This article will probably mean more to those of you who are members of the private trading community due to the fact you see this trader in the chat rooms on a daily basis. With that being said, I’d still like to believe that someone who makes $20,000 in only three weeks can still be inspirational to those of you who are not members.
Along with hopefully offering some inspiration, Dan’s real life trading results present an excellent opportunity to show one of the major mental mindsets you must have if you want to have any chance at success as a trader.
To set up a bit of context, Dan is a member of the trading community and has actually been a guest on my weekly podcast, The Stock Trading Reality Podcast. If you’d like to get even more context on Dan and his background, you can listen to his interview here.
A few weeks ago (from the time of this writing that is) Dan shot me an email that got me pretty fired up. I love to hear about fellow members doing well, and as you can see below, he’s been doing quite well!
This email was sent on March 8th, so I asked Dan if he would be willing to share a closer look at his results. He told me we might as well wait a couple more weeks so that we could see how his trading continued to go. I thought that was an excellent idea… I mean hey, he had already been killing it, let’s see how his trading would continue to unfold!
For the sake of not having a million images in this article, I am just going to list the date and the amount he made or loss. If you’d like to see the actual results, simply click on the link to see a screen shot of his account. There is one image though I want to focus on…
- March 1, 2016: +$696
- March 2, 2016: +$1,400
- March 3, 2016: +$1,042
- March 4, 2016: +$2,413
- March 7, 2016: +$6,736
- March 8, 2016: +$2,294
- March 9, 2016: +$2,710
And then March 10, 2016 rolls around… and below you can see the results…
First off, shout-out to Dan for being transparent and humble enough to share this with everyone. Talking loses is not fun… showing them is a whole other ballgame, so mad respect to you Dan!
You are not misreading it… yes, that is just shy of an $8,000 loss.
You can see from the highlighted column that it was just one of those days where Dan couldn’t do anything right. One losing trade after another. You know what? These days happen. You can be the best trader in the world, but everyone has these types of days whether or not they admit it.
These are also the days that separate the legitimate traders from the pretenders. Now sure, Dan has invested into his education and is a member of my ClayTrader University training program which is SUPER IMPORTANT to having trading success, but that’s not what we’re going to focus on here. The characteristic that Dan clearly has (which makes sense given he is a college coach) is mental toughness.
Have you heard this term before? I know I used to hear it all the time growing up while I played sports. Mental toughness does not just pertain to sports or any one area of life. I realize Wikipedia is not the best source for all knowledge (haha!), but in this case, I absolutely love their definition…
All I’ll say is take the word athlete out of the definition and replace it with trader.
If you have traded before, then you are well aware of the “difficult competitive situations” trading will put you in mentally (and in some cases physically too!). Point being, trading is not always rainbows and butterflies and puppy dogs. There are times when the market is going to kick you in the teeth.
Education is super super important, so don’t get me wrong, but your ability to get kicked in the teeth and then “emerge without losing confidence” is just as important.
This is where I hope I can motivate and inspire you. I am defining “you” as those of you who are taking my training programs… you’re on the right path! You will get kicked in the teeth, no doubt about it, but please realize you have the training you need, so DO NOT LOSE CONFIDENCE. Stay on the path like Dan did, and as long as you continue to practice what is being shown to you in the training courses, you can recover.
Speaking of “recover”, how did Dan do after getting kicked in the teeth with a $8,000 loss? Well let’s see…
- March 11, 2016: +$866 (a day where he was going light & getting confidence back)
- March 12, 2016: -$72 (Saturday showing contracts expire worthless)
- March 14, 2016: +$1,440
- March 15, 2016: +$963
- March 16, 2016: +$1,195
- March 17, 2016: +$2,946 (He’s baaaaaack!!!)
- March 18, 2016: +$3,574 (Great way to end the week!)
To summarize the course of the three weeks, Dan provided an overall recap which you can see below.
The market kicked Dan in the teeth, but thanks to his mental toughness he emerged from March 10, 2016 without losing confidence in his strategy or himself, and as you saw the rest took care of itself…. Leading to gain of $20,000 in only three weeks.
Learn How to Build Mental Toughness
As I discussed earlier, in order to have mental toughness, you need to be able to “emerge without losing confidence”. Well, in order to do that, you need to first have confidence! If you are running around collecting “education” from random YouTube videos and the deep dark corners of the internet, I would be willing to bet you do not have any true confidence in what you’re being taught. And rightfully so… I’m guessing you have a voice always questioning “is this even quality information I’m teaching myself?”
I use to be pretty hesitant about sales pitches, but whatever, I’m confident in what I have to offer, and a guy who made $20,000 in only three weeks just had some very kind words to offer as you saw above in the “thank you” email he sent me.
Dan is a member of ClayTrader University, so if you’re interested in being shown how to use technical analysis for trading and to build confidence, and therefore mental toughness like what he is using, you can do so HERE.
You can get a behind the scenes tour of ClayTrader University HERE. I will walk you through all the various aspects of the program and show you all the content you gain access to.
At the end of the day, even if you don’t spend a dime on my site, I genuinely hope this case study has inspired and motivated you to get realistic about the markets and understand that big gains are possible; however, you better have something you can fortify your confidence in so that when the “market kicks you in the teeth” days role around, you have a firm foundation to anchor your ship to!