A Case Study on Coaching and Trading Improvement By, Ken Long

Here are 3 snapshots of a “1-page monthly performance summary” from a trader learning day trading and hybrid swing trading systems. He has been trading now for three months after taking a home study course from VTI.

One of the ways to sharpen your most important tool (your mind) and to improve your practice is to act as a coach and think about what it means to give feedback to others about their performance.

Think of these 3 charts from 2 perspectives:

(1) If you were the trader who had produced those performance stats, what would be your self-talk about your demonstrated performance as revealed in those charts? What would be your tentative plan of action based on your conclusions?

(2) If you were this trader’s coach or if you were the trader’s first-line supervisor, what would be your “coaching performance plan” for the meeting you plan to have next week?

I think there is a lot to experience and from which to learn going through this exercise. I plan to collect comments from both perspectives from our community of practice, integrate them, and report on them. I will record a webinar to present the findings along with my own thoughts and share that.

“Hi Ken,

Three months on and I am getting more comfortable with day trading using the Hybrid Frog at the open and the OWL technique. There were still bouts when I let my overconfidence hand me a couple of -3R losses right after I got 6R & 3R wins (marked in the trade sequence plot). I wanted to convert those trades into a SWING but did not dial down the position size due to hubris after big wins. On a positive note (after the 18R TSLA trade I reported last month), I started applying your day trading methods to growth stocks during critical junctures such as earnings releases and found some initial success. I am quite happy with the improvement of my R-histogram.” -JG