In the never ending learning experience of futures trading I've been lucky enough to have found some fantastic professional traders to learn from.

Finding quality education when you first start out is so important. It's a minefield if you don't know what you're looking for as there are snake oil salesmen a-plenty and 'educators' who aren't traders.

Having been in the markets since 1992 as a broker dealer and being a Chartered Market Technician, I thought I knew what I was doing when I first ventured into the world of day trading....how wrong that turned out to be! 

Becoming consistently profitable in discretionary day trading is not about just learning a few chart patterns or understanding fundamentals.  In the simplest description it is a pattern recognition game using expected probabilities. However, it's the mindset you bring to the game that will have the biggest influence over your results. The mindset that got you into trading is unlikely to be the mindset that will produce success. The standard education system teaches convergent thinking, which is logic and answer orientated. In trading, we need to implement divergent thinking, which is a thought process to generate creative ideas by looking at various solutions. 

The 'holy grail' of trading in my view is achieving a peak performance state of mind while embracing uncertainty and risk, and having the belief, confidence and discipline to execute your plan. Of course, unless you understand the game to begin with and have a positive expectancy strategy, the mental state will only get you so far.

This is my process of personal accountability by writing the daily blog and as a means to prepare for the trading day ahead. Hopefully there will be some useful and potentially valuable information or links on the site for other traders. The views are my own and shouldn't be taken as financial advice, obviously. Always be learning and stay humble, but confident enough to execute your trading process.

Happy Trading!

Giles