Trading Journal #1 - January 9th, 2022

Today has been a different day for the crypto market from the general downtrend we’ve been used to since late 2021 and 2022. A lot of assets were pumping and there’s a lot of hype going around on social media. We see people talking about assets left and right and everyone claims that they have the next shiny object that will go to the moon.

As you can see Bitcoin has not moved that much in terms of what is usual for this asset class. It is ending the day rather weak but the other coins are actually not giving back all of its gains which is telling me that there’s strength in the market.

The chart below shows us the massive increase we’ve had over the past few days of crypto assets above their 20SMA.

To succeed as a trader you must somehow be able to sort through the noise and focus on your own systems. If you let every opinion online influence your decisions, you won’t make it in this business long-term. You must trust your own research and the system that you use.

By this I don’t mean that you shouldn’t try to expand your own knowledge with other trading systems and ideas from other traders. Obviously not. You should take opportunity where it is and test it to see if it has any ground to be used in your own processes.

However if you are allow others to change the execution of your trading system, you are inserting random results into your own trading. If things go wrong you won’t be able to identify the problem and if things go right you won’t know how to reproduce such results. It all comes down to extreme ownership of your own performance.

You don’t know what the other traders are doing, what type of systems they’re using, what kind of risk management, their risk tolerance, etc. There’s so much to consider when a trader is placing trades and the lack of that knowledge makes it unwise to follow other traders.

This is a performance based business and you shouldn’t be using the performance of others as your own. This is not how you achieve long-term consistency. This is how you’ll get exploited from other individuals in the way you handle your own money.

Developing a trading system takes time and effort of course but it is extremely rewarding when you have something of your own that you’ve built.