No excuses, stick to it
Every trader who wants to be successful needs a set of rules he acts on – a system. Most build their system over years with growing experience, others buy one. To discover what works and what doesn’t most traders test different systems during their trading career, till they find or develop one that fits them and brings the consistent success they searched for. But it is not easy to test a system, because there is one problematic factor involved in it – the trader himself.
Your rules tell you how much risk to take, how to upsize or downsize your positions, how to diversify and more…
Many people come up with good ideas for their trading, but the problem is that they are mentally not able to test them properly. They aren’t able to stick to the rules they created or which they considered to be good. Only discipline can tell you if a system works for you.
The problem is that we as humans don’t like pain and that we tend to avoid it. That’s a good behaviour in a physical world. But in a more mind related world, like in trading, you sometimes have to endure the pain of being wrong. It hurts our confidence and our positive thinking and especially our pride. But sometimes it is necessary to be wrong in order to learn something.
As a result of the avoiding of pain traders don’t stick to the systems they test. They tend to ban a whole system after a few bad results, instead of wondering about the cause of the failure. But it is necessary to develop the discipline to stick to a system in order to get an objective result. That doesn’t mean you should burn all your money trading a system that doesn’t work. Trade during the test phase using very low risk management procedures or only in a paper account. But trade it long enough to learn what works for you and what doesn’t. Your trading will benefit from this knowledge.
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