Breaking Down Your Trading Strategy

What is the number one thing you can do that will have the greatest impact on your trading strategy in the shortest amount of time? Of course, every trader will have their own unique answer to this question. According to Raymond H Burchett, though, the answer is simple: break down your trading strategy.

Burchett is the founder of Trust1st, an educational resource designed to help traders reach their fullest potential. In a recent NinjaTrader Ecosystem webinar, How to Keep Decisions Ahead of the Market, he explained his answer to the above question in detail. He believes that the key to confident trading is to take a hard look at your trading strategy and analyze both its strengths and its weaknesses.

“Keep going deeper and deeper, understanding how your strategy is giving you a competitive advantage against the other folks in the market,” he said. “That’s the best way to understand how much you trust yourself”.

Burchett said that self-trust allows you to achieve a high level of intuitive function while trading. He compared the actions of a confident trader to that of a pro athlete. An excellent athlete understands how their strategy relates to the motion of the game around them and is able to make intuitive, confident and strategic decisions based on that understanding. In the same way, a trader that has thoroughly examined their trading strategy can feel confident in themselves and their approach to the market.

The key to effectively breaking down your trading strategy is to be as specific and realistic as possible. Chart out in detail what it is about your trading strategy that gives you an advantage over other individuals in the market. Each bit of granular detail will increase your understanding of your own strategy, allowing you to trust both it and yourself more.

Alternatively, if examining your strategy to this degree does not increase your confidence, those areas of doubt may reveal gaps in your approach that you need to address. In this way, the breaking-down process will help you build confidence and simultaneously identify areas for growth.

In this short clip, Raymond H Burchett explains the benefits of this process in more detail.

If you want to learn more about building a consistent trading strategy, be sure to also watch Discover a Core Trading Strategy, hosted by Paul Bratby of Trade the Fifth and be sure to check out all of our other free trading videos!