Three mindset shifts that transformed my trading
Earlier this year I wrote about taking a break from my regular trading journey blogs while I adjusted to a new way of life – trading full time.
In April 2025 I decided to take the plunge and follow my passion to become a full-time day trader with the support of proprietary trading and education firm, DND Trading. DND's excellent guidance and coaching has been pivotal in helping me find a new view to trading, and working towards making day trading a sustainable career.
I knew that pivoting careers was always going to be a challenging endeavor, but against the 2025 geo-political and economic backdrop, it seems I could not have picked a wilder time (in recent years) to venture full time into the markets.
That said, and looking back over the last 6 months, this pivot has been extremely beneficial and rejuvenating for my personal health and growth. My trading performance has also improved considerably, so I thought this would be a good point to update my blog and share three key mindset shifts which got me to where I am today.
1) The importance of process and sticking to one strict and clear system
One of my biggest issues has always been changing between multiple systems, adjusting rules frequently and not realising the extreme importance of sticking to and having an obsession with process. System hopping is the product of disbelief in your process and results while wanting a path to a very high win rate and a consistently high risk to reward ratio (but that's not happening to anybody any time soon as the relationship between these goals is inversely proportional). What should be strived for is the consistent and precise execution of your system which has been back-tested and proven to have edge over time. Profit will ebb and flow but your profitably trend will grind higher. The only thing that matters is consistent process!!
You need to trust your process more than anything else and stick with it. Clear, strict rules with minimal confusion and room for interpretation have been a saviour for my trading given my personality type. That being said, learning to be flexible when my "default setting" is rigidity is something I'm still working on. But the main lesson is that you repeatedly need to place the same boring trades, that follow the same repeatable process, without any hesitation or interference. Without doing so, you will never escape the hell of erratic and negative performance and enter the promised land of long term consistent profitability.
2) Stop caring about the result
This one ties to the process point above. Whether you win or lose, make a profit or loss, detachment from the result is key. Trust that you will win over time if you follow your process. It's about the next 1000 trades, not the next 1 trade. I experienced this when executing numerous consistent trades following the same process week after week. Your edge will play out over time if you let it. Deviate from the path and you will erode your chances of success. I have felt a lot freer as I've strived to stop caring about the result, and just execute my trades. This has been a difficult mindset shift for me, and something I work on each day.
It costs money to make money in trading – never forget that. Trading and the financial markets are a business of risk management – it requires you to embrace uncertainty and become comfortable with being uncomfortable.
I used to panic about getting a few losses in a row and would then switch systems or give up. What was eye opening was seeing other traders go through loss streaks and realising that this is a normal part of the process, and not just me. Being part and having the support of the DND trading community has been invaluable in this regard. Traders may have a string of 6-8 losers, 1-2 winners then another 4-5 losers only to claw it all back to profitability. Remember that you typically risk 1 to make 2 or more so allow the mathematics of trading to play out. Even a typical 50% win rate system still have around a 50% chance of seeing at least 6 consecutive losers in a 50 trade sample size. Everybody has bad weeks or bad months but to succeed you must continue and never give up.
3) Quality over quantity
Day traders want to take as many trades as possible in a day so they force and chase setups because that will make them more money, right? Wrong. Having more opportunities does not equate to increased success. This is the "work effort" paradox of trading – when solving a typical business problem, more progress and improvement with harder work usually yields better results but with trading this is not necessarily the case. What will increase the odds of success is fewer, higher probability, clean setups from which you can extract value. Counterintuitive, isn’t it? But it works.
Rather sit on your hands and wait for clear consensus and direction than trade noise. Not trading is still trading if your system tells you that no valid entries are present. Then when price has finally decided which direction it's going to trend, it is more likely than not to move with conviction. Preserve your capital as it will bleed quickly if you trade noise. Be patient, be disciplined, and rather focus on your process and not trade volume.
I'm not perfect and there are times where a lapse in judgement causes me to forget or "ignore" the key mindsets above, but that's the human aspect of trading. We all make mistakes. The key is to accept the mistake, forgive yourself, and journal it to improve future behaviour. Each error is a stepping stone on the path to trading success but you need to own up to these mistakes and record them so that you know you're on the right track! I may still be close to the beginning of my journey but these mindset shifts have definitely steered me in the right direction.
Until next time :)
~Alessandro