January 19, 2022
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Read time:
2 minutes
There’s an inverse relationship in the markets between hard work and success.
Of course, trading is hard work and it takes a lot of time and effort to learn in the first place. There’s no denying that. But once you know what you’re doing, you actually end up working less when things are going well.
Think about it.
When you’re risking money in the markets and your trades are going according to your plan, there isn’t much you need to do. You check your plan, execute at your decision points when needed and spend the rest of the time being patient.
When things aren’t going well because you haven’t planned ahead, you have to spend more time and effort under pressure to figure out what’s going on, why things are failing and how you can rectify the situation.
That’s a stressful situation. There’s nothing more mentally draining than having to go through all the mental gymnastics it takes to decide whether you should scale out of a trade when you’re trading off-piste.
This is where a lot of traders get things wrong.
They think they save time overall by getting straight to their trading session each day without ‘wasting’ too much time on their planning and preparation. The irony, as I’ve just explained, is that these lazy routines end up costing more time in the end.
It’s just like what Naval Ravikant says: Hard choices, easy life. Easy choices, hard life.
Rather than jumping straight into your trading session each day, think about what steps you need to take before that to be fully prepared. Go the extra mile to create a detailed trading plan before executing any trades, so you know exactly what to do regardless of which outcome plays out in the markets.
The market is no place for cutting corners.
