Traders Ask: How Do I Get Better on Saturday?

BellaMike Bellafiore's (Bella's) Blogs, Traders Ask5 Comments

 

Hi Mike,

One of my goals for this 2010-2011 trading “school” year is to work six days a week instead of five. The other is to strive for perfect attendance. With regards to working on Saturday’s, I’m putting together my routine. These are the things that I plan to do.

  • Review weekly P&L & Ticket averages (i.e. My Numbers & Stats)
  • Review Trading Strengths & Weakness of the week.
  • Review Best & Worst Trades (Trading Videos)
  • Set goals for the upcoming week
  • Game Plan for Monday

Is there anything else that you guys do during your Saturday SMB meetings, that traders at home can also attempt? Is there anything you would add or take away from this list?

 

Bella Responds

This is such outstanding work I almost want to leave just the question and end the blog. The fact you are asking this question is in itself a wonderful lesson for the community. Very well done!

As way of background the questioner is Reader Angel. Some of you may know him from Chapter 3 of One Good Trade, A Good Fit. Reader Angel had knocked on all the doors at every prop firm in NYC and could not land a spot.  Many, like us, were not smart enough to offer him an invitation. Fast forward a few years and he finally has. Truly an inspiring story for all those whose passion is to trade professionally. And now his question above.

SMB was in the office today on Saturday. Leo’s Bagels. Some college football in between review sessions. GMan, Steve and me leading different review sessions. We watched film as a group of trades our guys have made. We offer mentorship and critical feedback to our younger traders (and bagels and juice). For remote traders a review with like-minded traders, reviewing some charts, talking about trades you were all in, is an excellent idea to consider.

On Friday I implored our desk to spend some time this weekend reviewing the RIG move above 56. This was a huge level. The move was clean. There were textbook pullbacks of opportunity. Go look at that chart and visualize the trades you would have made. Repeat this process ten times.

@downtowntrader and his posse stopped by our offices Friday and we grabbed some lunch. He shared over mini burgers and cokes (blackened salmon for me) that he reviews 300 charts a night. There is no way to get better at technical analysis unless you rip through charts like him. I like you coopting this professional practice into your weekend review.

Those are some of my ideas to supplement your outstanding start. To our readers: what do you do to prepare over the weekend?

Mike Bellafiore

Author, One Good Trade

5 Comments on “Traders Ask: How Do I Get Better on Saturday?”

  2. Mike,

    Thanks for the kind words. Some of the ideas that I’ve gathered are the following:

    – I have a 1.5 hour commute from home to work, I can use an Ipad to review videos while I’m on the train/bus. I can also repeat my best trade of the day/week, ten, twenty, thirty times while I’m commuting. This repetition will help drive the pattern and the mechanical process into my head, so I can re-enact it at a later date.

    – I’m also planning to devote 15 to 20 minutes pre-market and after-market to trading mechanics. I want to develop the routine of spending 30 – 40 minutes per day working on our equivalent to catching pop fly’s / catching grounders. Mechanics is certainly integral to what we do (i.e. Pattern Recognition, entering trades, hitting out, identifying levels, etc…)

    While reading is certainly an important aspect of trader development, I would consider it a passive approach towards development. In addition, we need to throw in some active “real world” exercises that will help us during “live trading”.

    Hope this helps!

    -Angel

  3. If you have a platform that allows it, week-ends are great to replay the market at “normal” speed, like RIG for instance. Like Angel said, reviewing charts and reading blogs can be done while commuting. But replaying the market requires to be focused for several hours, which is why Saturdays or Sundays are excellent for that.

  4. Grotaiche,

    What platform allows you to review at normal speed? Thxs for the nite above. Love your thinking here.

    Bella

  5. Bella,

    Well, I’m using MarketDelta (with DTN IQFeed as data feed) and it allows me to replay any market day for which I have tick data (won’t work in some cases where your data feed doesn’t provide enough history ; e.g. if I want to review Sep 15th, 2008, IQFeed doesn’t have that much history). You can choose what speed to replay the day on (e.g. x1, x100, etc…).

    There is also ThinkOrSwim that provides this capability for customers with funded accounts (they call it “OnDemand”), for the last 30 or 60 days, can’t remember exactly.

    I have also heard from a “Market Replay” plug-in at Open E-Cry’s. Don’t know much about it except its name :p

    There are probably other platforms that can do it but I have only investigated the ones I was originally interested in.

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