Why Trading Goals are Important ?

By | March 22, 2017 3:30 pm

Setting clear, specific written goals can have an incredible effect on the levels of performance that you achieve. Goals are desired outcomes. They are what we would like to achieve.

In Sportsmind, Jeffrey Hodges states that

“only about 5% of people surveyed are goal setters and less than 1% have written down goals”.

Given how important definite goals are for focus, drive and motivation – the fuel for success – this means potentially that 95-99% of people are under-achieving. What about you?

Reasons people don’t set goals

Lets understand the reason why people do not set goals.
Not Accountable — Most of Traders just simply do not want to put the time and effort into setting goals.They Consider it as a futile exercise and avoid it completely.

Unaware of the benefits.– Ignorance is a Bliss Goals are great motivator but most of traders who have not used it cannot know the benefits without trying them. Traders need to try them once before realizing the benefits. For that we need to get out of our comfort zone and try something new

Don’t know how —  Not knowing and Not trying to Learn are two major roadblocks. Little training is given to traders on how to set goals effectively we given during our training session. and it has done wonders in there trading career.

Fear of failure — For most people, setting goals has an anxiety attached to What if I don’t achieve the goal? For many, this doubt is fatal. Instead they assume that if they don’t set a goal and then get something good, it will be a nice surprise; and if things don’t work out, then it won’t be as disappointing.

Why Trades should Set goals

Few Benefits of Goal Setting

  • Create motivation — To Take Efforts needed to achieve Goal.
  • Focus on the Process — We need to Focus on Mastering the Process instead of waiting for Results.
  • Enable feedback
  • Increase your effort towards Learning– When goal-setting is followed by feedback and then by further goal-setting, we create loops that accelerate our learning;
  • Increase your levels of persistence when faced with challenge.

 

Suppose I want to Set my Goals as to improve my Skills on Swing trading in next 2 months. Once I set this Goal now I need to put efforts in learning the skills. For that I need to Focus on my learning and mastering the skills, either I can learn by reading books or can Take a course from person who are already expert in that.

Once the learning starts I need to keep giving feedback to myself on my shortcoming so as to improve my learning which will eventually improve my skills.

Goals Traders Should Keep

  • Risk management goals – Goals pertaining to trade sizing and draw downs and account management.
  • Execution goals – Goals pertaining to implementing trade ideas/plans so as to maximize reward and minimize risk;
  • Self-management goals – Goals pertaining to maintaining a healthy mindset for optimal decision-making;
  • Personal, non-trading goals – Goals that reflect desired outcomes in areas of life outside trading that might spill over into trading performance, including physical fitness, relationships, spirituality, etc.

Goals are desired outcomes. They are what we would like to achieve. You will have them, and have acted on them.

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