From Good to GREAT Through Growth and Discovery, feat. Kendra

Welcome back! Becky & Kendra created this podcast & website in 2023 to have a space to offer up our constructive conversations that might help other developing traders learn, grow, and feel supported, as these conversations do for us. In this episode/blog, Market Mama Kendra’s going to dive into a topic that as developing traders we are always working on, and that’s how to go from good to great!

Becky and Kendra have been in this trading arena over three years at the time of this episode and it’s already quite astonishing when you look back to where we started. Kendra day trades primarily NQ futures at this point and her profitable trading strategy has been built around auction theory with a huge emphasis on Market Profile, Volume Profile, and order flow. However, that's not where she started. Both mamas first learned about the stock market from the ground up having zero knowledge, understanding, or exposure besides sometimes hearing about the main indices: the S& P 500, the DOW, and Nasdaq mentioned on the news. This is the baseline that likely the majority of adults have in relation to the Stock Market. So, we feel extremely blessed to be in the position we are now to not only have acquired a real skill to trade in the open market, but also to be co-creators and founders of our trading psychology podcast: Market Mamas. It really is leaps and bounds from when we were first learning what a candle stick even was, how to identify patterns, or support and resistance.

One of the things we truly love about trading is there is no ceiling, no corporate ladder, and no limits to potential growth and development. Individual success of a trader is completely self-designed and driven. One of our favorite tips Kendra discovered when learning to create content was “imitate and innovate.” If you are like Becky and Kendra and consume a ton of books and material on self-development and growth mindset, then it’s likely you’ve noticed that all the authors, motivational speakers, and public figures are sharing much of the same theories, messages, and strategies but put their own special and unique spin on it.

We also really like how this concept of imitate and innovate applies to trading and selecting a style in which you will learn and develop into your own edge. For example, Becky and Kendra both received their advanced secondary trading education from mentors that had a genuine heart to pay it forward with their profitable trading strategy to help others, and they built their trading systems from collecting knowledge from other sources and putting in the time to refine it to suit and serve them. We find this part of trading very inspiring that there are so many teachers out there who have opened up their playbooks for aspiring traders to imitate. Here specifically, Kendra explores how as students of the game we can then apply that innovation factor to further our own individual trading blueprint. We believe nothing makes an educator or mentor more proud than having helped plant a seed that takes root and produces fruit of an even greater variety and transformation. 

In Kendra’s personal trading experience, she’s found much of the work that has pushed her forward and got her to new levels was highly personal and not exactly a requirement to trade. She’s found there’s a big difference between the efforts put into learning a style to acquire a skill set, again the imitation, and the individual work to have a system that is grounded in discovery and advancement, which is a critical part of innovation. There's so much inspiration and motivation when you set out to learn a new strategy. Many of us who went all-in full dedication, have learned really strong technicals of trading and a solid understanding of the markets. We all have our routines that we do day in and day out without fail, so we can prepare for the daily opportunities Miss Market may present and we show up to practice and learn. Things like charting and doing top down analysis, making trade plans, recording a live trade session or taking live notes, journaling our trades, sharing our executions with a trading community or accountability partner... These are all really great habits that keep you learning, maintain your identity as a trader, and give you the reps you need to eventually break out as an extremely successful and consistently profitable trader. There’s so much that goes into just having a solid foundation to grow from and then be able to really focus on things like, how do I execute better? How can I follow how the market moves better? How can I have better reactions that will bring on substantial improvement?

In her daily trading recaps, Kendra likes to ask herself the question “what is this day wanting to teach me?”

We agree and really believe it takes a deeper level of discovery in order to develop and evolve your trade strategy along with your execution growth. For Kendra, there’s this period right after a trading session that provides instant feedback, did I win or lose? Am I green on my day or red? Then there’s the sharing of her execution(s), which involves explaining the logic and intention behind her trade or trades. Did she follow her trade plan and setup, how well did she read Miss Market and how in sync were her actions, how did she feel during the session? This is a vulnerable time, and it’s usually when she’s the most critical of herself, when she’s seeking validation. Checking her account statuses, how much potential profit she earned, how much closer she is to meeting her benchmark goals. These are all very important factors that help to gauge her performance on any given day and can also affect her confidence about how she’s doing overall. She’s trying a lot to not internalize the results on her day too much right after her trade session, but rather compartmentalize and pivot especially since that’s the time she will be least able to look at her results from a neutral stance and be able to extract the most value.

