Several readers had the same question after my email on systematizing your trading: where is the best place to start?
Everyone agrees that systematizing your trading is a great idea but it’s hard to know what things are worth streamlining.
If you’re still pointing and clicking to enter your trades, there are a slew of things you can do right away.
The easiest and most common things traders can do to start systematizing are:
- Automatically calculating your position size (use a formula in Excel or Google Sheets)
- Set up and start using hotkeys in your platform to enter orders (here is the documentation for TWS)
- Configure strategies in Brokerage+ in Trade-Ideas (more here)
- Use AutoHotKey to create keyboard shortcuts for common tasks (my personal favorite!)
Every trader’s routine is a little different, so the highest priority thing for you to systematize is going to vary widely.
So what’s the #1 way to determine what to start with?
Here’s an exercise I did for many weeks that opened my eyes to just how much more money I could make in my trades by systematizing.
Every day I would record my screen as I traded. After my trading day was complete, I’d save the file and then review it as par of my end of day review.
This was incredibly revealing.
Watching these videos was a window into everything I was doing wrong that I had no way of realizing during the trading day in real time.
All of a sudden every day I had multiple insights into very tangible things I could do to get better.
Ways to tweak my layout.
Tasks that took longer than I realized.
Inefficiencies that added up to just barely missing profitable trades.
Looking over your own shoulder as a neutral observer allows you to see and understand things that you don’t even realize as you trade – things that translate into real profits that you’re leaving on the table.
Here’s a challenge for you.
Do this for a month.
Pick just one thing a day to streamline.
Systematize it.
Repeat each day.
After a month I guarantee that you’ll be a completely different trader than you are today.
