The trader in this category here has probably been trading for five to seven years. In NLP terms, he ranges from consciously competent to consciously, unconsciously competent. Most of your good trainers fall into the latter category.

At this level, the trader is now or has been producing consistently profitable results. It’s not that his ‘rat brain’ doesn’t from time to time seize control and cause damage to his account; but the effect of the impulse trade (i.e. a trade that breaches his rules) is limited. Rather than causing a blow-up, the impulse trade may cause a loss of one or two percent.

A trader in this category is continually honing his skills. Some of the areas of improvement include:

The point I am making is we never stop learning about ourselves and about the market. One of the benefits of teaching is it hones my trading skills forcing me to articulate some instinctive trades. I can’t tell you the number of times a question from a student has led to a profitable line of thought, research and validation. Dad taught me the moment we start thinking we can stop learning and improving, that’s the moment we start our decline.