I'm begging you to take trading seriously

Added: 2026-05-23

[00:00:00]I wanted to have an honest conversation about taking trading seriously. And I'm not saying that you don't care about trading. I'm saying that there's a difference between caring about trading and also taking trading seriously.

[00:00:10]Because you can care about trading and watch all of the YouTube videos. you can learn as much as you want about trading, be in Discords, whatever it might be, but then you're not journaling, you're not reviewing your past trades, you're not collecting enough data, or you know, you've just blown a funded account and your first instinct is just to buy another one and go again, but you're not taking the time to debrief and go through your data, go through your journal, see what worked, see what didn't work, see what led to blowing that account. On the other hand, you know, you're probably trying to size too big, you know, to make money back because, you know, you can handle the loss. So, you're not, you know, taking it seriously with correct risk management, but you know, you care about it because you want to make money in trading, which is a good thing, but you need to take it seriously to get to the next step. And this is why you find that you keep getting stuck in this circle and that you're not progressing past this certain point or you feel like trading doesn't work for me. Trading isn't clicking. It's not clicking because you're not taking trading seriously. Trading is a business and every loss is a business expense and that's how you need to view it because it's all P&L. It's all profit and loss.

[00:01:19]It's all profit margins. It's it is a business and it needs to be treated seriously like a business because like if any business if you don't take things seriously and manage your risk, the business is going to shut down. It's the same as trading. If you don't manage your risk, you're going to blow the account. And I'm saying this because I was in this position where I cared about trading, but I wasn't taking it seriously. And I thought that what I was doing was the right thing. You know, taking trades, you know, trying to make money, getting the best strategy, learning more about the markets. But the things that I needed to take seriously, I kind of like brushed over it. I was like, I don't need to journal. You know, who needs data? I don't need any of that stuff. I'm just going to trade, enter here, make money. But it doesn't work like that, right? Not taking trading seriously is costing you money. But a more important thing is it's costing you time. And I know I've touched on it before that all of these lessons are building you into become that profitable trader, but it's not going to build you into that trader if you are not taking it seriously. Think about anything else in your life, your job, your relationship, your fitness, anything like that. If you don't take it seriously and put in the effort, it won't work. Like for example, the gym.

[00:02:26]You can care about it and say, "I really want to get in shape. I really want to lose weight." whatever it might be your goal, but if you don't take it seriously, it's not going to happen. You can still go to the gym and not get anywhere. Just like trading, you can still trade and not get anywhere. And the markets are genuinely one of the hardest arenas you will ever step into.

[00:02:44]You are sitting across from institutions, hedge funds, people with millions of dollars and massive teams behind them, and you think you can go in half prepared and think you're going to outperform them and make money. You have to be better than that because they are showing up every day. So what does it look like to actually take trading seriously? The first thing is to have a written trading plan. You need to have a plan of what you are doing. You need to go in and be like, I need to do this, this, this, and this before I enter.

[00:03:14]This is my criteria. This is what gives me the green light to execute. You need to have it written down and know exactly what you're doing. You cannot go into the charts and just go, "Oh, this setup looks good. I'm going to take it." Why are you taking that trade? You have to know a definitive answer of why you are taking that trade. The next thing is journaling. You need to journal absolutely everything. Every setup, every entry, every exit, why you took that trade, how you felt, everything to find the patterns in your own behavior.

[00:03:43]You need to be able to look back over it to see the patterns. If you don't write anything down, how are you going to see the patterns? You're just going to try to remember it, but you probably can't remember what you did yesterday at 2:00 in the afternoon. How are you going to remember all of those previous 50 to 60 trades? You you physically cannot do that. And if you don't know, then you're going to continuously make the same mistakes over and over and over again, and you can't correct it. The next thing that you need to do is set systems in place after you've worked out what it might be that your issue is. If you are someone who tilts after a loss, you need to set up systems in place to keep yourself in check because no one else is going to keep you in check and no one really cares if you tilt because the more you tilt, the more money you give away and the more someone else makes. So the more you tilt, probably the better for them. But you need to put systems in place to stop yourself from doing it.

[00:04:37]Whatever it might be, you need to have something a system that snaps you out of it. Whatever it looks like for you, going for a walk, shutting the laptop, doing some meditation, whatever that is.

