Your trader identity is something that is very important. Understanding your key qualities will allow you to interact with markets more naturally. When you are able to interact more naturally, you won’t need to spend loads of time adjusting yourself to your strategy. You will simply be who you are and deploy your strategy as well as you can.
It’s likely that, if you have a good view of the market and trade a reasonable size, yet still have fear, anxiety or tension when trading, the root cause of such things is an unclear understanding of your identity.
Some of this work has been done in the trader introduction. We will not look to dig a bit deeper into this concept and get a clearer view of those guiding qualities.
REFRESHER :
What do you spend your free time doing?
What is the one thing you need to do to feel accomplished in a day?
What do you enjoy most about trading?
TRADING DETAILS :
I find it easy to follow a plan, why or why not :
My trading strategy is easy/complex because :
The most important part of my trading strategy is __ because :
I tend to find ___ trades to be the ones with the least hesitation :
It doesn’t matter if I won or lost as long as I :
I would happily stop trading for the day if :
When I review, it’s most important to me that I ___ during the trading day :
I often find myself trading outside the hours I planned (true/false, explain) :
When I review, I have lots/few trades outside my trading system :
Watching the screens all day makes me :
If left alone on a park bench I would :
CREATION
Ideally, I would be able to ___ in my trading :
Ideally, I would also be extremely :
I would like ___ to define my day to day life :
When I am no longer here, I want people to say he/she :
Your trader identity will grow a bit with you. We change over time. From here, I want to suggest you consider a few ways to develop the qualities you’ve outlined above. Actions and expression have a way of cementing our identity. We first determine who we want to be, then we walk into being that person.
This might mean you take up a writing blog where you talk about your thoughts in line with who you want to be. It may mean you set time aside each week to act in line with your identity. No matter the outlet, it’s very important that you do intentional things to be the person you want to be, live the way you want to live. This creates thought patterns that will serve you well in all areas of life, not just markets.
It’s also very important to understand that who you are most may not serve you most in markets. For this, we need to use what we can and then direct the unhelpful energy elsewhere.
For example, an adventurous type may need to get out after the trading is done. A spontaneous type may need to randomly say “I’m not trading today” or trade only from alerts. A perfectionist trader may need to aim for absolute perfection and avoid all else. Be creative and learn to find a way to make trading work for you, then get away and do what your personality needs you to do in order to perform at the highest level.