There are a few schools of thought on how long it takes to create a habit.

Some say 21 days, and some say two months, some take years. No matter how long it takes, you need to create good trading habits for a successful trading business.  One of these habits is a daily trading routine.

1. Give gratitude for the education and training opportunities in your trading business.
2. Prepare your mental, physical and emotional self for each good business day. Meditate, stretch, exercise, and fuel your body and mind. Write down your goals.
3. Research economic news. Use Forex Factory calendar, Yahoo Finance, CNBC, and many other sites to look at economic reports, earnings, and other market-moving news. Most good brokerage firms have a news source and earnings calendar.
4. Search for potential trading candidates, this will depend on what your trading business is: stocks, options, E-min futures, forex. Use scans for stock and option trading candidates. Better yet, subscribe to Rob Roy’s Covered Call Explorer or Trade Watch Alerts.
5. Set up your trading plan /checklist for each potential candidate; where to enter the trade, where is your profit target, where is your stop loss, is this within your risk-reward ratio parameters, and what size position can you afford according to your overall risk allocation.
6. Then wait for your plan to trigger. You can set alerts at crucial entry points or wait for a breakout after the first 30-60 minutes of the market open. The rest should be on autopilot if you have your stops and profit targets set in place. Check your trades to verify that your plan is still working. Be in the risk management business as much as in the trading for-profit business.
7. Study and continue your education.  One can always improve technical skills, entries, and exit timing.
8. Journal each trade so that you can improve your trading by noticing any trading habits that are no longer beneficial, trends that have changed, or new emerging patterns.

Keeping with a daily trading routine and tweaking it to make it better is a worthwhile goal.  Keep a healthy daily trading routine in order to create a habit.

Rob Roy shares his Daily Trading Routine in his Monster Market Movers.

Start creating good trading habits today.