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I heard this somewhere and I think may apply in your situation.
So consider this:
Give a trader the best system available -- and without discipline he will lose all the money. But give a great disciplined trader just a ordinary system that barely makes a profit -- and he will not lose the money.
And every one of them will work… and every one of them will not work
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Setups only need to be reasonable;
Typically;
Your set up should not have you buying support in a DT… Nor should your set up have you shorting resistance in an UT
(unless you fancy yourself adept at calling turns)
Of course ranges could be considered a set up on to their own
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That said; the discipline required
Taking the same action – trade over trade… day in day out – month over month… year over year
The actions
Every time your set up materializes – trade it
Every loser – keep it small (and obviously each stop should be placed at a point (price) where that trade fails – as setting it any place else is simply wasting money)
Every winner – let it run till its time to exit (and as no one ever knows how far price will run - for every given trade – you'll need to figure out a way to identify when it is time to exit that winner)
Do the above consistently;
Regardless of how you feel…, what you think… what you want…. or hope for
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One add’l note;
The mkt is uncertain – one trade/ trade’s outcome – is always independent of any other trade/ trade’s outcome
(be a good idea if you understand this sentence to your very core)
And as always I am going to post something completely oposite, maybe something nobody would like and think that I am wrong.
What is discipline? Discipline means blindly following the herd, or blindly following some rules, or blindly following someones orders.
In other words, discipline is the unwillingness to ask the validity of certain rules, which exatly what ruins some traders. It does not allow any room for adaptation. New things happen and they don't adapt, because they think they need discipline.
In my opinion, discipline is harmful to trading. Children, soldiers need it, because they often don't know on larger scale what is really going on. Children don't understand why they go to school, they do, because they are following their parents orders. Why do soldiers need discipline? Because they need to go out there and fight no matter what.
So, don't be a soldier and don't go and die on one trade, even if the discipline tells you to.
The "discipline" of religiously getting out on stops that are too tight regardless of the circumstances at the moment is one thing that can kill you.
That's different from the "discipline" of maintaining mindful situational awareness and striving to consistently follow rules associated with an edge.
One thing I am sure of is that mental rigidity is not compatible with profitable trading. There is a fine line between sticking with reasonable rules and knowing that you are right while the market is wrong.
There is no single indicator, charting technique, or quantitative measure, that can accurately produce a forward looking view of the market. Rather, it is an aggregation of a variety of different inputs that forms the context for what should be the primary focus, which is price action. In any case, confirmation bias is likely to be an attendant factor in any analysis and/ or decision, so ultimately success will come down to risk, money, and trade management. However, this too must be pragmatically applied within the context of the market, i.e., type of day, liquidity, volatility, etc.
methinks you totally missed @Zondor's point, that is, the blind or rote adherence to an arbitrary set of rules, without taking into consideration the context of the market, can be ruinous