Market Advance featured on Your Trading Coach

When anyone who knows about Your Trading Coach, reads back into my old blog posts, it should become obvious to them that my understanding of Price Action was heavily influenced by Lance’s approach. Even though my trading system is mid to long term, I am reviewing his Price Action articles anytime I feel like I cannot read the current market structure.

I am very pleased that he decided to show some of my trades on his blog, so that his readers can see that the same principles apply to any market, on any timeframe.

I would like to emphasize, that when I say his blog influenced my understanding of the market, I do not mean that I read it once, had an “a-ha” moment and realized how to trade profitably, never to lose again. The only reason his writing is helping me is because I am coming back to it every single week – not only to read his new article, but to look through the old posts in all categories that he writes. We do not learn by reading some idea once, we learn by systematically reminding ourselves the important principles in that idea and applying them in our daily practice.

If you read “Market Wizards” by Jack Schwagger, you will note that the best traders in the world are constantly improving by learning from other professionals in the field. I do not recall a single interview in the book where the trader would not show his respect for other’s work and would not acknowledge the fact that he is still learning from other traders, books, market newsletters and of course the market itself. It goes to show that no matter how successful a professional trader is, he still needs to constantly learn and improve.

Eleven years ago, when I was just starting getting interested in the market, I was believing that I need to learn for a year, possibly two, and then I will just enjoy trading my system and spending the profits. Now, more than a decade later, I am learning much more than when I started, spending more hours each day on learning (certainly spending more time studying the market than actually trading it) and only recently starting to open trades in the right places. I came to realize, that the essence of anything we want to do well in this life, is in constant studying and practice. There is no point where we can stop learning and relax. Instead, we relax by enjoying the learning process, constantly fascinated by the infinity of knowledge we are yet to learn.


 

Part of my everyday trading process, is reading selected market books. Along with new books I add to my library every couple months, there are some that I continue reading every single day. “Trading in the Zone” by Mark Douglas and “Market Wizards” by Jack Schwagger are only two examples without which any progress in my trading would not be possible.

I have read “Trading in the Zone” in Russian when I just got interested in trading eleven years ago, but unfortunately I could not see how it will help me to make any money trading. I put it aside, and continued pursuing more “Holy Grail” trading methods, confident that I will find the one that NEVER loses – why do I need any trading psychology then? Nine years later I was still learning about the market, developing new trading systems, still unable to make any consistent profit, still not finding the “Holy Grail”. Realizing that I am not getting anywhere I started looking for answers, and noticed the book again on Amazon, while shopping for new technical analysis bibles. I bought it in English about a year and a half ago and it made all the difference for my trading performance (I was very lucky to stumble upon Lance’s blog about six months later as well).

Since then I have read “Trading in the Zone” fifteen times, taking notes, highlighting important parts. I cannot emphasize enough how many new insights I am getting with each new reading. Every single day I put a timer for 10 minutes and read it again. Today I am on page 87, and as soon as I am done, I simply go back to page 1.

Last year I was living in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, and on 15th of September we had the biggest hurricane in modern Baja history – Odile –  hit the town. After one scary night we found ourselves in a house without a single window, ocean water covering everything. Almost all the books in my library got damaged. Still, I decided not to buy them again and instead try to restore them. Here is a photo of my copy of “Trading in the Zone” today:

"Trading in the Zone" by Mark Douglas
“Trading in the Zone” by Mark Douglas
"Trading in the Zone" by Mark Douglas
“Trading in the Zone” by Mark Douglas

 

I am not trying to say that this particular book or Price Action based trading system is a “Holy Grail”. Instead, I am saying that the attitude of constant learning and improvement, such as you can clearly see in Your Trading Coach blog, is that illusive “Holy Grail” that every trader is trying to find outside, not realizing that it’s always been inside – hidden by our ego and only waiting to be developed.

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