{"id":89995,"date":"2016-05-19T14:09:57","date_gmt":"2016-05-19T18:09:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/countingpips.com\/?p=89995"},"modified":"2016-05-19T14:48:26","modified_gmt":"2016-05-19T18:48:26","slug":"10000-hours-of-trading-what-does-it-take-to-hone-your-trading-skills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/2016\/05\/10000-hours-of-trading-what-does-it-take-to-hone-your-trading-skills\/","title":{"rendered":"10,000 Hours of Trading: What does It Take to Hone your Trading Skills"},"content":{"rendered":"
May 19, 2016<\/div>
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10,000 Hours of Trading: What does It Take to Hone your Trading Skills<\/strong><\/p>\n

by:\u00a0Colibri Trader<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Can you become a better trader by following\u00a0the 10,000 hours rule<\/em><\/p>\n

and why it matters\u00a0to look for ways to constantly improve<\/em><\/p>\n

The question of what it takes to become a\u00a0master in any field<\/a>\u00a0(sport or business) has been in the epicentre of research for many years. It has occupied psychologists and philosophers alike for decades. Is it the\u00a0innate talent<\/strong>\u00a0what matters or a skill can be\u00a0mastered with practice<\/a>. What does it take for\u00a0professional athletes<\/strong>\u00a0to become first among others with inborn talents\u2026<\/p>\n

Almost fifty years ago Herbert Simon and William Chase summed up a groundbreaking conclusion that is still\u00a0echoing with importance:<\/p>

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There are no instant experts in chess\u2014certainly no instant masters or grandmasters. There appears not to be on record any case (including Bobby Fischer) where a person reached grandmaster level with less than about a decade\u2019s intense preoccupation with the game. We would estimate, very roughly, that a master has spent perhaps 10,000 to 50,000 hours staring at chess positions\u2026<\/p>\n

After Simon and Chase there have been numerous psychologists and authors testing this hypothesis and proving and disproving the rule of \u201cThe 10, 000 Hours<\/strong>\u201c. For example, John Hayes researched the works of over 70 of the most famous classical composers and found that\u00a0almost none of them did create a masterpiece before they have been composing for\u00a0a minimum of 10, 000\u00a0hours.<\/strong>\u00a0There were just a few exceptions and they were Shostakovich and Paganini, who took them only 9, 000 hours.<\/p>\n

In trading, it seems to be the same or at least really similar. I don\u2019t know a lot of other traders, whom after an honest conversation have not shared with me that have spent\u00a0years of losing money consistently<\/a>\u00a0before becoming profitable. In my trading career I remember just one trader who told me that was successful straight from the very beginning. He was sharing with me that it only\u00a0took him 3 months on a simulator<\/strong>\u00a0and with the help of his trading mentor, he became successful. He is an exception because in his case- he managed to save a lot of costly mistakes by following his mentor\u2019s trading approach. But most traders are doing it alone and that is why it takes them such a long time.\u00a0Trading, as any other highly competitive sport discipline, takes a lot of hours in front of the screens and practice.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In a book that I recently read (Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence), Daniel Goleman reveals the complex truth behind the popular 10,000 rule:<\/p>\n

The \u201c10,000-hour rule\u201d \u2014 that this level of\u00a0practice holds the secret to great success in any field \u2014 has become sacrosanct gospel, echoed on websites and recited as litany in high-performance workshops. The problem:it\u2019s only half true. If you are a duffer at golf, say, and make the same mistakes every time you try a certain swing or putt, 10,000 hours of practicing that error will not improve your game. You\u2019ll still be a duffer, albeit an older one.<\/p>\n

No less an expert than Anders Ericsson, the Florida State University psychologist whose research on expertise spawned the 10,000-hour rule of thumb, said, \u201cYou don\u2019t get benefits from mechanical repetition, but by adjusting your execution over and over to get closer to your goal.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to tweak the system by pushing,\u201d he adds, \u201callowing for more errors at first as you increase your limits.<\/p>\n

The words of Ericsson cannot be more true regarding the trading field.\u00a0Professional traders know that going out of the comfort zone is what makes a difference<\/strong>\u00a0in the long-run. Imagine you are doing the same trading mistake over and over again. The only way to get rid of your bad habits is to get out of your \u201ccomfort zone<\/a>\u201d and do something differently. Even if you are not sure where your mistake is, you should put all of your efforts into trying to find it. Only then and after long hours of practice, you would be able to become profitable. What matters in this case is not only the time invested in trading, but the quality of the time. It appears that\u00a0even if you stay 20,000 hours in front of your screens, it won\u2019t make a difference if you are doing the same mistakes repeatedly.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It seems obvious and simple, but modern education is build on the premise of sheer time investment. That is why\u00a0it is important to emphasise on the fact that success is \u201cdeliberate practice\u201d<\/strong>, concentrated training with the sole aim of personal improvement, many times\u00a0accompanied or guided by a professional and skilled coach or mentor.<\/strong>That is how I became successful myself- I have been mentored by one of the biggest and most successful traders in London. Before I had the chance to meet this important person to me, I was making too many mistakes- 80% of which I was not even aware of! That is such a striking number when I look back at it now. According to\u00a0Goleman, what I have found also applies to other disciplines:<\/p>\n

Hours and hours of practice are necessary for great performance, but not sufficient. How experts in any domain pay attention while practicing makes a crucial difference. For instance, in his much-cited study of violinists \u2014 the one that showed the top tier had practiced more than 10,000 hours \u2014 Ericsson found the experts did so with full concentration on improving a particular aspect of their performance that a master teacher identified.<\/p>\n

That is completely in-line with trading field.\u00a0You need an objective feedback from somebody, who can monitor your performance<\/strong>. Human beings tend to be subjective when it comes to measuring their own performance. That is why, it is crucial that you have a profitable trader helping you along the 10, 000-hours of trading journey.\u00a0It is imperative that you are coached by a real professional<\/strong>\u00a0or at least somebody with years of trading behind his back. No wonder that\u00a0every world-class sports champion has a coach<\/strong>. If you keep on trading without a feedback from a proven profitable trader, you won\u2019t be able to get to the very top.<\/p>\n

In the end, it seems that the trading strategy that you are using is not the most important element of becoming a master trader.\u00a0It is the feedback that you receive from really experienced traders and the quality of the time invested<\/strong>\u00a0in\u00a0improving you own mistakes. Now stop thinking how good you are- start seeing how you can improve through\u00a0concentrated trading effort<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Article by\u00a0Colibri Trader<\/strong><\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

10,000 Hours of Trading: What does It Take to Hone your Trading Skills by:\u00a0Colibri Trader Can you become a better trader by following\u00a0the 10,000 hours rule and why it matters\u00a0to look for ways to constantly improve The question of what it takes to become a\u00a0master in any field\u00a0(sport or business) has been in the epicentre […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","no-post-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89995"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89995\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90008,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89995\/revisions\/90008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}