Welcome to a brand spankin’ new trading year!
The holiday break is a good time to sit back and reflect on the year that was.
Have you started on your trading resolutions for 2025?
If not, here are simple questions to think about.
Remember, it’s important to be completely honest with yourself when assessing your performance!
First, ask yourself questions such as:
- What are my trading strengths?
- What are my trading weaknesses?
- Was I able to stick to my trading plan?
- Have I achieved my trading goals for the past year?
You can start by going through your trading journal and reviewing each and every one of your trades. This is an excellent way to find inspiration for setting your resolutions and goals for the new year.
As you go through your journal, you can get more specific. Here are some questions you can ask yourself:
- What did I do well? What didn’t I do well?
- What worked for me? What didn’t?
- How well did I do in gauging market sentiment?
- Did I follow my trading rules? Do I need to explore other methods?
- What else do I need to improve in my framework to perform better?
List down the things that you need to work on. Be brutally honest with yourself – that’s how you’ll come up with the best resolutions.
Here are some simple but effective examples that you might find applicable to your own trading:
- I will set a daily / weekly / monthly loss limits for my trading account.
- I will stay focused and trade the entire London session from beginning to end.
- I will dedicate two hours on Sunday night to prepare my charts and read up on economic reports that will be released in the upcoming week.
- I will be more aggressive and press my winners.
- I will roll my stop higher on swing positions to protect my profits.
- I will not put off writing and updating my trading journal on a daily basis.
- I will not make any of these newbie mistakes.
Of course your list of resolutions will be just a list of meaningless words unless you actually act on fulfilling your goals. That means you need to establish methods to help you achieve your objectives.
You have to follow up and follow through!
One thing you can do to help you accomplish your goals is to re-evaluate yourself on a more regular basis. You don’t have to wait until the end of the year to review your progress!
Take a moment every week, month, or quarter to reassess your progress and get back on track.
Have you been sticking to your resolutions? Which of your resolutions are you having difficulty with and how can you improve on them?
It would also help if you had an accountability buddy or a trading mentor to help you follow through. They can nag you, bug you, and give you an objective assessment of your progress. I highly advise this for those of you who have difficulty sticking to resolutions.
If you didn’t perform so well in the past year, having a positive mindset can go a long way in helping you bounce back and sustain your progress as a trader.
No matter what your bottom line looked at the end of this year, remember that you’re starting the year off with a clean slate.
Take advantage of this and the additional experience and insight that you have earned from the past year. They will allow you to learn and work better, which can possibly lead to consistent profits.
