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Self-efficacy

Your belief in your ability to execute a specific task, which predicts persistence through drawdowns better than general confidence does.

Self-efficacy is task-specific. Believing you can follow a stop rule under pressure is different from believing you are a good trader, and it is the more useful belief because it points at a behaviour.

It is built mainly through mastery experiences: small, repeated successes at the exact task. This is why starting at minimum size matters. A hundred correctly executed small trades builds a genuine belief that you can execute; one large trade managed well does not.

When it collapses during a drawdown, rebuild it the same way. Reduce size until execution is easy again, accumulate clean repetitions, then scale. See scared-money for what happens when it is missing.

Related: locus-of-control, growth-mindset, scared-money, deliberate-practice

Educational only, not advice. Spotted an error? Post in Site Feedback.