This can get really overwhelming, especially for a new trader. The learning curve is steep, and it is not uncommon for many to be lost over how to interpret the markets, handle their risk, and pull in a profit. That was me. After hours and hours of research and trying countless strategies, I found myself consistently frustrated by results and my inability to scale trades. No matter how hard I studied, trading success remained just a distant dream.
There, I met one of the top proprietary trading companies in New York City—well known for producing seven and even eight-figure traders. What captivated my attention was that their Head of Trader Development, Jeff Holden, broke down a complex trading idea into four simple and counterintuitive techniques that helped me trade better and, more importantly, easier.
In this piece, I will share with you the four things that transformed my trading journey. The techniques are meant to make your trading easier, ensuring you spot good trades and confidence in executing correctly.
4 Tricks To Increase Your Trading Accuracy
1. Learn to Read Price Action
This is pretty much reading price action, the very first step in making trading easy. Which, in the simplest of terms, studies how the price moves over time. It forms the foundation of all successful trading strategies, and as this author believes, it’s absolutely essential to know what the price itself is telling you before jumping straight into your indicator.
One error I sometimes made was overemphasizing just one time frame—because it was daily, hourly, or even minute to minute. Jeff made sure to point out that understanding price action fully requires looking at several time frames, starting with the bigger ones—for instance, daily and hourly—and then drilling down to the smaller ones—5-minute and 1-minute charts. A multi-time-frame analysis is what will help you find consistency and patterns across varying periods, where you’re most likely to find the very best opportunities.
Price action tells the “story” of the market. When you hear professional traders talk, they use words such as “aggressive, passive, trending, or choppy” to describe price action. Learning how to interpret these nuances helps you spot potential trades setting up in real-time and be prepared to act.
2. Why Does Your Trade Have an Edge?
Understanding why your trade has an edge should be the second step. An “edge” in trading is just a high-probability situation where you think the market will change in your favor. Having an edge isn’t about gut feelings or waking up in a good mood. It’s actually about having a systematic approach with a catalyst, such as news or earnings, and a setup based on price action that leads into a specific trade idea.
I used to think that if a stock was going up, then there was reason enough to trade it. But successful traders such as those think of things in terms of probabilities and risk management. They don’t just jump at every stock that’s moving. Instead, they really evaluate four or five potential trades and then only put their money into the one with the strongest edge.
3. Begin With Your Stop
One of the most ridiculous things I learned was how to start with your stop. Most traders, myself included, were usually worried about how much profit from a trade they stand to make. Jeff taught me, however, that the hero lies not with the profit but with the risk.
A stop is a predetermined price level you will exit from a trade on if it moves against you. In other words, you need to find where the price invalidates your edge before you even enter the trade. That way, you’re always in control of how much you’re going to lose, which is essential for longer-term success. Having identified your stop, you then determine the appropriate position size for each trade so that no one loss would blow out your account.
The other skill that I have found helpful is the ability to move my stop as the trade unfolds. If new price action is exposing that your edge is going to get better, I’ll move my stop in so I can lock some profits. Then there is never a trade because you’re scared of losing money—that’s the best way to blow up your account.
4. Focus on Your Trading Edge, Not Emotions
But by far, the most important lesson learned in this regard was that trading is a game of edge rather than emotions. This means if, during your practice sessions, you don’t feel like pulling the trigger on good trades because you’re afraid of what might go wrong, then that’s an even bigger challenge because it makes it difficult for you to stay objective. Fear, frustration, and FOMO cloud your judgment.
That was clear, elegantly explained with a metaphor by Jeff. He said that fear and frustration, as emotions, can often be like a mile-wide obstacle but only an inch deep. Your trading edge—that being those high-probability setups you have learned to recognize—is only an inch wide but miles deep. You need to look at your focus as being on your edge and staying there rather than getting derailed by emotions in the execution process.
Trading with an edge, or a better than even chance of winning in the market, means having an understanding that losses are bound to happen. However, if you’re constantly trading with an edge, then over time, you are going to win more than you lose. This mindset helped me tune out any emotional doubts with an obsessive focus on executing with confidence.
Conclusion
This makes trading easy after one does the following four things: learn to read price action, understand why my trades have an edge over the computer, start with my stop, and focus on my trading edge instead of my emotions. Most of what I learned was taught by Jeff Holden at SMB Capital.
You can trade effectively with such a structured approach. There will be, of course, more profitable trades and even less stressful ones with practice. The message here is that successful trading is all about a process, managing risk, and consistently applying your edge.