In 1969 when my friends and I were enjoying the Beatles song Hi JudeManagement coach Martin Broadwell spoke about:Four levels of teachingTo describe the work that must be done to learn a skill.
Broadwell discussed teaching, but his ideas about levels of competence became popular in psychology and self-improvement circles.
what are these “proficiency levels” Can it be applied to your Forex trading journey?
Level 1: Unconscious Incompetence
It may sound like a flowery insult, but it just means that You don’t know how much you don’t know yet.
You may have heard about Forex trading and thought, “It’s like stock trading. How bad could it be?”
So, you open an account and bet 10% on your first EUR/USD trade. You win big, so you do it again, this time on australian dollar/us dollar Just for laughs.
I lost everything I gained EUR/USD And more, so you should use SMA to help you determine the trend.
This goes on for a while until you realize that your winnings may be due more to luck than skill. You may even lose a lot! You can’t even call your losses “education fees” because you haven’t learned anything that could lead to consistent profits.
Level 2: Conscious Incompetence
This is where you realize it. “easy lemonade” It may actually be “Hard, hard, lemon is hard.”
You still don’t know, but at least you know now. They take action to improve their bottom line.
They try to learn fundamental and technical analysis and common market conditions. They experiment with different indicators and time frames and use their trading history to record their success rates.
You create a profile of individual currencies and how they react to economic stimuli. Last but not least, you experiment with strategies until you find a system that suits your trading personality and risk tolerance.
You will fail a lot (and burn accounts?) at this point, but you will also learn.
Level 3: Conscious Competence
At this stage, you have an idea of what works for you and what doesn’t.
But as I gained the tools and skills to make a profit, You still need to make a conscious effort to achieve consistent results.
You likely have several profitable strategies in your playbook, but keep consulting your trading journal to confirm which strategies to use.
You have set strict rules for managing risk but you have difficulty following them when fear and greed control you.
Your trading journal remains your best friend. But this time, you are interested in consistent execution rather than consistent wins because you know that you can still make a profit even when you lose trades.
Level 4: Unconscious Competence
No, this does not mean that you lost your mind while trying to gain discipline.
In the “unconscious competence” stage, You will feel that trading has become automatic for you..
You have seen hundreds of patterns that you can now identify market conditions and choose strategies after ten minutes of reading.
You’ve managed your risk so often that choosing a Netflix show requires more brainpower than position sizing and cutting losses.
You know your system so well that you’ll realize when you’re not getting the same results and that it’s time to make some adjustments.
At this final stage, your rules become habits and your execution of them is driven by “feeling” rather than conscious effort. Making consistent profits becomes second nature to you.
Competence is not mastery
Just as mastering three skill moves won’t make you win the World Cup, being a competent trader is just a step towards becoming a Elite Trader.
If you want to grow your account beyond your basic needs, you’ll have to challenge yourself more, learn faster, and practice more intentionally.
But that’s a topic for another day. What stage do you think you are at in your business journey?