My Best 8 Ideas From 2024

Heeding the messages into the New Year

I started this newsletter with no background or skills as a writer. I had no idea what I was doing.

What began as a daunting task has now become a labour of love. Through writing, I have been better able to express trading ideas and concepts that have been stuck in my head prior. It has increased self-awareness and highlighted clear areas of improvement.

I am proud of much of the content and believe it has set in motion some positive ripples in the trading community.

It is also clear that there is still so much I need to internalise. Identifying changes is one thing, but being able to put new solutions into practice is very much another.

A recent podcast episode with Devon Eriksen has left a lasting impression on me. Here he described the concept of “agency” - the ability to take action or choose what action to take to achieve your goals. Agency is about problem-solving AND learning from mistakes in the belief that you will eventually be successful.

This is particularly relevant and necessary for discretionary traders.

Erikensen goes on to say:

You are going to get a lot of things wrong. So you have to keep trying again until you eliminate all of the errors from your model or from your plan. And you cant do that with pure intelligence, because intelligence is just the ability to analyze. It doesn’t tell you what the universe is like. You have to go over and over and over again.

At its core, this newsletter is all about trading ideas- actionable insights that you may take into your trading to test and build into your high-skilled craft. As I reflect on this first full year of this publication, here are some of my favourite ideas that I shared that I continue to solve. In reading this, you may identify with the patterns that you must work on for 2025.

1. Play To Strengths

Leveraging your strengths is the key to performance as it taps into your deepest motivations.

The challenge is to find an edge and trading style that best suits your unique characteristics. From this, you must apply yourself ruthlessly.

A simple framework to guide this process:

• This is how I trade when I make money

More specifically:

• This is the catalyst/s where I make money

• This is the timeframe and the playbooks where I make money

• This is the routine I follow when I make money

• This is the specific pattern and entry where I make money

The key point to stress is that everyone is different. Where trader education and literature often fall short is that they focus on one specific setup or style as gospel. Education is not about how to do a task. It is about how to learn a task.

The sad truth is we can’t be anything we want to be. Instead, use your unique skills and talents. If you are a man of stats, then go down a quantitative route. If you are more visual, gain insights from the order book and tape. If you are a social animal, build a team around you for market perspectives and information.

Identify and play to YOUR strengths. I ripped through examples in November to reinforce my best plays and where I make money.

What are your underlying strengths and how can this help you in trading?

Link: November Monthly Review

2. Do The Hard Work On Yourself

Resistance is that thing that stops us from doing what we need to do. It is the space between the life we live and the unlived life within us.

In trading, I think it is very easy to sit down and trade. Call it the gambler mentality and the need to play. What is hard is to knowingly apply oneself. What is hard is to do the necessary work on yourself before and during the trading day to perform. What is hard is facing up to losing days and learning.

This resistance can be beaten by being professional. Here are some action steps:

• Inspiration comes from the process: by performing the mundane physical act of sitting down and starting to work on a project, you set in motion a certain sequence of events that produce inspiration. Things jump out to be explored and tested. Listen to these.

• Patience: it is a journey. It takes time for the stars to align and to build the necessary skills. Patience is needed to keep oneself from flaming out in each trade. Success will come with consistency but not on a schedule when you want it to.

• Skills: focus on skill acquisition because you want to have the full arsenal available when the big opportunities come along.

• Play it as it lays: there is going to be adversity, grievances, bad calls, bad beats as well as lucky breaks along the way. Accept this reality in trading.

• Preparation: the professional is prepared each day and ready to confront self-sabotage. Take what the day provides. Understand that the territory changes every day.

• Self-validation: be able to notice what you are feeling with non-judgemental awareness and acceptance. The professional cannot allow the actions of others to define his reality.

Trading is a full-time endeavour. Prepare for each day and each catalyst fully. Prepare your mind for what you are about to do. Work on the playbooks and write-ups so that you can tap into your best self when that one good opportunity comes along. Assess your trading coldly and objectively. Be tough-minded and thick-skinned to accept adversity. Where you fall short, improve it. Come back every day. The market is not out to get you. The only thing that stands in your way is whatever emotional baggage you choose to hold onto.

Link: The War of Art

3. Where Is Your Trading Awful?

There is one major obstacle that stands in the way of excellence: mistakes.

A starting point to determine where performance is breaking down is to clearly define mistakes, errors, and problem patterns. Identify any repetitive nature and its consequences. Heed the painful data.

It is only by facing up to our weaknesses that can we truly own them.

For example, I am awful when:

• Reacting to a callout where I have done no work, reading, or thinking.

• Being involved in illiquid stocks leading to slippage and crowding.

• Entering new positions from 11am to 12 pm AFTER the meat of the move is done.

• Flipping from one direction to the other.

These tendencies arise when I feel I need to be involved or have missed a move. I think it comes down to my impulsive nature and always wanting to participate. I am competitive and the feeling of missing out is a hit to this psyche that I should be first.

Now that these problems have been identified, specific solutions can be built to correct them.

Mistakes have the potential to accelerate your development as a trader. Heed them. You need to become an exceptional loser to succeed in this game.

What are your common problem patterns? Can you clearly define your weaknesses and build solutions to counter them?

Link: Where Is My Trading Sht

4. Bet Exponentially In Unique Situations

The market ebbs and flows with opportunities. The skill lies in the ability to dance between the moments to take action and those to remain still.

The best traders I have seen can upgrade a regular trade to "unique" when special situations arise. From here they swing BIG.

These unique variables could include:

• a catalyst so big that it needs time and price to play out

• a breaking news event that has not been widely disseminated

• a move that becomes extended beyond historical norms

• extreme consensus positioning.

Outlier events are where the highest Expected Value arises. You must be betting exponentially in such circumstances. Throughout my career, the month and year have been made by just a few outlier winners.

Here are some tools to better help identify such situations:

1. Know your best plays deeply through screen time, immersion, testing and write-ups.

2. Build graders to asses multi variables to give a points score

3. Spend time in the pre-open planning different trade scenarios and forming IF/THEN statements

4. Pre-define sizing at different grading buckets

When you're in your best setups, ask yourself...

Am I big enough here?

Link: Grading setups to increase sizing