Two of the systems that I have created for myself to improve my trading are: The "1% Improvement Rule" and "Profit Projections". 

 

The 1% Improvement Rule is the idea that regardless of what happens in a trading day I will get 1% better. I define this by looking at ONE problem area in my trading and I trading and I work to improve on it by 1%, one day at a time. A lot of issues that I thought would take MONTHS to fix took about a week with this system. For example, I got away from a key strength of mine which was buying pullbacks on morning spike plays. I made this mistake from Late January to Early April. 

I used my 1% system to recondition myself to play to my strengths. I would paper trade outside of market hours with TOS On Demand with a practice system I developed. Then I would simply do what I did in practice during market hours. 3 Months of Mistakes were rectified in about a week. The goal was closer than I thought with a little bit of practice. Since I started this I have NEVER bought a top during live trading.

There are other problems I aim to fix in my trading with this system and I tend to fix them faster as I hyper-focus on them until they are fixed. I journal the 1% system at the end of each day and state if I improved, it it was mixed, or I have gotten worse. If you improve 1% a day for 100 days then you will be 2x better than when you started.

All of this has lead me to ask myself a question though?

Is the quality of my work work worth consistent profits over the next 3 Months?

I use a system I call Profit Projections. Its basically a spreadsheet that tracks expected gains with consistent profits. Every trader wants this.

The question I have to ask is "Is the quality of my work worth the profit projection?".

The answer is unclear.

The only way to make money in the market is to trade, and I have been trading actively far less and far smaller. But so far I have more consistency than I did 3 months ago. It can all go wrong, so I constantly need to work hard to stay competitive in the market.