Setting Your Trading And Investing Goals

By Sam McNeill

What's the best way to go about setting your trading or investing goals? Well, as with most goal setting in your life it involves two important elements: perceived difficulty, and how specific you are in stating your goal. These two elements play an important part in attaining your goals.

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.

And people are more likely to perform well when the goal is seen as believable based upon their knowledge, their training, and their skills. When people know it CAN happen because they CAN make it happen, performance increases. So don't set a completely unrealistic goal.

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.

You can measure your progress against your trading/investing goal simply by keeping a running tally of your earnings year to date. So when you are half way through the year and have an earning tally of $38,100 from your goal of $72,400 you know you are on track as you are over half way there.

Most people who start trading shares or investing in shares do not have goals. When asked about what their trading goals are, they don't know and they don't worry about it. The most common response is "to make some money". This is neither specific nor difficult nor does it have a big "Why is this goal important" nor is it measurable.

Start by setting a difficult, specific, and realistic trading/investing goal and start measuring your progress. But make sure you understand why you want to achieve your goal; you need to know why it is important for you to achieve your goal.

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. - 31876

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