🎯 Profile Basics: Developing Trader (Score Range: 57-71) 

You’re well on your way to becoming a disciplined trader—consistency is within reach, and you’ve built a solid foundation. But there’s still room to grow. While you stick to your plan most of the time, occasional slips and doubts keep you from hitting your full stride. 

⚠️ Common Characteristics of Developing Trading

📈 You are consistent most of the time, but sometimes deviate from your trading strategy and plan. 

😟 You’re starting to trust your system, but doubt creeps in after losses. 

🎯 You might struggle to fine-tune execution and review performance effectively. 

😐 Your emotions are mostly under control, but you occasionally let fear or greed influence decisions. 

🧑 ‍💼 You’re juggling trading with other responsibilities, which can disrupt your focus. 

✅ Your Plan of Attack (POA) 

💪 Step 1: Strengthen the Habits of Consistency. 

🔕 Step 2: Limit Distractions – Trade with a focused, distraction-free environment. (Remove news & social media during trading hours!) 

️⚙ Step 3: Streamline Your Process with Automated Conditional Orders – Set your entry, stop, and targets upfront to reduce emotional decisions. 

🧠 Step 4: Refine Your Plan Only If Necessary – Conduct Regular Trade Reviews and identify patterns to improve execution. 

🌟Step 5: Consider a Mentor to Accelerate Your Growth – Learn from a pro to refine your process. 

Need more details about your results? Read the expanded report below. 👇👇👇

📈🔧 The Developing Trader: Growth Meets Gaps 

You’re not just dabbling anymore—you’ve built a solid trading foundation, and consistency is so close you can taste it. Most days, you’re in the groove: your plan guides you, your system hums along, and trades click into place like a well-oiled machine. But then there are those moments… 

Does this sound familiar? You’re checking your positions at lunch, juggling a fresh trade setup with a buzzing phone or a news alert screaming panic. Usually, you’d stick to your rules, but today, fear of missing out—or a quick loss—nudges you to tweak an exit or skip a step. Your emotions are mostly tamed, a far cry from earlier days, yet every now and then, greed whispers “hold a little longer” or nerves cut a winner short. 

It’s not every time, but you sometimes stray from the plan, and more than you’d like. Or the newest shiny object on YouTube sucks you in, making you wonder if this new strategy is even better. Whatever the cause, you wandered off course…again. 

It’s not chaos, not even close, but those occasional slips keep you from running at full speed. You’re on the cusp of something great, and it’s frustrating to feel it slip through your fingers.

Life’s other demands all call for your attention—family, work, health, whatever—pulling your focus at critical moments. You’re consistent enough to see results, but not sharp enough to trust every move, and that gap shows when you look back at old trades and wonder what could’ve been. 

Here’s the truth: you’re already ahead of the pack—most traders never get this far. 

Your execution is solid, but not razor-sharp. And while you’re tracking and reviewing trades, you haven’t mined that data to optimize performance. Those slips and doubts? They’re not failures; they’re the challenge you must overcome to level up. 

With a little polish—locking in habits, leveraging automation, and sharpening focus—you can turn “most of the time” into “every time.” Your foundation’s solid; now it’s about sanding the edges to make it shine. 

The Developing Trader in you is itching to break through, and the next push could put you into the top category of Consistent Traders. 

Keep reading for more details about your Plan of Attack.

🏗️🧱 Expanded Plan of Attack: Your 5-Step Blueprint to Closing the Gaps 

💪 Step 1: Strengthen the Habits of Consistency 

You’re already consistent most days—now make it every day. Treat your trading plan like a non-negotiable playbook: every entry, exit, and risk rule followed to the letter, no exceptions. That starts with your routine for trading prep. Make your prep an ironclad process and the execution will follow.

Incorporate insights from your trade tracking and journal. Look for hidden patterns. If you fumbled the plan on a trade, note why in your journal. Job stress? Tired? Hungry? Listening to news? Upon review, you might notice outside stressors that lead to your most common mistakes. Then you can compensate for those in the future.

To stay on track, consider rewarding yourself for a streak of trades executed according to plan. Start with a challenge: commit to 10 trades (live or paper) where you stick to your system without a single tweak, even if doubt creeps in. Journal and log each one and check it against your rules.

Reward yourself after hitting the mark (coffee, a break, whatever works). Then up the streak to 20. It’s not about flash; it’s about building a habit so ingrained that straying feels wrong. You’ve got the foundation—now hammer it into steel by trusting your process over your gut every time. 

🔕 Step 2: Limit Distractions 

Focus is a superpower—distractions are kryptonite. Build a distraction-free trading zone: phone away, news feeds off, social media blocked—no YouTube rabbit holes mid-session.