We believe trade review and recaps are so important to make those discoveries in our executions. Even more, Kendra’s learned the way we go about doing it can make it even more effective. As she’s made significant improvements on implementing things like using if/then statements and being more selective on market conditions she will participate in, she can see that having a positive impact in her win rate and cleaner execution days. Also, it’s been much easier to identify if her trade is just flat wrong, she traded with a bias, or over traded out of stubbornness. Those lesson days are great to reinforce the realities of understanding that Miss Market is always right and not to get too married to our grand plans as great and as much sense as they make to us at the time. Kendra likes to ask herself the question “what is this day wanting to teach me?” The harder lessons to identify are when she is following her system well, being consistently profitable, and admittedly getting more comfortable, and she doesn’t want to try and fix what’s not broken. However, Kendra believes this is precisely when she has to apply pressure, purposeful pressure, to take what’s good and figure out how to make it great!

Let’s dig deeper into Kendra’s trade review and recap. In the past, before her evening charting time, Kendra would look over her execution, maybe do a replay for a specific trade she didn’t execute very well or an opportunity she missed. We 100% recommend using trade replay if you have it available on your platform, especially as you’re learning and building an edge. What Kendra started doing recently is making a more in-depth recording of her trade recap for her morning executions before she charts for the next day. This involves walking herself back though the entire session, things that she observed and notated premarket, her intentions for the day, location and conditions around opening, how she was interpreting price action in congruence with her live data. She reviews the live notes she was taking at those timestamps, how she was honoring and waiting for her if/then levels. While she’s doing this, she’s sharing her different charts that she executes on and monitors, also explaining what she was seeing and how that influenced her trade biases and actions. She’s also commenting a great deal on her feelings during the session and in hindsight, discovering things she didn’t see or give enough credence to, as well patterns she’s recognizing within the market and herself.

In the book Mindset Secrets for Winning, it was the author's recommendation of “looking at results or mistakes more analytically with a degree of detachment,” that really helped her to see the value of doing her trade recap from a different vantage point that could help her get even more value and understand herself more. Also, Kendra states that knowing her personality of being very self-reliant and being a Taurus, she has the most regard for trusting herself and her own beliefs. Talking to herself through these recordings really helps put her in a peaceful and powerful mood by injecting even more belief in her trading abilities. They usually last around 15-20 minutes and she will play it back before moving on to updating her charts for the next morning.

With trading being such a personal and self-directed pursuit, Kendra really believes taking the additional time to have time with just you and Miss Market is a really wise investment. It helps foster that strong inner-voice that we as traders need to lean into when we are on the charts. Kendra is looking forward to continuing to grow that strength in herself, as she still sometimes overthinks or hesitates when she needs to act. We know it takes time, experience, and more reps to build that trust with our own trading intuition and instincts. Time outside of regular trading hours, where you can look at things from a different lens is the most helpful! It’s easier to identify those areas that can take you further when you’re not still having some type of carry over from a trade execution.

We like to always have a couple of specific areas of growth we can target in addition to the overall intentions to follow our process and trade our edge. There’s always more on the management side of trading that can help us on the journey of being good to becoming great. Doing the trade recap recordings really revealed to Kendra that she needed to do a better job with position sizing and trade exits. Those are things she was able to define and then be deliberate to focus on what she wanted to see happen. Do any of you out there do recordings to recap your trade session too? And if so, have they also brought value to your trading game?

Thank you to everyone who is subscribing to our podcast, reading our blogs, and providing us feedback! We have learned over these past three years how easily our confidence can rise and fall based on our performance, but we are dedicated to the long game and showing up each day for this work towards our goals. We know and want you all to know and own that we are all worthy of this pursuit and have so much more value to bring forth during this lifetime. We hope that you all will believe that whatever you feel called to do has already been given to you. Just keep at it one day at a time, and watch all the pieces fall into place. Our best trading days are ahead! We wish you all the very best for your lives. Happy Trading!