Get Your Reps In

This dilemma often crops up.

“I’m a developing trader, I’m trading on the hourly, I have a solid strategy, and my discipline is good.”

“I only get 3 trades a week, the rest of the time, I just sit on my hands.”

“I feel like my progress is slow and I’m not learning due to the limited number of trades. What should I do?”

And this is a tricky one.

Here are your choices:

1 – Trade additional strategies so you get more reps
2 – Trade on a lower timeframe to get more occurrences
3 – Trade your strategy on more markets.

But which is best?

Well, personally I feel that number two can get you into trouble.

I don’t believe that all edges work across all timeframes and the lower timeframes can be an emotional roller coaster.

If you chose to trade the hourly, you did it for a reason!

Number 1. Trading additional strategies is a reasonable option.

You can start to trade different ideas in small size, with the goal of developing some more strategies you can deploy.

The main thing to avoid here is not letting the new strategies impact how you trade your existing ones.

They need to be completely different. Otherwise, the new strategies will impact your existing results.

Eg: If you trade momentum at the moment, perhaps the new strategy could trade mean reversion.

The final one was number 3. Trade your strategy on additional markets.

Another reasonable (if not the best) solution.

You know the strategy is working, so why not focus your efforts on migrating it to different uncorrelated markets?

Tweaks might be required and slight rule adjustments are probably needed, but this can be a good way of getting more reps in without making drastic changes.

Today, think about how you could get more reps in. How can you get more trading experience without overtrading?

Maybe you are already trading enough, in which case consider reviewing each trade as a rep.

Even using market replay as another rep.

We absolutely don’t ever want to create an overtrading monster but there is a sweet spot that allows us to gain market experience and boost our development without overdoing things.