Starting your Trading Day 

This topic should be a no-brainer for most and a review for those without a routine. How you begin your day can have an impact on the days trading results. 

How you start your day is important and creating a daily routine can set the tone and MA (mental attitude). The first thing is waking up from a great sleep. I have heard so many times when loses occur and I ask, “How did you sleep last night? I usually uncover the trader has not slept well.  

Sleep is so very important for trading and having your mind clear, alert and ready to go is critical. But I could talk about sleep in one article, so I will hold that for another time to get into details. 

Let’s assume you had a great sleep, next you want to have a good breakfast not just 5 cups of coffee. In fact I recommend you not drink coffee at all. If you are taking vitamins and then drink coffee, the vitamins don’t work because the caffeine affects how the vitamins are absorbed. Also by eliminating the coffee you won’t have the “crash” that comes in a few hours. There are other ways to stimulate yourself before you begin. OK so, no coffee, promise? Just try it for a week and see what happens. It may be a challenge at first but eventually you won’t crave it. 

The best thing is to hydrate your body with good old H2O. Since our body is made of mostly water anyway it makes perfect sense to keep it hydrated.

Water is great for the mind. In fact have you ever experienced what I call “trader’s trace”? 

Where you’re looking at the computer screen and just begin to stare blindly, not really seeing anything, because you’re in a daze, yep that’s trader’s trace.  This is a psychical warning sign that your body and mind is in need of water, and your mind goes blank because you are on hyper-drive processing the information from the market and changing every second the market does.  You’re looking at multiple screens, indicators, watching the news watching for set-ups, and combining it all to make a decision, basically your mind is COOKIN! 

So treat it well and feed it what it needs, W-A-T-E-R.  It will thank you with sharpness, calm and focus. 

OK, now you have had your sleep, breakfast and maybe a small bit of exercise to get the blood flowing you’re ready to trade. Here is where a routine comes in. No matter what markets you trade preparation is so important.  Some traders even do some work at night time to set their mind in the direction of the market and add in the night-time session activity so they can be better prepared and save some time in the morning. 

I always suggest, especially if you are fairly new or you want to “quantum leap” your trading you keep a list and write “3 new things you learned” at the end of each day.  In the morning you take your list and you re-read it. Keep in mind just because you learned something new once, it doesn’t mean the brain has it stored and will recall it again when you need it.  So using the technique of “repetition” can help the brain store it.  Add this to your daily routine. 

Use questions to get your mind working, and provide focus for the day, like:

What was great about your trading yesterday?

What will you repeat?

What will you focus on for the day?

What are my goals for the day?

Re-read your list of rules?

Re-read your 3 new things page

What could I do to my trading today to make more money?

What could I do to fix what didn’t work before?

What must I NEVER do again? 

Questions in the morning are great to get you in the right MA. Questions in general keep your mind working and in balance.  Questions help to keep you out of emotions, because the mind is to busy finding the answers to the questions, so emotions don’t come in if the mind is kept busy. 

Another thing you can do to keep emotions in check and to see if they are affecting your trades is to take and emotional rating before you trade and right after a trade.  Create your own scale maybe a 1-2-3 scale 1 = Total control 2=50/50 in control 3= out of control. Do set your numbers for what works for you. 

The idea is to determine if your emotions are getting in the way of your trading.

Add this to your morning routine.  Actually add anything you think will help your morning routine.  

There will come a day when your trading is in absolute “perfection” when all the planets align when emotions don’t exist when each trade you take is brilliant and perfect.  It’s on that wonderful day or days you MUST write everything you did, how you eat, slept, prepared and even what you wore. It’s that day that you want to recall when you need it.  They are few and far between but when they come you will know and they are spectacular! 

Next create a routine for yourself to get into the best mental attitude you can. Imagine how you feel when your trading is ON and how good it feels. 

Create a trade criteria check list. These are the data points that must be in place for you to take a trade. It’s important to write them down and get in the habit of using the list before each entry. After awhile it will become second nature. An example would be: 1) The trend has to be clear for at least 5 one minute bars. 2) The Dow and S&P have to be in the same direction of my trade. And so on. 

Your morning routine can be anything you like as long as it works and it gets you in a great MA to trade at your peak. 

Should you be “off” then know you are off and take sometime to get back on track. 

Remember: great traders know when NOT to trade. Routines are a good way to create consistency and certainty in your trading. 

You and only you are in control of your trading and anything is possible. So create a morning routine and stick to it. 

So the bottom line is to create a routine or ritual you do daily that puts you in the best frame of mind to trade. 

And until next time great trading!