It is easy to convince yourself that your trading decisions are the best in the world. And it’s comforting to think that you can come up with endless brilliant ideas without a fuss, believing that your strategy will generate profit in the real market.
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When you get cocky, thinking that you figured it all out, just remember that pride is one of the deadly sins, and the one, from which all others arise. Arrogance and vanity have never brought any long-lasting fun or money to anyone. After all, there is always room for improvement, something that can be simplified, fine-tuned and adjusted.
Experienced traders often say that one of the biggest mistakes beginners make is to stop learning.
Even the best trading ideas stop working sooner or later because the market is like a swift-flowing stream, changing all the time.
Therefore, as a trader, you can’t afford to do nothing. The ever-changing market environment demands constant vigilance. You need to adjust your trading and trim your sails to the wind constantly. You should keep learning, implementing new things into your trading system.
Most successful market players have once suffered a series of losses. The market challenges traders as their ambitions grow with their trading prowess. The trick is that you can never become an expert at trading without a passion for constant growth. As soon as you reach, as it seems to you, the highest level, the ceiling immediately dissolves, and you see new highs to improve your skills. And all because the market is constantly transforming.
How to find out if your trading ideas are good?
An idea is worthless as long as it’s not implemented. And even if it is, it’s worth nothing if you don’t track its performance. The idea needs testing. One should evaluate the results meticulously to understand if it’s possible to scale the idea by introducing it into your trading on a regular basis. Or was it just one successful idea that won’t work next time.
The first thing to do is to capture the idea before it’s gone. That is, we must write this idea down as soon as you come up with it.
Below are three smart ways to record your ideas.
TradingView
It is a convenient platform that helps you get the right things fast. Many people prefer “ultra clean” charts (without unnecessary information) and like the option to plot charts for stocks, Forex, etc.
The website also allows taking snapshots of the market forecast to check whether this forecast has been accurate later and compare the initial situation with the forecast and results. Is it important? Most people have a nasty pattern of inventing trades for which there are no actual market conditions to enter the market.
If you’re unsure, do not enter a trade – take a snapshot instead, and then check back later to see if your assumption was correct.
Posting your ideas on TradingView can provide an understanding of how good your plans are. Does your intuition lead to earning money? Is there a sort of trading tactic you should avoid at all costs?
It is important to remember that simply recording your ideas and actually implementing them are two different processes.
But taking a closer look at your plans and strategies is a smart move anyway.
Evernote
An alternative way to evaluate your ideas is to keep them in Evernote.
How to do it:
- Open Evernote at the beginning of your trading day.
- Create a new note in the journal folder. Add the date.
- Make a note of each chart where you notice a trading opportunity.
- Add a screenshot so you can come back to it later.
That is pretty much the same as the TradingView method.
Feel free to use Evernote to record a list of assets, timeframes, and charts to watch.
MetaTrader Screenshots
MetaTrader has a very convenient feature that allows you to take a quick screenshot of any chart by clicking on it and selecting Save as Picture.
You can add notes. Click OK, and the chart will be added in your MQL5 account.
To view the saved charts, log in to your account and go to Profile > Charts. It’s a convenient way of recording trades in a journal.
Summary
The tools we described above are great for improving your trading skills. Simply put, making these records allows you to see how good you are at predicting prices and making right trading decisions.
Check your journal entries from time to time. Evaluate the correctness of your predictions. Don’t feel bad about missed opportunities. Take failures as part of the process and get more practice playing the foundation for profitable trades in the future.
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