Your results are a delayed measure of your habits.

If you want to be in financial markets, there are some habits you need to develop. The first one is financial literacy, which I often emphasize. To improve your financial literacy, you should conduct research on various topics such as behavioral economics, crowd psychology, investor behavior, and financial markets, read plenty of books, listen to podcasts, and watch videos on relevant subjects. In another writing, I can provide brief summaries of the contents along with individual comments and suggestions.

Improving your financial literacy alone will not be enough. In addition, you need to develop yourself in the context of technical and fundamental analysis as well. Many people who are new to learning technical analysis express that they struggle to continuously work on and experiment with charts. In today's writing, I want to focus more on this topic.

You can start by accepting the challenges

When the main reasons that lead to this situation are examined, there are many reasons such as not being sure of the level of one's own competence, not being able to see the results of one's behavior immediately, repeating the same action over and over again is boring, having different priorities in one's life, needing a certain amount of money to survive and meet one's daily needs, and wanting to make money quickly. Each of these may be justified reasons, but if you want to be in the financial markets and become an investor or trader, you should know that you have to follow it regularly and you should start with this prerequisite. There are a lot of factors to keep track of, especially considering that the crypto markets are open 24/7 and the markets are affected by the opening or closing of different exchanges, such as (İngiltere Exchange, China Stock Market, US Stock Market, etc.). The first thing you need to do is accept this situation and difficulties, (çünkü this is such a yer).

Coming to terms with failure

The second thing you need to accept is that the process will not always go upwards, just like a heartbeat, it will go up and down. As habits naturally turn into routine, they start to become less interesting and satisfying. After a while, you get bored of doing the same thing over and over. Anyone can work in a job that can keep them constantly motivated, but what truly makes a difference is being able to continue even when the work is not exciting. The only way to achieve perfection is through doing the same thing over and over again and learning to love it. When you look at many successful people like (Kobe Bryant, Cristiano Ronaldo, Henry Ford, Stephen King, Thomas Edison, Bruce Lee), you can see that even after failing numerous times, they never stopped repeating themselves and emphasized that failure should be embraced and learned from.

While writing this text, I was listening to Harun Tekin's episode on Nilay Örnek's podcast How to Be. Harun Tekin, the lead singer of Mor ve Ötesi, also connects his success to repetition and continuity, emphasizing his belief in the philosophy "Practice makes perfect." As you can understand, in every area of life, professionals stick to their programs and repeat, while amateurs allow life to interfere and believe they can achieve success with little effort. To achieve this, I will also provide some tactics in the continuation of the text.

There is no way other than trying.

I'd like to share a story about repetition and experimentation that James Clear mentions in his book Atomic Habits. Jerry Uelsmann, a professor at the University of Florida, divided film photography students into two groups on his first day of class. He said that everyone on the left side of the class alacaklar( grades according to the number of studies they produce )yani the "quantity" group, while everyone on the right side will be the "quality" group, (yani alacaklar) grades according to the quality of a single work they produce. At the end of the period, he saw that the best photographs were produced by people in the "quantity" group and was surprised by this situation. According to James Clear, there is not much surprising in this case, because the students on the left took many photos throughout the semester, tried different methods, learned from their mistakes and arrived at the best photos. On the other hand, the people in the "quality" group could not go beyond speculating about the photo they took. They were trying to convince their professors why their photos were of such high quality. As we can see, the more we try, the more we tend to learn.

We can see a similar example in crypto markets. Let's take Efloud as a basis, which can be the best example of continuous repetition and countless tests, and often repeats it. Judging by his tweets, he only gives his analysis and explains his plan. He repeats once again what he has repeated countless times. On the other hand, when you look at most of the crypto phenomena, they attribute many things they "don't know/are wrong" to news, insider investors, cryptocurrency exchanges, and manipulations. Many of them speculate, just like the students in the "quality" group... Therefore, if you don't want to find excuses for yourself and lose money, you have to do it again and again, even if you get bored.

The cost of good habits right now, and the cost of bad habits is...

I will address the behavior of making it a habit to analyze charts throughout the text as a concrete example of financial markets, in terms of continuously working on charts. Another reason that prevents the maintenance of good habits is the time inconsistency between the behavior itself and its results. "The cost of your good habits is paid now. The cost of your bad habits is paid in the future."

The human brain has evolved to prefer immediate and rapid rewards over delayed rewards. Our early ancestors spent their days responding to serious threats, searching for their next meal, and trying to survive. Therefore, valuing quick pleasure was more adaptive. On the other hand, the intended rewards for many actions occur much later. For example, you save money and invest, but you may only receive the rewards (perhaps) years later. As we explained in the dopamine section, behaviors that are rewarded quickly are repeated, while actions that are immediately punished are avoided. When the experiences we gain are satisfying, our likelihood of repeating that behavior also increases. Therefore, for a habit to take hold, it should feel at least a little successful. I can provide an example tactic related to this.

What is the attachment technique?

With the "paper clip technique", which is a method that I saw in James Clear's book and found very effective, you can both see your current progress and visualize your habit and frame it in a concrete and numerical way. All you need are two jars, one empty and the other filled with 365 paper clips. After that, you need to set a behavior goal for yourself. You can create a specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound goal, such as "I'm going to study graphs for two hours every day," (Daha araştırabilirsiniz) the SMART method for detailed reading. After achieving your goal during the day, you should throw one paper clip from the jar containing 365 paper clips to another. You can combine several methods to form the habit and not stop repeating it. For example, at the end of each month, you can count the paper clips in the jar and set yourself an effective penalty for the days you did not do it. If you achieve the behavior goal you set for the whole month, you can set yourself an extra reward in addition to your paper clips at this point.

Finally, remember that "Your results are a delayed measure of your habits." It is very important to notice that you are making progress in the process of adopting good habits and letting go of bad ones. I will address this in my next writing.

This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move carries risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making decisions.