Is Discipline Enough to Succeed?

[equtrader 10]

No matter how disciplined one is, if he does not know when to buy and when to sell he will lose in a disciplined and maybe orderly way. It will be slow pain. Better to have no discipline and lose fast.

[pushpacares007 10]

Discpline and stop loss is something which is very important in trading...I still remember that day when i was emotionally holding on to a stock which had hit the stoploss and lost quite a bit of my money being lost...from that day i realized that market has its own way of teaching you and if you are not disciplined then you cannot earn money.

[Vince50 10]

Guys, I am still getting all kinds of annoying ads all over my screen. But not when I go to other forums or threads. I wonder why. Hmmmmmmm.......

[bobcollett 10]

Guys, I am still getting all kinds of annoying ads all over my screen. But not when I go to other forums or threads. I wonder why. Hmmmmmmm.......

 

Hi Vince

I hate to say this but, they're out to get you

regards

bobc

[Vince50 10]

Thanks Bob. I'll just stay indoors for a few more weeks. Shhhhhhh...........

[Vince50 10]

I don't know much to trading. I only know what I know from hard direct experience and repeated daily practice, note taking, reading, and chart time.

 

But I come to conclusion its all discipline..............................

 

The success that a trader achieves in the markets is directly correlated to one’s trading discipline or lack thereof. Trading discipline is 90 percent of the game. The formula is very simple: Trade with discipline and you will succeed; trade without discipline and you will fail.

 

I have also come to conclusion that I don't feel bad about my previous losses in the beginning. Lets face it, I didn't know what the hell I was doing. And guess what.......I still don't know what the hell I am doing. But what I am doing makes sense to me and seems to working thus far. So all that technical and discipline stuff don't mean nothing unless the trader know what the hell they are doing.

 

Just my two cents.

 

But how will you ever know for sure you know what you are doing unless you are winning?

After all, isnt it true that the best indicator is your brokerage acct balance? :rofl:

[llonigro 10]

discipline without knowledge and experience...fail

a trader without confidence....fail

a strategy without money/risk management....fail

an investment without enough capital.....fail

 

there are too many elements involved, in my opinion

 

Spot on Obsidian. I couldn't agree more. Successful trading requires multiple factors to be in congruence. Having discipline isn't the be all end all and holy grail.

[Angelnish 10]

Discipline is probably one of the most overused words in trading education. However, despite the cliché, discipline continues to be the most important behavior one can master to become a profitable currency trader. Discipline is the ability to plan your work and work your plan. It's the ability to give your trade the time to develop without hastily taking yourself out of the market simply because you're uncomfortable with risk. Discipline is also the ability to continue to trade your system or strategy even after you've suffered a series of losses. Do your best to cultivate the degree of discipline required to become a world-class trader.

 

Discipline is not enough to succeed, you will need:

Persistence – Perseverance – Positive Thinking :ciao:

[Vince50 10]

Discipline is probably one of the most overused words in trading education. However, despite the cliché, discipline continues to be the most important behavior one can master to become a profitable currency trader. Discipline is the ability to plan your work and work your plan. It's the ability to give your trade the time to develop without hastily taking yourself out of the market simply because you're uncomfortable with risk. Discipline is also the ability to continue to trade your system or strategy even after you've suffered a series of losses. Do your best to cultivate the degree of discipline required to become a world-class trader.

 

Discipline is not enough to succeed, you will need:

Persistence – Perseverance – Positive Thinking :ciao:

 

I agree Angel. Over used for sure. But here is where we may disagree. I think it is also over rated. In fact, most trading horror stories come from too much discipline and confidence. I will take NATURAL TALENT in 95% of endeavors over discipline. I know this from personal failure all my life. I never wanted to be a trader. It came natural to me. But let me give you a real life example; Do you remember when you were in Junior High or High school that there was always that shy awkward kid with glasses on the basketball team that never fit in, He always blew the important shot, he tripped over himself, never had any grace on the court and because of his self image he practiced twice as hard as anyone on the team. Then comes the day of the big game and the ladies man, the captain of the team hears his girlfriend walking in to watch him and while he is looking at her, he cuts thru all the other opponents and dunks the basket, still without looking at what he is doing.

 

I'd rather be a natural than be good.

 

Id rather be lucky than disciplined.

 

Id rather have the right people helping me than to be the smartest trader.

 

By the way, I was not that young gawky kid. But because I had no talent in sports I knew it would have been, so I got into right brain activities instead. -) All the discipline in the world will not make an ordinary person into a Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods. It is impossible. I also believe that there are many, many shrewd people on these boards that will never ever be a break even trader if they tried for 50 years. Why? They see the chart in a different way(not bad or good, just different) than someone who is a winner and also sees the charts in a different way from losers.

 

Bet a lot of money, I mean all you own, that if you took the top 100 CEOs' WHO MAKE BILLIONS of dollars for their co in profits each year, not 5% of them could make a living trading no matter how disciplined or not they were. Agree?

