How to Build Good Trading Habits in Three Simple Steps

You should keep a trading journal of every trade you make! Backtest every system for at least 1,000 trades! Brush your teeth before bed!
All of this is sound advice. However, how many traders actuallyfollow this advice? Do you? I would bet that less then a third of you reading this article keep a trading journal. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not special. I didn’t keep a record of my trades during the first few years of my trading career. This changed one year ago. Here are the tips that helped me to finally create this habit. These rules are not specific to trading and can be used to build any habit in any area of your life!
The 1 Minute Rule

How do we get on the path of building a habit? This is where the 1 minute rule comes in! If your goal is to keep a trading journal, at
the end of every trading day, take one minute and write down your trades. Even simpler, at the close of trading just write down 1 sentence. This could be your best or worst trade of the day, your trading mood, or a combination of both. Here’s an example:
‘’May22^nd: I took a signal where there wasn’t any and I proceeded to lose 4000 as the Nifty  moved against my position’’

Based on a true story. Okay it IS a true story. But as I started to write this down in my journal, I found myself needing to explain why the trade was a mistake. And I wrote more then one sentence, a lot more.

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