Last update: August 2021
“[…] It all comes down to mindset. Chipper talked about how it takes a strong will to be able to fail 70% of the time and press on, practicing, playing, and striving to be better without the failures weighing down on you.”
Justin Driskell —
Justin here, back with another Friday Feature.
Last month I finished a three-part series about backtesting. Consider today’s blog an epilogue to that series. Let’s go back to before I started trading, shall we?
It was early 2018 and my wife was getting into photography. It was a hobby of hers that she wanted to make into a business. She caught wind of a business seminar and asked if I would go with her. It was actually at this seminar that I signed up for my three-day workshop with Legacy (but that’s beside the point). What really caught my wife’s attention was that Atlanta Braves legend, Chipper Jones, was going to be a guest speaker there.
If you don’t know who Chipper Jones is, you are definitely not from Atlanta.
Chipper is considered one of the best Major League baseball players in Atlanta Braves franchise history. If you live in Georgia, even if you’ve never watched a single Braves game, you’ve heard of his name. We sat through the seminar listening to multiple speakers give life lessons and motivational speeches. It was Chipper’s turn to come up and it was set up like an interview where someone was doing a Q&A with him. I honestly don’t remember much of what he talked about on stage but one statement he made really stood out for me.
He talked about how his career batting average was .303. This meant that around 3 times out of 10, he got a hit. This also meant that 7 out of 10 times resulted in an out. He talked about how it blew his mind that he could fail 70% of the time during his career but was still honored as one of the best.
Think about that for a minute. A professional athlete fails most of the time. In professional baseball, a batting average over .300 is considered really good. In professional basketball, as long as you make around 50% of your shots, you’re considered good. In hockey, all you got to do is make one out of 10 shots to be considered good. So, what does this have to do with trading?
It all comes down to mindset. Chipper talked about how it takes a strong will to be able to fail 70% of the time and press on, practicing, playing, and striving to be better without the failures weighing down on you.
In my swing trading backtest, an average of only 45-50% of the trades were successful. One of the hardest things for me as a new trader was learning how to fail 50% of the time and keep going without trying to tweak a rule every time a trade got stopped out. You must trust your backtest and trust your system. Professional sports athletes understand what their numbers should be in order to be considered “good”. As a trader, you need to understand what your systems numbers should be as well to determine if it’s “good” too.
So, run your backtest and journal the trades, use the numbers at the top of the Tackle Trading Journal as your baseline of how your system should perform over many trades. Practice until proficient then go live.
TRUST YOUR SYSTEM, traders.
Justin Driskell
Justin started his trading journey during a 3-day workshop with Tim Justice in April of 2018. He has always been interested in the financial markets and the opportunity it potentially provides. He likes trading stocks and options. Outside the markets, he’s a husband, father of two boys, and full-time automotive technician.
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“[…] It all comes down to mindset. Chipper talked about how it takes a strong will to be able to fail 70% of the time and press on, practicing, playing, and striving to be better without the failures weighing down on you.” Trust your system, traders.
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4 Replies to “Friday Feature: The Scouting Reports Backtest Series Epilogue”
Thanks Justin Great Point.
Outstanding blog.
Thanks
Thanks Justin!
CHIPPER JONES! he’s awesome! Got to hear him speak last Friday. So many gems from Mr. Hall Of Fame that apply to trading.
YOU ROCK Justin D! Thanks for a great post.
Keep up the great work! Keep swinging!
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