Pick a 1-2 hour block each week for trade research and prep (mine is Friday after market close).  Set it in your calendar and treat it like a meeting with the market. Use a tool like Freedom or Cold Turkey to lock out X and other internet noise during that window. Set a time-limit on research. If you don’t get to all the stocks on your list in that time, only trade what you’re able to really assess. Enter any orders you want to take (see step 3) and create the initial journal entry for this trade—parameters and why you’re taking it.

If you like to trade daily, then keep the distraction free habits in place for your daily trading session.

Set another challenge for yourself. Start with three distraction-free sessions; note how your execution sharpens without the buzz. Life’s demands—work, family, dopamine hits—will tug, but this bubble keeps your head clear. The market doesn’t care about your inbox—it rewards the focused. 

⚙ Step 3: Streamline Your Process with Automated Conditional Orders 

Emotions will always be the weakest link in your process—automation is the way to plug the gaps that emotion tries to open. Moving beyond basic orders helps you execute your plan without you second-guessing mid-trade. The automation has no emotions; it follows your plan exactly.

All brokers offer some level of pre-set orders (entries, stops, or targets). Some brokers—like Thinkorswim or Interactive Brokers—offer highly advanced orders. Learn about your broker’s advanced choices like “conditional orders” or “OCO” (one-cancels-other) orders.

Start small and test out order automation ideas on a paper account until you have it figured out. First, have your trade plan lined out: ideal buy point, a stop-loss, and first profit target.

Experiment with different order types:

• • • Conditional: Uses a market condition to submit your specific order with an If;Then logic.
    • OCO: Useful for setting a stop and target on AutoPilot. If one fills, the other cancels.
    • Time-Based: if you want to avoid trading at certain hours or set a specific time limit for your order to play out.
    • 1st Triggers: If the first order fills, your next instructions are activated. Useful for creating a cascade of orders to meet your plan.
    • Or whatever order types your broker has

Test each type in a simulator for five trades. Layer different types to see what happens. With the right combination, it’s possible to set your trades up to run hands-free—your job’s to create the plan and hit “submit.” Once you’ve mastered these orders, they also save you time.

This isn’t fancy tech; it’s discipline hacking coded into the market, keeping FOMO and greed at bay so you can stick to your rules and be more efficient. 

🧠 Step 4: Refine Your Plan Only If Necessary 

Your system’s solid—don’t tweak it for kicks. Set a regular review: every week or month, pull your recent trades (from your log) and scan for patterns. Did you nail entries but bail early? Did losses hit because of sloppy stops? Did news create extra volatility? Write down your insights.

Only adjust if the pattern is screaming—like bad stop placement on 7 of 10 trades (just an example). Compare current and past performance to check if something about the market has changed vs an error in technical analysis or a fat-fingered order entry.

If you decide to tweak your process, test any changes in a simulator first, not live cash. This isn’t about chasing shiny objects; it’s about new iterations based on evidence, not impulse. One month of reviews will show if your plan’s the issue—or if your execution was sloppy.

Don’t change your system on a whim. Adjust only when data confirms a consistent issue. This ensures your system evolves with purpose.

🌟 Step 5: Consider a Mentor to Grow Beyond The Gaps

You’ve almost found consistency—but you might be too close to your process to see the gaps. Now could be the time to consider finding a mentor for an objective perspective. A trusted pro mentor can refine your process from wisdom and experience.

They can guide you through current markets, revealing hidden nuances, and help streamline your approach for efficiency and consistency.

Depending on your schedule, try a program with weekly calls or an online community forum. It’s not about learning the basics anymore; it’s about mastering a framework to close gaps fast. You’ve built the base—a mentor’s insight can push you to Consistent status quicker than going it alone.

This could be your edge to turn “most of the time” into “every time.” 

🚀 Ready to Go Next Level?

Your hard work has brought you so close to being a top-tier Consistent Trader. I’m rooting for you to get there. 

If you’d like a no-fluff roadmap to conquer this 5-step plan, check out my book, Trade Your Way to Freedom. It’s your shortcut to honing your technique and unlocking your trading potential. I’ve been where you are, and this book shares the solutions I used to close the gaps, master focus, and build a winning system.

Your Plan of Attack – Laid Out Inside the Book:

#1 Strengthen Habits: Sticking to your system every time (Chapters 2, 3, 16) 

#2 Limit Distractions: Methods for staying focused (Chapters 5, 8, 16) 

#3 Streamlining – Automated Orders: A beginner’s guide to setting them up (Chapter 17) 

#4 Refine Where Needed: Your trade journal and trackers as essential tools in the trading business (Chapters 15, 16) 

#5 Time for a Mentor? Why mentoring is essential for top-tier performance, plus various ways you can get help to level up (Chapter 19)