Welcome to NexusFi: the best trading community on the planet, with over 150,000 members Sign Up Now for Free
Genuine reviews from real traders, not fake reviews from stealth vendors
Quality education from leading professional traders
We are a friendly, helpful, and positive community
We do not tolerate rude behavior, trolling, or vendors advertising in posts
We are here to help, just let us know what you need
You'll need to register in order to view the content of the threads and start contributing to our community. It's free for basic access, or support us by becoming an Elite Member -- see if you qualify for a discount below.
-- Big Mike, Site Administrator
(If you already have an account, login at the top of the page)
Now first of all let me say, I don't have ANY time for people that are going to troll this thread because of Tony Robbins, its a waste of my time and theirs. Paul Tudor Jones has been known to consult Tony Robbins and look where he is... No matter what his funds are doing of late, he has had some incredible years.
What the real premise of Tony's work is, for those who don't know, is modeling - modeling the thought patterns, body language and experiences of those who have achieved what his clients want to achieve. So my question is directed at successful traders.. who are you? what do you think about in terms of your trading and who do you think has most influenced your style of trading?
I am looking for a model that I can follow to help my trading journey, not to speed up the process but rather to add some rigidity to it.
I don't model myself on another as we should really be forging our own way forward. But I do enjoy listening to Rob Booker's podcasts covering the whole range of trading topics plus oodles of off-topic trivia and entertaining stuff. Rob is very outspoken and to the point, something I do admire - especially in an American. (nuff said)
Rob's latest podcast (#279) is especially powerful: The Traders Podcast. And check out the older Raghee Horner interviews. Check out the lot... Rob does refer to Tony Robbins and NLP at times.
Maybe rigidity is the wrong word. So far I am profitable, however not highly profitable. I guess what I would really like to know is whether or not I am going in the right direction. With the use of a model, I will know whether or not I am going in the right direction..
Well, if you are profitable you are surely going in the right direction already. Don't try to push yourself too quickly and I guess all the answers you are looking for are staring you in the face when you review your own trading. You DO review your trades don't you?
And in Tony Robbins talk (I love his stuff too), be careful of your own limiting beliefs. Thinking you need a model to achieve high profitability could be your own undoing. Just apply Tony's principles and do your own analysis of yourself. Tony has already distilled numerous high performance models into the books and courses he sells. No need to find a trader model. YOU are the model. All great traders are very different. Just take what works for you and do it.
Congrats on being profitable as that is a major step up. No, more than major step. Now stop limiting yourself.
As @RichardHK says if you are profitable you are going in the right direction...period.
You don't state the type of trading you do, nor your approach. In my case I am a long term trader in stocks using charting as my approach.
Here is my advice...build upon your success...don't try to change it in mid stream. I have seen too many traders who had consistent though low level success who decided to make wholesale changes to their approach. Perhaps they were initially successful with a few big gains, they however sacrificed the low consistent approach that they were making prior to the change. Then they hit a rough spot with a couple of big losses and wanted to return to that low level consistent approach...but they had no journal to fall back on and lost the mojo of their previous trading.
If you follow my journal, you will see that I don't follow the conventional wisdom of using indicators and overlay. Being interested in charting I read/own books written by gurus in each form of charting...you want Candlesticks the go to person is Steve Nison, you like Bollinger bands (and I really like Bollies) then John Bollinger is the guy to read, P&F charts then read Thomas Dorsey, MACD read Gerald Appel, Average True Range/the Relative Strength Index (RSI)/Average Directional Index/ Parabolic SAR then J. Welles Wilder Jr. is your man.
Did I copy their approach using each indicator, chart or overlay....nopes. The reason is that each writer in my opinion tried to apply their approach to everything. I liked many things that were promoted, disliked others. So I cherry picked what I liked, and eventually found that I could modify the parameters of most indicators and integrate them into a suite of indicators/overlays and charts together so that I could draw a consensus. Over a period of 15 years as a non-paying hobby (creating/following charts (mainly P&F types) from Saturday editions of the financial pages from newspapers) I followed 100 stocks and I literally paper traded to learn how things worked. About 15 years ago I started really trading and about 11 years ago I did it for real and it has been my sole source of income since.
Is my charting methods cast in concrete? No...I am still open to tweaks and I constantly try new ideas...
But it started by reading how the gurus did their trading and taking what I liked...discarding what I disliked and integrating it into a system that made sense to me.
So that is my suggestion to you...you probably don't have an original system (if you do congrats but still do reading to improve it). Do your reading and experiment with small tweaks. I have not back-tested my approach in a formal way as I think it is too complicated to do so and I have no tools to do it. I would test my new approach on historical data 20 years old...if it worked I would try data 5 years old....if it still worked then I would test on current data....there is nothing worse than optimizing an approach on current data only.
Don't be in a rush to make the big bucks...that will come with experience.
Since you are profitable you are going in the right direction.
Take a look at your own trading. Why are you not as profitable as you think you should be? Determine what it is that you are doing that stops you from being as profitable as you would like to be and stop doing that.
Take a look at any of the Jack Schwager Market Wizard books. Every trader is unique. You have to come up with your own system.
Successful traders have a plan and the discipline to follow their plan.
"The days when I keep my gratitude higher than my expectations, I have really good days" RW Hubbard
If you are consistently profitable, it wouldn't be wise to drastically alter your trading strategy. You keep saying you are looking for a "model", by model, are you referencing a specific trading model, or a trader to look up to, similar to a role model?
Either way, what others are saying is true. Do not try to become someone else by copying everything they do and expecting identical results. There is no secret formula for success in business/trading. You won't find anything that specifically will state whether or not you are moving in the correct direction.
The only accurate way to measure success is against YOURSELF. If you see that you are regularly improving each day, or each week, than you are heading in the right direction. Please don't become one of the people who compare themselves to everyone else only to look back at what they are doing discouraged. What works for 10 other people may not work for you. I also suggest the market wizard books. These are all extremely successful people who each have their individual strategies. If George Soros tried to match the strategy of Paul Tudor Jones, he may fail. If Warren Buffet tried to match Druckenmiller, he may fail. You must find success in your own words, not someone else's.
