The Road to Successful Trading

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
How to Design and Construct An Effective Trading Plan 
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Chapter 3: Developing your Personal Profile 
 
“To live is to choose. But to choose, you must know who you are and what you stand for, where you 
want to go, and why you want to get there” Anonymous 
 
Who are you? What are your needs? Why do you trade? All of these questions and more are just a 
prelude to developing your daily trading objectives. But a very important concern needs to be 
addressed: can we be objective about ourselves? Few of us can completely strip away the façade we 
have created for ourselves over time. Often, many of the basic personal characteristics and 
preferences we have may have been the result of subconscious processes.
As part of process of developing a trading plan, we must define our goals; what really motives us. 
However, to get the most accurate results, we must do the best job we can to honestly examine 
ourselves. As a trader’s career unfolds, we learn much more about whom we actually are and this 
helps to separate our self image from who we really are. Sometimes, there is a divergence between 
the two. This is one of the intangible benefits of interacting with the crucible of trading. Winning 
and losing is a daily event in trading and both of those events can be very telling about our attitudes 
about our lives in general.
If you are an independent trader, you do most of your trading in isolation. You have to be your own 
boss and employee at the same time. Knowing how to “manage yourself” and how to keep 
motivated and disciplined is a much under-estimated required skill a trader needs to develop. The 
more you analyze yourself, the better.
The isolation can be dangerous in that we all have the tendency to agree with ourselves and we can 
miss opportunities to grow and improve. Indeed, trading is all about constant learning and 
evolution. Evaluation is so important to keeping things tuned up that traders analyze every trade to 
help determine how well the system is anticipating the proper direction and movement of the 
investment. To accomplish this task, traders keep a Trading Journal. 
How to Design and Construct An Effective Trading Plan 
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After each trade, the trader analyzes and records specific information about the trade and the 
mindset of the trader. Not only does the trader learn about the effectiveness of the trade but also the 
trader learns more about themselves and how they react in certain situations. This regular self 

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appraisal helps to refine the knowledge of ourselves which becomes an invaluable tool not only in 
trading but also for daily living.
But, to get things started in the process of self-evaluation, we ask a series of questions to help us 
focus on answering some important questions. Try not to side step this process as our egos don’t 
like to see too much sunlight. The tendency is to pass this part off as “touchy-feely” but it is an 
important part of the process.
Many people get into trading for the wrong reasons and the sooner that can be made obvious, the 
better for the aspiring trader. For instance, some might be trying to create a job for themselves when 
they are really afraid of the rejection that can be encountered in the job seeking process. If an ego is 
that fragile, it will never hold up during the trying process of trading with money on the line.