I recently was talking to a fella on the interwebs and The question was asked if I thought trading is a form of entrepreneurialism. It's very interesting question. I believe that if you asked 10 people this question, you would get 10 different answers But here's mine. The way I define an entrepreneur is someone who adds value to some raw inputs and provides that value to the world via a product or service. In order to accomplish this, a ‘business’ is usually the delivery mechanism. And one of the key components of a business is a plan. We typically call this a ‘business plan.’ It can be written or unspoken. But it’s the combination of the idea and the execution and the goal.

So the answer is “Some traders are entrepreneurs.” The one’s who are I would expect have a business plan. But what is a trading business plan look like? If you Google business business. plan, you won't find anything useful. There's too much of a difference between a product or service business plan and a trading business plan for conventional business plan resources to be helpful. However, if you were to look up trading business plan, you won't find very much useful there either. Most people are primarily interested in knowing is when to buy and when to sell. It is not nearly as popular to search “How to create long run success in a trading business.”

The following is a basic outline of some of the elements that I would think would be included in a trader’s business plan. There are objectives (mission and vision), risk management, procedures and processes, internal controls, rules, and tasks that all go into it, but they are different to some degree or another than what would be considered a part of a business plan.

Objectives

General Principles

Money Management:

Trading Hours

Documents for Daily Review

Daily

Weekly

Morning Routine

Rules

Trade Management:

Journaling/Tracking

Definitions