consistently profitable trading. That alone would have put you in top 5% of all traders. Food 4 thought.

Building A Healthy Perspective
Generally developing traders are more hyper-sensitive to every single trade, each win and loss. But look at this from a different perspective:

Imagine being a new archer having this same approach – that you gauge your confidence based on each shot.

That map would be all over the place, and drive a person batty as to how they are doing, because naturally one will be an inconsistent shooter in the beginning.

Instead, look to a great basketball player, and tell me if their confidence wanes from missing one free throw. They don’t make this mistake. They keep the right perspective and mindset by focusing on the process, not result. They keep the right perspective.

Constantly Changing
Changing strategies every month or so will take you in circles (like the dog that chases its tail).

Quarterbacks don’t change throwing motions every month, nor do musicians change instruments every time things go bad. Why would you think the path to successful trading would be any different?
So avoid changing your trading plan and strategy every month. Stick to the one you got for at least 90 days, once you’ve refined it. Commit to learning/trading it inside and out.
By doing this, you are (at the very least) building a skill set towards successful trading. Even if the strategy does not work out, you are developing one of the most important qualities in trading – discipline.
And with discipline comes confidence, which is something most un-successful traders lack. Remember, the draw down of the first chart was the prelude to a 108% return, (doubling your account in a few years).
Ask yourself if you have done this (changed strategies after a small losing period). Ask yourself if you’ve focused on result more than process. Then see how you can change this to keep the right perspective when trading.