Trading Goals

What are your trading goals for this month?

 8% return of your account? Making 10 pips a day? Making 300 pips this month? Bringing in $8000?

This month I would like you guys to try something different. Instead of setting performance based goals, try setting consistency based goals as well or instead.

The thing about performance based goals is that they don’t take into account ‘bad trading’. If you hit your goal of say a 5% return at the end of the month, you are usually not too focused on how you got there. You had a goal, you achieved it, you are happy.

Now what if that 5% goal was reached because you took a lot of non-setup trades and they just happened to work? What if that 5% goal was reached because you deviated from your trading plan, increased your lots and got lucky? What if that 5% goal was reached because you adjusted your stop a lot wider than your method allows and the price just happened to go in your favor?

What we want to do is completely eliminate or dramatically reduce bad trading habits.

Performance Based Goal Examples:

• This month I aim to make 10 pips a day.
• This month I aim to make 5% of my account.
• This month I aim to make 300 pips.
• This month I aim to make $8,000.

Consistency Based Goal Examples:

• This month I will aim to not place any non-setup trades.
• This month I will aim to not widen my stop.
• This month I will aim to properly and honestly record all of my trades.
• This month I will aim to enter all setups without hesitation.
• This month I will aim to not exit my positions prematurely.

What if you don’t achieve your consistency goals at the end of the month?

Well you now have something to work on the following month.

If 50% of your April trades were non-setup entries, aim for less than that during May. If you widened your stop 5 times during April, aim to do it less than 5 times during May. If fear took over and you only entered 50% of setups, aim to enter 60% during May.

Remember patience and discipline takes time and practice 🙂