A fascinating look at a trader’s turnaround in performance

In a minute

You'll see exciting progress from a trader who's turned their trading around.

But first...

Imagine being dropped into a country where you don't speak the language. And your only option to learn the language is listening, observing and interacting with others.

How long would it take you before you get the hang of it?

I ask because my sister moved to France a little over a year ago. And despite having visited France numerous times previously, having studied French before her move, and not to mention being married to a French person, her biggest challenge?

Speaking the language

She was struggling to progress. It was also emotionally challenging because she felt alone in her struggles.

Whatever her attempts to master French they were missing what? Immersion in the environment for long enough to evolve. Right?

More on that later.

Here's a trading screenshot from the trader mentioned earlier

• See how the Exit Before "out-of-bounds" - i.e. the edge of the playing field?

• Problem-solving to calculate the playing field dimensions is an incredible edge.

• It's less challenging for mature traders because problem-solving improves with age.

See the previous article describing the playing field here.

Also:

• Do you notice the minuscule initial risk?

• That risk is there to notify you the trade has failed.

• Can you find out your trade failed using equally little risk?

It's a big deal having the expertise to identify opportunities with minuscule risk to find out the trade hasn't worked.

In the next trading screenshot: Can you see avoiding the trap of "trading with the trend"? Aware of the edges of the playing field, the trader avoided making a long trade which would have failed.

The third screenshot incorporates the trader's progress in turning around his performance.

Have you picked up on how the trader isn't using the same trade size for each trade?

• A performance superpower is sizing trades according to odds ranking.

• It's a big deal to have a playbook of trades with individual rankings to do so.

A further hard-to-recognise observation is as follows:

When looking at charts like this in hindsight, it's easy to forget that the trader can't see anything to the right at the time of a trade! And so with that in mind: You can see the executed long trade. Right? The trader was waiting for that trade to develop because it aligned with his hypothesis.

Stay with me here... There's an ol' trading saying: "Pros are patient; amateurs jump in"

Seeing the forest for the trees the trader takes the opposite side of the amateurs who jumped in on the long side.

There was never an intention to trade the short side beyond a small scalp. It was only ever intended to catch out the amateurs who jumped in early, and then follow up with the long trade.

The outcome on the short scalp was a minuscule loss. It wasn't a poor trade choice because trading is an odds-based business.

It's exciting seeing a trader grow to reach this level. Aka seeing the entire board of moves - not just an individual piece move.

How's my sister's French going?

With the help of her 14 yo daughter (who speaks French fluently), her French husband and weekly online French-speaking classes:

• It took 3 months before she was comfortable enough to converse briefly at the local food stalls. I
• t was 12 months before she reached competence. Not as a tourist doing tourist things. But as a resident living in France, doing everything a resident does.
• Rather than trying to speak French immediately her skills compounded over time.

What's harder - Speaking French or speaking market?

That's right: The Market speaks a language. Comprehending the Market's language is a skill that compounds. You don't go straight to fluency. Knowing this - another question:

Have you experienced taking a course, webinar, mentor, coach, [insert label] and not realised the success you expected?

If you knew you had to learn a language to trade successfully would you have taken a different approach?

Here's the deal

The trading you've seen is from a trader 10 months into mentoring. 10 months you say - isn't that like forever? Well 10 months is a helluva lot shorter than 3 yrs or 7 yrs or 12 yrs isn't it? Especially when you factor in still not being successful in that time.

If you're curious here's how compounding trading expertise works:

• Playing field - 1 mo. to basic competency.

• Identify trades where its possible to take miniature risk 3-4 mo.

• Not trading the same size 6-7 mo. to know the playbook.

• Playing field advanced proficiency - 8 mo.

• Seeing the entire game several moves ahead - 9 mo. but continues to improve with experience.

• Using the market's money to add to trades for outlier gains - 10-12 mo. (trader above not there yet).

What's your takeaway? The powerful forces of compounding are there for the taking for anyone prepared to let them work for them.