Every Given Sunday

Sunday is my favourite day of the week, but why?

Sunday has always felt relaxed and personally it has always been a time to reflect and take stock of what you have. My week can be consumed by lists and goal setting and striving to achieve, but Sunday for me is a day to see the overall bigger picture. It’s the time I can reflect but also a moment of realisation of the self and to see where we are in the bigger plan. But to put into more detail.

Firstly, I enjoy the analysis and strategizing for the week ahead, I think you must love this part as it breeds confidence in your work and Sunday then becomes the bedrock and starting point. This allows the inevitable adjustments that are needed in the week to have a great foundation, so your waypoints in the week have origin. If you do not have this, any ad hoc trades or reactions to the markets become the norm, so cannot be traced back in your decision-making process and this makes it tough to learn from your actions if they are just guessing in the heat of the moment.

Secondly, my philosophy is that consistency, routine, discipline, and structure are the major keys to success, but if you do not construct a trading plan, you cannot apply these attributes to the week’s work as you have no clear direction or strategy. This means you run the risk of being aimless and just reacting which may bring short term success, but over the long run, you will either lose or tread water and go nowhere.

‘You will unquestionably see the biggest impact on your trading performance if you journal throughout the week. By recording analytical and psychological metrics you can then undertake a thorough analysis on Saturday or Sunday.’

To break this down further, I aim to have a strategy or form of analysis that suits my personality that I love and have confidence in. The excitement of a greater individual approach allows me to build and plan for the week. It provides an anchor point to plan effectively for different outcomes.

My weekend analysis also allows me to take a step back. I am out of the markets and this allows me to calmly form a removed perspective to go through my weeks trading journey. The main areas are tracking performance, the bigger picture, trading plan, trading, trading psychology, and learning.

I can also visualise on Sunday the week ahead and walk through my thoughts, ideas and what to do in certain situations. This side builds with experience as the markets have synergy and are repeatable and structed so l can see scenarios play out that have happened before. This leads into why journaling my trade actions and my psychological approach, is so important. I begin to learn and develop whilst building up a bank of knowledge. The journaling process throughout the week helps the good practice process and Sunday is the review, reflect and adjust day. Acting as a safety net!

‘Without Sunday I cannot become effective or prepared, have meaningful refection, and evaluation to build meaningful development’.

The Sunday plan and analysis provides a centre for situational awareness, it slows me down to builds connections to my reactions to the markets and my awareness of the trading self.

The most important area to concentrate on is your trading psychology and this is the foundation of your trading, your detailed analysis of this topic will provide answers to any problems or adjustments needed in other areas. The root causes of bad trading can be found in the below topics. 

Discipline, routine, motivation, focus, mastery, composure, resilience, mind, energy, and patience.

I undertake a general overview of my performance and figures and compare this to my goals and targets. (As the process is formed out of the goals) I can then see the big overall picture of how well I have traded and whether I have stuck to my rules and principles. Did I trade outside the plan? From this I can begin to establish some reasons behind my aberrations.

This is an opportunity to look at the overall goals, principles, and rules. It gives you a chance to review, analyse and adjust. For this process, tinkering is not the aim. You are looking for reasoned adjustment to improve trading performance, so good justifications are needed and a thoughtful process is needed. As a processed drive attitude, I would look at each step to achieve the goal and how I can adjust to obtain the desired outcome. The focus on the process is the key.

I also find it a good time to improve my knowledge. If your week is hectic then reading a few chapters of your trading/investment book or gaining some more knowledge on fundamentals or technicals will free up time on the weekend for a few hours to improve trading skills and intelligence.

Simon