Trading isn’t about winning every time. It’s about winning more often than you lose.
Since we humans have a negativity bias, the occasional loss can crush our feelings of victory and make us feel like we’re getting nowhere.
But believe it or not, larger profits isn’t the only sign you’re becoming a better trader.
Yes, you’ll make more money if you’re better at trading — but just because your account isn’t growing steadily yet, doesn’t mean you aren’t improving.
There are other signs. It’s important to know these other signs, too, because they can help you crush that self-doubt into the ground.
With that in mind, here are a few ways to tell that you’re leveling up in the trading game.
Perhaps the most obvious improvement you can notice — aside from more $$$ — is you know what you’re looking at when you glance at a chart.
For example: in the beginning, maybe you struggled hard to notice certain patterns or trade setups.
But as you practice (and maybe fail a few times), you start to pick out those patterns at a glance.
You become more confident in your ability to analyze charts and data and place trades successfully. Even if you lose some, you can still pat yourself on the back, knowing that you’ve learned things along the way.
Traders are humans. We can’t get rid of our emotions for good, especially when our money hangs in the balance.
But we can compartmentalize them. That is, we can acknowledge them before tucking them away to do some cold, hard, rational analysis and decision-making.
At first, you might fall victim to emotions once or twice in trading. We all do.
But if you learn from those experiences, you get better at understanding what those emotions are telling you (then putting them to the side) instead of letting them tell you what to do.
This also goes for taking losses. Losses suck, but good traders take them as learning experiences and move on. They don’t let the losses get them down.
After all, losses are a part of trading.
So if you find yourself able to remain calm when things look like they’re going sideways, you’ve become a better trader.
Big rewards thrill, but purely chasing money could lead to ruin. Great traders shift their mindset from chasing profit to limiting the losses.
For example, they’re diligent about setting their stop losses and only risking a logical amount of their capital on each trade, such as 2% (although your exact number may vary).
Additionally, they shift away from thinking about absolute profit potential to reward/risk ratio. They aim to see how much they can earn per an acceptable amount of risk.
As a result, these good traders are more forward-thinking. They focus more on base hits that could potentially add up over time instead of a huge one-time potential win now with a lot of risk.
Sound like you? Stick to it. This tends to help traders win in the long term.
Traders never make it far without a good strategy — and they stick to that strategy regardless of how they feel.
Being able to stick with a strategy through thick and thin shows you have discipline and can manage your emotions. It also shows you have confidence in what you’re doing. These mean you’ve grown in your trading journey.
For me, one obvious sign that I had grown in my trading career was my ability to develop my Statistical Disruptive Flow strategy, try it out to see where it lacked, refine it, and so on.
With every improvement came more growth and more wins.
Today, that same SDF strategy brings in triple-digit gains pretty often. I mean, I just closed an options position for a 700% gain. Not too shabby.
I’ll show you how it works, too.
Click here to learn how SDF helps me find amazing yet hidden profit opportunities in the market.
