Begin With The End In Mind
It’s hard to know how to make it somewhere if you don’t know where you’re headed in the first place right? When you embark on a road trip, the first thing you typically do is decide where you’re going… where you’d like to end up! From there you can begin planning the trip and taking the necessary action steps to inevitably end up at your destination.
Success as a trader works the same way. You have to know what you want before you can have it. That part is simple. Select a goal and see yourself there. What does that reality look like for you? You have this trading skill pocketed… what does it do for you? What is your life like now that you have it? Spend some time here and get clear on your why. It’ll be the fuel that keeps you moving on your way to success as a trader.
Shortcut The Learning Curve
The word shortcut gets thrown around a lot online these days. A lot of the hacks and tips and tricks are simply hot air if you ask us. The only true shortcut to success in any field… trading included, is to find someone who’s been where you are (at the start) and is currently where you’d like to be (the end destination you set in the prior point).
Modeling after someone who’s already walked the path and who is doing what you’d like to be doing will save you time and energy. You’ll avoid countless mistakes and misturns that you otherwise would have had to experience to reach your destination. Mentors and coaches are your “hack” to achieving success faster than the average trader out there who’s trying to make it on his/her own.
Actioning The Advice
The next step’s quite straight forward. Get your hands dirty! Get in the trenches doing as your mentor / chosen program says. Follow the roadmap they have laid out for you. At Phantom we have a Funded Trader Roadmap that breaks our process for achieving consistency + acquiring funded capital from one of many prop firms in our network within a 12 month span of time.
Simply get started and begin making your way through the course content and applying the concepts as we teach you how to! This phase is simply a matter of putting your head down and doing the work to build the skillset required to handle say a 100k account and to be able to generate an ROI month after month on your capital.
Building Momentum
So, you’ve learned the basics, you’ve held yourself accountable and you have good guidance. At a certain point, it’s time to get out of the nest and start flying. Start small with your trading. Research trades that will offer the most minimal risk and see how it feels to even pull the trigger. Maybe you’ll lose some money, maybe you’ll make some. Either way, it will give you valuable feedback for moving forward and you must learn to grow your knowledge account before you can consistently grow your bank account / trading account. This really is about repetition.
The same way a pro basketball player becomes a pro player through shooting hoops day in day out, trading success requires daily practice in a similar fashion. Show up, backtest, open small live accounts, practice on free prop firm challenges, try for small prop firm accounts. Anything that’s just outside your comfort zone that pushes you to grow week in week out.
Evaluate and Course Correct
As you start to trade, take the time to pause and see what is going right and what is going wrong. Both aspects are equally important. For example, if you’re doing something right, then definitely make note of it, so that you can continue doing it. Focus on what is working and maintain an upward trajectory. Ask yourself how could you keep doing the things that are going well, but also streamline your process?
Refining your technique will help you repeat your successes quicker, in the future. On the other hand, if you’re doing something wrong, consider that just as strongly. How could you eliminate your “wrong” behaviors moving forward or conduct yourself differently in the future? How could you eliminate bad habits, so that they won’t hold you back?
Cultivate Good Habits
The top 1% of traders come in all shapes and sizes, but many of their good habits remain constant, across the board, no matter who they are. Take the time to cultivate these habits. You might start small, by waking up a little earlier each day. But ultimately you want to refine all of these winning habits including emotional regulation, developing the ability to self-reflect, and redefining your definition of failure. It’s important during your growth as a beginner trader, to practice good habits, such as cutting losses quickly to minimize the risk of a potentially large disaster, even if small losses are frustrating to take.
Banish Bad Habits
Just as you want to discover and emulate the good habits of successful people, you want to banish the bad habits that might be holding you back. Maybe you’re held back by a fear of failure or you aren’t dedicated enough to learning. Be honest with yourself about your shortcomings and strive to improve yourself on a daily basis. A big one here is to start to decrease the amount of social media content you take in… especially in relation to more trading strategies.
While we agree it’s important to experiment and find your footing in the market, learning too many strategies will oftentimes hurt you as you’ll experience crossover and by doing so results will suffer. Most strategies work, you just need to make them work. So pick one that is consistently producing profitable traders and that you resonate with and stick to it until you’ve mastered it. Dabbling and strategy hopping will only leave you questioning whether trading in general works. Most make money online strategies work, it’s that people often give up on them well before results start to show.
Refining and Progressing
This final step is what takes you through to your goal. In most cases that goal being consistent profitability in your trading and capital funding. This phase is about having your work, process, approach reviewed by someone who has more experience than you and who can help you polish your edge. This could be in the form of 1-1 coaching, live group coaching calls, chart feedback whether that be in the form of losing trades or winning trades… even trades hesitated upon taking. Every question that comes up for you throughout your trading journey, get help! This is something we focus on heavily here at Phantom. It’s hard to know what you’re doing right and what you’re doing wrong especially when you’re new to trading. There are a lot of things you can get caught up on along the way. This only stalls your progress.
Having a network of like minded people around you both at the same level you’re at as well as those further along will speed everything up… primarily by providing the clarity you need to keep showing up and making tweaks and improvements to your approach until it’s perfected. Act, assess, adjust. This is how one improves. Practice + refinement day by day. Done long enough consistently and you’ll be the consistently profitable, funded trader you’ve been dreaming of becoming. We’ve helped over 9000 traders now progress towards this same goal, many of which have gone on to acquire well into the 6 figures worth of capital and who have left 9-5’s and made trading their full time gig. We want the same for you. How about we make that happen?
Here’s a Quick Recap of What We’ve Covered:
- Begin with the end in mind (work backwards from your WHY).
- Shortcut the learning curve (with mentors and coaches who’ve been where you are).
- Actioning the advice (putting in the time to sharpen your skills).
- Building momentum (letting your efforts compound and your progression speed up).
- Evaluate and course correct (asking the right questions to make sure you stay on track).
- Cultivate good habits (reflection, healthy eating, quality sleep, routines, etc.)
- Eliminate bad habits (internally and externally – audit what you do and say and think).
- Refining and progressing (perfecting your edge with the help of experts & community).
Curious About Phantom Trading And What We Do Here?
Click here to visit our homepage at Phantom Trading. As a member you get exclusive access to our global trading community filled with like minded traders, plus learn from our team of funded traders with a combined 50+ years of trading experience featuring the founders Wyse & Kevin who have institutional experience and experience with trading private capital, plus our team members who have over $1.5 million in funding through prop-firms combined!
Robert Castillo
@coldwaterfx
FX Trader & Analyst
Writer & Editor
Rob is a funded trader from Toronto, Canada, and has been trading currencies, commodities, stocks, and cryptocurrencies for over 7 years. Outside of trading, he enjoys making music, boxing, and riding motorcycles.