[00:04:47]It's different for everybody, but you need to find something that works for you. It's just trial and error. Being okay with a red month, doing everything perfect, following your plan, following your system, doing everything that you were supposed to do, and walking away at the end of the month negative, because it happens to everybody. Despite what they say online, everybody has red months, everybody has losing trades. The question is whether or not you use them to become better or tilt more. And you need to review your data. You need to know what's working, what's not working.

[00:05:21]It needs to be treated like a business.

[00:05:23]I said it before, trading is a business.

[00:05:25]You need to treat it that way. You're not going to make it if you're just fumbling through it and just winging it.

[00:05:32]You cannot wing trading. You will incur massive, massive losses, right? The main thing that you can do to take trading seriously is to get your mind in check.

[00:05:42]Understand why you respond to things the way that you do. You need to understand that so you can work on it because it's not going to miraculously fix itself.

[00:05:52]And when you become profitable, it does not magically go away. You can become unprofitable very very quickly. Even if you've just become profitable, if you cannot get your mindset in check, it is the most important thing. I hop on about it and I know I go on about it a lot, but it is so important. Anybody can learn a strategy. You can learn a strategy in a couple of months, but if your mindset isn't there, you cannot execute that strategy and you will not be able to manage your risk and you will not be able to manage the trade and you will still be unprofitable. Even if someone gave you the trade and said this is the entry, this is the take-profit and this is the stop-loss, you will still not take that trade because you will have fear and doubt in your mind that the trade won't work out. And you need to be able to overcome that. And the only way to overcome that is to get your mind in check. There's a great book called the chimp paradox. It talks about when your brain gets hijacked. So if you're in a situation and you tilt in trading, for example, and then you're like, why have I done that? I know I shouldn't have done that, but I couldn't help myself. I couldn't control myself.

[00:06:54]I could not stop it. It talks about that the hijacking of the mind, your prehistoric brain, and ways to overcome it and how to deal with it because that is what is getting in your way. And that's what you need to learn to overcome and take trading seriously because that brain is also what's telling you to avoid risk. It's making you avoid losses. It's making you scared to entry. It's also the the part of the brain that makes you want to revenge trade because you've just lost money and it needs to get that back because it can't handle a loss. Like this is the most important thing that you can do to take your trading seriously. Everything else I mentioned such as journaling, data, all of that kind of stuff, those are the pieces of the puzzle that you need to put in place so that you can work on the chimp brain that you have so that you can overcome those issues. And I feel like personally, people fail trading not because they didn't learn enough, but because they didn't commit to trading how they should have. It wasn't that they didn't understand their strategy. It was that they didn't trust their strategy and they didn't trust themselves. If you don't trust your system and you don't trust yourself, you won't be able to make it. Back yourself.

[00:07:59]Have unshakable belief. When no one's there and everybody's doubting, you need to back yourself 100%. That is what every trader who makes it does. They believe in themselves 100%. Here's what I want you to do after this video. If you do not have a trading journal, go and get one. If you have one and you haven't been using it, just start using it. Or if you have one, go and review all your past trades. See if you can see any patterns. If you're feeling frustrated, feeling like, I'm not getting anywhere. Something's holding me back, go and review your data again. And be dead honest with yourself and say, "Hey, look, I'm clearly doing this wrong. These are the changes that I need to make." Being honest is so important.

[00:08:37]If you don't have a trading plan, write a trading plan. Put it somewhere where you can see it. So before you enter into a trade, you can look at it and go, "Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes." If you can't say yes to everything, there is no trade. That way, you're not going to force yourself and just go, "Oh, this trade might be okay." If you can't tick every box, there is no trade. If you've been unsure about strategies or you've been strategy hopping, commit to a very simple strategy for the next 3 months.

[00:09:04]journal and collect data for three months straight without straying from the path. After that three months, then review all of the data, see what your win rate is, see what your profitability is, and then make an informed decision whether or not this strategy and system is working for you. Not after every single trade, after 3 months of data collection, then make a decision on it.

[00:09:29]Because those small things are what separates the traders who make it and the traders who don't make it just on trading journals. If you need a journal, I have created a journaling template for Excel. You can use it on Google Docs or download it. The link will be in the description. It is free to download. It tracks your trades, but it also tracks how you're feeling mentally as well, so you can collect as much data as possible. If you need more help with trading, we do have the free Discord. We go live every single week. We do trade breakdowns, trade analysis, back testing, everything like that.