-Benjamin Graham
You might think that this means that success is a matter of luck or some inborn aptitude. It’s not.
Lincoln Holbrook will show you how the very nature of randomness makes it possible to apply statistical mathematics across 7 Pillars of Control to get highly specific expectations about trading results. These results can be sorted into 5 broad trading categories which each have their own unique risk/reward profiles and expectations about what results should look like.
Unsuccessful investors tend to let the outcome of their most recent trades negatively affect the decisions they make on future trades; reducing profitability. A focus on the most recent trade outcomes makes it more difficult to control the emotions of fear and greed leading to cutting profits short while letting losses run.
On the other hand, those traders who consistently generate market profits understand the things you’ll learn during the webinar. They understand the mathematical probabilities of their chosen risk/reward profile and therefore approach the markets with clear and specific expectations. This gives them more confidence to continue following their trading process even during inevitable trading slumps.
Comparing specific expectations about what results should look like to their actual results gives these traders a more productive and helpful inner dialogue about their trading. This positive and productive dialogue helps them avoid the self-doubt, second guessing, and confusion faced by others. It also helps them continually improve their results.
Lincoln has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and talked to thousands of traders to figure out why so many struggle to be consistently profitable. What he discovered is that most people don’t know the seven things they (and only they) control which provide specific expectations about results and from which they can build a trading process. They don’t understand how these seven things work together in surprising ways to significantly increase annual rates of return.
A trading process is more than entry or exit signals. It’s more than trade alerts. It’s more than a few trading rules.
A trading process combines three things:
The importance of having specific expectations and a complete trading process cannot be overstated.
As Geoff Colvin wrote in his book, Why Talent Is Overrated,
“In the research, the poorest performers don’t set goals at all; they just slog through their work. Mediocre performers set goals that are general and are often focused on simply achieving a good outcome – win the order; get the new project proposal done. The best performers set goals that are not about the outcome but rather about the process of reaching the outcome.”
So it is with trading. Specific, realistic, and statistically valid expectations and the ability to compare actual results to these expectations leads to a more productive inner dialogue about your trading. This helps you avoid such temptations as FOMO, self-doubt, inconsistent applications of rules, and other pitfalls faced by individual investors.
If you want to be a best performing trader and change your financial life through the markets, you need to focus on the process of following your trade plan exactly and not be emotionally reactive to the most recent trade outcomes. This is especially true when you experience losses. All traders lose money…the successful ones remain focused on and confident in their trading process as they continue following it exactly to place trades.
Most people are intimidated about the markets. This is natural because the markets move in random ways and most people haven’t studied to become full time traders. They know they need to prepare for retirement so they work hard to earn more money and they pay professionals to manage (and grow) their money. Yet these professionals have failed. Over the past 20 years, they’ve returned on average only 4% annually after fees.
At some point in life, people wake up to the fact that they won’t have as much as they expected when they retire and so they feel pressure to begin trading their own money hoping for a better result in a sort of “last-ditch” effort to change their unhappy economic reality.
So they begin to research the best ways to trade their own money. Yet this is also confusing because so many companies make such big promises about their “easy,” “proven,” “secret,” or “highly-successful” trading systems. The unfortunate thing is that all of these systems lack training in key areas that are crucial to success.
This is why Lincoln has seen only a few people actually have consistent market profits and trade their way to financial freedom.
For most people it’s hard to remain consistent while trading. Despite a sincere desire to improve results and real effort in the markets, most people tend to trade with an approach of “buy; then hope, wish, and pray for a profit.”
Generally this haphazard approach is caused by the part-time nature of the effort. Most people who trade their own account also have full time jobs or careers where they spend much of their energy and focus.
This part time effort combined with a sense of fear about putting money at risk, makes it harder to approach the markets with any sort of consistency. This inconsistent approach makes for inconsistent and unprofitable trades over time.
Most part-time traders begin their trading journey feeling a pressure to catch up their accounts quickly. Many in the financial world prey on this desire by pitching compelling opportunities for turning small amounts of money into big profits quickly.
Yet this emphasis on perfect entries does nothing for the individual seeking to grow their accounts. Worse, it actually hurts their ability to become profitable traders. The truth is that entries are only one aspect of a systematic and repeatable trading process that provides consistent profits in a repeatable way.
The pressure to find perfect entries becomes an irrational focus on the outcome of individual trades.
It might seem logical that focusing on individual trade outcomes and working to keep each of these outcomes profitable is the best way to be a successful trader. But this isn’t true.
In our experience, most people have no idea how to create realistic expectations about what their results should look like. Nor do they understand how to gain predictability in a random market through the use of statistical probabilities. They are surprised by the control they can exercise to get consistent and predictable returns using a process that is both measurable and repeatable.
Once they are exposed to these concepts they become excited about their trading and begin to feel more confident about their financial future; often for the very first time.
Once you learn what to do and make the behavioral shifts required to actually do it, you begin to take control of your financial future. This is important because individual traders with smaller accounts can get far higher annual returns independent of any financial advisor.
We look forward to seeing you on the webinar!