ForexSpirit

A few weeks back I came across a very interesting article in the New York Times that delved into research on how we learn new skills. The article looks at how talent is developed and star athletes are trained.

Why does it take so long for us to learn something complicated? What sort of processes are going on in the brain during the learning phase? What is the best way to learn a new skill so as to maximise the speed and proficiency of the learning process?

The core change in the brain as it undergoes new training is called myelinization. The best way to speed up and strengthen this change is through the rigorous focus on technique.

I initially had trouble in how I could utilise this information to better my trading. What exactly is technique for a trader? Is it how you follow your trading plan? How you go about your trading activities during the day? How you perform your fundamental or technical analysis?

After having mulled over this issue for a while I think I have now at least a germ of an idea of what trading technique means to me.

I now see it as being able to regularly extract those bread and butter trades from the marketplace that need to form the central foundation of my trading profits.

These bread and butter trades are the antithesis of the large, ‘winner takes all’ trades that have been my downfall recently.

Looking back, I think I had a much better grasp of this practice than I do now. As I mentioned in my last post, I think trading multiple currency pairs has led me astray. While I might be sticking to bread and butter setups in the majority of the pairs I traded, I’d almost certainly be looking for a larger win somewhere else.

There is far more information to be kept track of when trading multiple currency pairs, and I often had nowhere near deep enough understanding of the pairs I was trading, especially in comparison to how well I know the movement and mood of my primary pair, EUR-USD.

My technique suffered and became lacking.

I need to get back to what I was good at. I need to focus on returning my technique to the level it was once at. Small and medium sized trades are to be once again my primary focus. I won’t give up on looking for the odd big trade, but I won’t be looking for there to be one out there every time I look at a chart.

I also won’t be looking to recoup any losses, especially from a higher leveraged trade, straight away on a similar sized trade. I used to have no problems in taking my time making back what I had lost. Now I seem to want to have an instant fix.

I seem to have regressed in quite a few key areas of my trading. My hope is that having identified these problem areas I’ll be able to revert my behaviour to the way that was working successfully for both me and my trading.

It’s all about great technique.