Declutter Your Trading

Declutter definition: “To remove unnecessary items from (an untidy or overcrowded place).”

There is only one reason  to trade: to make money. You only need to incorporate things into your trading that makes you money. If you do not have a good filter on what matters and what does not matter trading can become a lot of work for a little reward as you waste time on the things that do not matter.

Here are five questions to help you declutter your own specific trading style:

  1. Only spend the needed screen time for your trading methodology . Day traders may even only have to trade the first and last hour while some trend followers only need end of day data. How much screen time do you really need for your trading style? How much are you currently getting?
  2. Your charts should only have the technical indicators on them that you actually use for trading signals. More signals than are needed can actually cause you confusion as they can even contradict each other. Do you use all the technical indicators on your chart? Can you remove some?
  3. Do you stress over things in your trading that you can’t control? All you can do is create a trading plan and then follow it, the market chooses whether you win or lose. If you did the right things then do not clutter your mind with emotions that do not help you going forward.
  4. If real time news or market pundits make you do things outside your trading parameters and actually lose money tune them out. What messes up your profitable trading makes you a weaker trader turn them off.
  5. Does your confidence, hope, or ego drive you too make trades too big and give back your past profits? Most risk management errors come from position sizing. Trading too big is usually caused by the ego being too sure of one single trade which causes errors in our math due to a cognitive bias that we can’t be wrong.

“It’s not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.” – Bruce Lee