Diseño del modelo explicativo

hen it comes to trading, many first time traders want to jump right in with both feet. Unfortunately, very few of those trad-ers are successful; successful trading requires knowledge, skill and ex-perience.

Before you dive in, you need to determine what your goals are. What do you hope to achieve with your trading activities? Why do you want to trade?

1.) To buy a new sports car?

2.) To buy a bigger house?

3.) To make $100,000 a year / month / week?

4.) To finance a college education for your children?

5.) To make a full-time income to support your entire family?

6.) Freedom to choose what, when, and who you do things with?

7.) To have a fun, exciting life full of extraordinary experiences?

8.) To work less and enjoy more time with your loved ones?

9.) Or are you just planning to make some extra cash on weekends?

Before you trade a single penny, really think about what you hope to achieve with that investment. Knowing what your goal is will help you

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stay motivated when you’re facing a tough spell of trading, and it’ll help you make smarter investment decisions along the way.

But be realistic:

Too often, people start day trading with dreams of becoming rich over-night. I’m not going to say that it is impossible (because it is possible), but let me remind you that it’s also very rare. It’s much safer to create a trading strategy that will allow your account to grow at a slower pace over time, which can ultimately be used for retirement or a child’s edu-cation.

So let’s talk about how to define your goals and make a plan for your day trading endeavors.

Here are the three important steps:

1.) Define Your SMART Goal

SMART is an acronym which stands for:

1.) Specific 2.) Measurable 3.) Attractive 4.) Realistic 5.) Timeframe

Fortunately, when it comes to day trading, it’s very easy to define a goal that meets all of these criteria. You simply specify exactly how much money you would like to make per month with your day trading.

Example:

I want to make $10,000 per month with day trading.

• Is this SPECIFIC? –

Yes, a dollar amount of $10,000 is very specific.

• Is this MEASURABLE? –

Absolutely! Just check the balance of your trading account at the beginning of the month and at the end of the month. Your that YOU are motivated by this goal.

• Is this REALISTIC? –

We talked about this in the previous chapter. Successful people believe that there are no unrealistic goals; only unrealistic time-frames. Right now, your trading account may not be big enough for you to realistically trade enough shares or contracts to achieve your long-term trading goal, but if you follow the steps outlined in this book, it’s very possible that your long-term goal WILL become realistic in the near future.

• Does it have a TIMEFRAME? –

Of course it does: you want to make $10,000 per month; the timeframe is 30 days.

2.) Make a Plan

Developing a plan is essential to your success, but we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves. We’ll talk about your trading plan in detail in the second part of the book, “Your Trading Strategy – The Cornerstone to Your Trading Success.” Just make sure you don’t mix up the order: you first define your trading goals, and then you develop a trading plan.

Many traders look for a trading strategy first and then hope that the trading strategy will help them achieve their goals. That’s putting the cart in front of the horse.

Regardless of what you’re doing, you should first define WHAT you want to accomplish, and then plan HOW to achieve that goal. Otherwise you might find out that you started climbing up the wrong ladder right at the very beginning.

3.) Execute the Plan

This is where the rubber meets the road. Once you have your plan, you’ll need to actually execute it. And naturally, that’s where most of us fail.

Let me give you an example:

Amazon lists 18,361 books for “Weight Loss” and another 28,707 books for “Exercising and Fitness.” That’s a total of 47,068 books on the popular topic “How to Lose Weight” (compared to only 4,463 books in the category “Stock Trading and Investing”).

If I wrote a book on weight loss, it would be a very, very short:

1.) Eat less.

2.) Exercise more.

Come on, it’s simple: we all know that we can lose 10 pounds in 10 weeks if we just follow those two rules.

We reduce our calorie intake to 1,500 or 2,000 calories per day, and then we do some aerobic exercises at least three times a week for a minimum of 30 minutes.

We have a SMART goal (“lose 10 pounds in 10 weeks”), and we have a plan (“eat less and exercise more”), so why do we keep buying these books and magazines that promise a new diet, a new way to lose weight?

Because we fail to execute our plan.

And then we blame the plan: “it’s too hard,” “it’s impossible,” “it doesn’t work.” This isn’t true. We didn’t succeed because we were simply too lazy, or we didn’t have the discipline to execute our plan. But instead of working on the true problem – the execution – we change the plan itself, hoping that there’s an easier way.

Successful people will realize that their problem doesn’t lie in the plan, but in the execution.

Here’s what you can do in order to ensure your own motivation and dis-cipline when it comes to executing your plan:

It’s important to focus on the big picture. It’ll help you stay motivated when your learning reaches a plateau, or when you face a couple of losses. All great accomplishments start with a great vision.

Once you’ve defined your SMART goal and the amount of money you want to make with trading, ask yourself this: “How would achieving this goal impact your family life?” and “how would it affect you personally?”

Take your time to answer these questions and write down the answers.

As you know, human beings are great at procrastination. We don’t like to be outside of our comfort zone, and that’s why sometimes we do nothing and just “hope” that we will achieve our goals. As you can imagine, the chances of achieving a goal by doing nothing are slim to none. So, an-swering the next question will help you to take action immediately.

Ask yourself: “Why should you act NOW?”

When you take the time to actually think about the answer, it will be a huge motivator. Little tricks like this will help you stay focused on your long-term goal, which will help you to execute your plan.

Action Items:

Continue your trading journal. Write down the reasons WHY you want to trade and what you are trying to accomplish with your trading. Be specific! Define your smart goals. Dream big.

Write down the impact that your trading success will have on YOUR life and the life of your family. This is an important step, because it’ll help you get through the challenging times, which all traders experience.

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