New Year, New Goals

Many newer traders are going to be setting goals for 2024 that are going to be like "make a million dollars this year" or "quit my job and go full-time" or "90% green days." What I want to talk about today is setting realistic, achievable, repeatable, and scalable goals for the new year. Big numbers are fun, don't get me wrong. But in this business, you'll never get to the big numbers if you don't focus first on sustainability. Let's take a look at a few reasonable goals you might want to set for yourself this year.

One of my personal favorite goals is around trading rules. First, your goal should be to have a set of trading rules that is built upon your own personal trading habits and preferences. Write those rules down, post them somewhere visible near where you trade (or save them on your phone where you can refer to them easily), and read them each day. Make a goal for 2024 that you'll follow your rules each trading day, regardless of your trading results, and give yourself some kind of penalty for breaking your rules. My personal penalty when I break my rules is I either stop trading for the day or I have to size way down if I want to continue to trade (for example, if I'm just trading 1 mini lot, if I really want to keep trading I've got to go down to 1 micro lot). Whatever your rules are, make them make sense for you and follow them.

If you like monetary goals, make sure that they are reasonable. If you're currently average $150/day trading, don't set your goal at $500/day for the new year. I'm a big fan of scaling your goal over the year. Last year, for example, I set my goal for the year to increase my daily goal each month by $100. While I didn't reach my end goal for the year, it was still reasonable and achievable and it gave me something to focus on that was easily repeatable and adjustable as the year went on. Some people don't like daily monetary goals and I get it. They can be limiting. But when you're still on the newer side of trading, there's nothing wrong with having some numbers in mind where you know you'll be pleased with your trading on the day. I also crafted a rule about trading after I hit my daily goal, which helped me push for more when it made sense and gave me a clear stopping point each day.

If you don't want to have a monetary goal, one of my favorite goals even today is to have a clear goal around the quality of my trades. I know that going into the day my goal is to take three great setups. If I trade more than that, it's usually because I either took not my ideal setup or I got emotional and didn't follow my rules. When I review my trades for the day, I can look back and see where the best setups were and if I took them or if I took a trash setup. It forces me to review my trades every day and it forces me to look for the setups that I like. It's one of my favorite goals.

Whatever goals you want to have for yourself, just make sure they are reasonable. And if you don't hit your goals, that's OK! Review your goals and find out why and adjust them as you need to. There's nothing wrong with reviewing your goals each month or each quarter (or even each week!) and adjusting them to what makes sense for you.

Here are today's NQ levels:

Current Price: 16510

Upside Targets: 16659, 16682, 16729, 16767, 16829

Downside Targets: 16564, 16448, 16313