Setting Your Trading And Investing Goals

Goal setting in trading and investing, and indeed in any area of your life, has two vital items involved in goal setting and goal attainment: i) perceived difficulty of the goal; and ii) how specific your goal is.

If you set yourself a trading/investing goal which is difficult and specific you are more likely to heighten your performance to attain your goal.

In a trading example a goal to earn $50,000 next year through your trading activity is good. However, a goal to achieve, say $51,600 will likely produce better performance as it is perceived by your brain as more specific.

Setting easy goals is unlikely to raise your performance as if you set a difficult but specific goal. So if you believed that a trading goal to earn $51,600 is easily attainable for the year, and then maybe set it to a more challenging $72,400.

But your goal has to be realistic to be achievable. You need to believe your goal is attainable through your past experience, knowledge, training and/or skills that you can make it happen. So to perform against your goal make it realistic.

As you work towards achieving your goal, your belief in the importance of achieving your goal will make you more committed to your goal. As you assess your progress you will be reinforcing your commitment when seeing results. This will strengthen your performance to achieving your goal.

A way of measuring your trading progress, can be done as simply as keeping an ongoing running tally of your trading outcomes for the year. For example, if your goal is to earn $72,400 from trading for the year and by half way through the year your trading tally is $38,100 you can measure how well you are placed to achieving your goal – you have more than half of your goal achieved.

Often when we start off in trading/investing we do not set goals. Often we’re just happy to see ourselves make some money. This unfortunately is not specific or difficult – it is not going to challenge or focus your performance.

So, why not think through your trading or investing goals. Set yourself an attainable, but difficult specific challenge and measure your progress. You will be amazed how you feel about your results.

Kevin Hogan discusses in his textbook “The Psychology of Persuasion”, the idea of “the least acceptable result” and how this is the goal that most people will achieve from any activity. What is your trading or investing least acceptable result? Don’t let this be your goal, set your trading/investing goal today and raise your performance and watch the results.

Looking to find the best share trading course, then visit Just Shares to find the best advice on how to trade shares and share trading education.