{"id":7430,"date":"2010-10-02T08:06:34","date_gmt":"2010-10-02T12:06:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.smbtraining.com\/blog\/?p=7430"},"modified":"2023-08-01T17:58:34","modified_gmt":"2023-08-01T21:58:34","slug":"from-bad-to-great-a-traders-steps-to-improve-performance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.smbtraining.com\/blog\/from-bad-to-great-a-traders-steps-to-improve-performance","title":{"rendered":"From Bad to Great: a Trader&#8217;s Steps to Improve Performance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of our traders went from flagged for underperformance, to Most Improved, to one of our better traders. How did he do this?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Hey Bella,<\/p>\n<p>One of the things that has really helped me has been going back and studying the charts of all of my winning trades and finding similarities in the chart patterns and taking a more technical analysis approach to my trading using 10\/15min candlesticks. For example, one of the things I noticed was that whatever chart pattern I traded 80+% of my winning trades were made above\/below the previous days trading range, so now I almost never take trades that are not above\/below the previous days trading range. I also really paid attention to the structure of the chart leading to the breakout\/breakdown of the chart pattern I am trading. For example, if I&#8217;m watching a stock for a morning breakout trade through highs then some of the things I would look for in determining whether or not to take the trade are<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>is it trading above yesterdays high<\/li>\n<li>the candle that printed the current high of the day, did it close there or did it leave a long upper tail\/wick<\/li>\n<li>how far did the stock pull back off morning highs before attempting to breakout again; 25%, 50%, more than 50%<\/li>\n<li>do any inside bars get printed in upper 30% of the morning range indicating consolidation near highs just before breakout<\/li>\n<li>the inside bars that get printed do they close at highs or leave tails\/wicks<\/li>\n<li>how far is the candle in relation to 5ema, is there support from the rising moving ave<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I definitely feel that paying attention to these small little details have really made all the difference in my trading recently. Let me know if you would also like some actual trading examples.<\/p>\n<p>You can be better tomorrow than you are today!<\/p>\n<p>Mike Bellafiore<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/One-Good-Trade-Competitive-Proprietary\/dp\/0470529407\/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1382397128&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=one+good+trade\"><em>One Good Trade<\/em><\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Playbook-Inside-Think-Professional-Trader\/dp\/B08S2VSZPR\/ref=pd_ci_mcx_mh_mcx_views_2\"><em>The PlayBook<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/mikebellafiore\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/twitter-badges.s3.amazonaws.com\/follow_me-c.png\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>No relevant positions<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of our traders went from flagged for underperformance, to Most Improved, to one of our better traders. How did he do this? &nbsp; &nbsp; Hey Bella, One of the things that has really helped me has been going back and studying the charts of all of my winning trades and finding similarities in the chart patterns and taking a &#8230; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.smbtraining.com\/blog\/from-bad-to-great-a-traders-steps-to-improve-performance\" class=\"more-link\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":144,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[162,4674,1420,18,1193,653,1348,1354,1349],"class_list":["post-7430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mike-bellafiore-bellas-blogs","tag-day-trading-blog","tag-one-good-trade","tag-performance","tag-smb-capital","tag-trader-education","tag-trader-training","tag-trading-author","tag-trading-coach","tag-trading-mentor","no-post-thumbnail"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.1.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>From Bad to Great: a Trader&#039;s Steps to Improve Performance | SMB Training<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.smbtraining.com\/blog\/from-bad-to-great-a-traders-steps-to-improve-performance\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"From Bad to Great: a Trader&#039;s Steps to Improve Performance | SMB Training\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"One of our traders went from flagged for underperformance, to Most Improved, to one of our better traders. How did he do this? &nbsp; &nbsp; Hey Bella, One of the things that has really helped me has been going back and studying the charts of all of my winning trades and finding similarities in the chart patterns and taking a ... Read More\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.smbtraining.com\/blog\/from-bad-to-great-a-traders-steps-to-improve-performance\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"SMB Training Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/smbcap\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-10-02T12:06:34+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2023-08-01T21:58:34+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/twitter-badges.s3.amazonaws.com\/follow_me-c.png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Bella\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@smbcapital\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@smbcapital\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Bella\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta 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