 

Quick story: I was a young teen ager when Arnold Scwarzeneegger was a name people laughed at to pronounce. I had been following his career for years before his first movie. When his first movie was announced, I knew gyms were going to open up all over the country, and I wanted in. I devoted my life for years to being in the gym. I even took steroids to do anything at any price to simply become a local Mr Brooklyn winner. I was more disciplined than at any time in my life. I lived on eggs, tuna,chicken and salads. Yuh gettin the picture? And to be honest, I made some very modest gains, the steroids didnt do much at all, and I wasted my entire life living a dream that could never come true. Then I found trading 15 years ago and as soon as I saw my first moving average or indicator, it was a perfect hand in glove fit! And even today I'm not as solvent as Id wanted to be from trading because my mother died 3 years ago leaving me in total financial disarray. So you need luck too.

 

IMHO, the best indicator of a winning trader is who he has around him. The lone wolf traders of Market Wizards fame is an extinct animal, if ever even existed. So you can have the best discipline and the worst luck, and still not make it. Oh, money mgmt overcomes that? That "might" be true if you had NO living expenses. I dont buy it! In fact as a young blackjack dealer on a cruise ship, I amazed my pit boss by losing every week for 2 months straight! Its over 5 million to one. But if tyou think about life..there are always 5 million bad things out there that at any second could happen. How we handle it, and come back is another story for another day.....

 

Question: What is the best way to show discipline in trading? And to feel it!!!?

[Roger Felton 10]

I agree Angel. Over used for sure. But here is where we may disagree. I think it is also over rated. In fact, most trading horror stories come from too much discipline and confidence. I will take NATURAL TALENT in 95% of endeavors over discipline. I know this from personal failure all my life. I never wanted to be a trader. It came natural to me. But let me give you a real life example; Do you remember when you were in Junior High or High school that there was always that shy awkward kid with glasses on the basketball team that never fit in, He always blew the important shot, he tripped over himself, never had any grace on the court and because of his self image he practiced twice as hard as anyone on the team. Then comes the day of the big game and the ladies man, the captain of the team hears his girlfriend walking in to watch him and while he is looking at her, he cuts thru all the other opponents and dunks the basket, still without looking at what he is doing.

 

I'd rather be a natural than be good.

 

Id rather be lucky than disciplined.

 

Id rather have the right people helping me than to be the smartest trader.

 

By the way, I was not that young gawky kid. But because I had no talent in sports I knew it would have been, so I got into right brain activities instead. -) All the discipline in the world will not make an ordinary person into a Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods. It is impossible. I also believe that there are many, many shrewd people on these boards that will never ever be a break even trader if they tried for 50 years. Why? They see the chart in a different way(not bad or good, just different) than someone who is a winner and also sees the charts in a different way from losers.

 

Bet a lot of money, I mean all you own, that if you took the top 100 CEOs' WHO MAKE BILLIONS of dollars for their co in profits each year, not 5% of them could make a living trading no matter how disciplined or not they were. Agree?

 

Quick story: I was a young teen ager when Arnold Scwarzeneegger was a name people laughed at to pronounce. I had been following his career for years before his first movie. When his first movie was announced, I knew gyms were going to open up all over the country, and I wanted in. I devoted my life for years to being in the gym. I even took steroids to do anything at any price to simply become a local Mr Brooklyn winner. I was more disciplined than at any time in my life. I lived on eggs, tuna,chicken and salads. Yuh gettin the picture? And to be honest, I made some very modest gains, the steroids didnt do much at all, and I wasted my entire life living a dream that could never come true. Then I found trading 15 years ago and as soon as I saw my first moving average or indicator, it was a perfect hand in glove fit! And even today I'm not as solvent as Id wanted to be from trading because my mother died 3 years ago leaving me in total financial disarray. So you need luck too.

 

IMHO, the best indicator of a winning trader is who he has around him. The lone wolf traders of Market Wizards fame is an extinct animal, if ever even existed. So you can have the best discipline and the worst luck, and still not make it. Oh, money mgmt overcomes that? That "might" be true if you had NO living expenses. I dont buy it! In fact as a young blackjack dealer on a cruise ship, I amazed my pit boss by losing every week for 2 months straight! Its over 5 million to one. But if tyou think about life..there are always 5 million bad things out there that at any second could happen. How we handle it, and come back is another story for another day.....

 

Question: What is the best way to show discipline in trading? And to feel it!!!?

 

Good stuff, Vince50. Good question, too. It's not enough to put on the "poker face" and get spanked so hard by the market that you have to trade standing up and not let the pain show on your face. You really do have to FEEL the discipline or it's just an act. So, how do you feel discipline?

 

To really feel it, you have to understand it. Discipline is, of course, having a Trading Plan and then being able to follow that plan without deviation. Is it ok to "fudge" once in a while when your gut says it's a good idea? NEVER. If you break, bend, twist, alter or mangle your Trading Plan in any way at any time, you cannot call yourself a disciplined trader. Why is this so important?

 

Imagine that you spent years developing a trading strategy that worked so well that you turned it into an auto-traded system. The software code found the trades, executed them, managed them and exited them and good profit was made virtually every day in the backtested results. However, when you put this great system online trading your real trading account, it would arbitrarily do really strange things that weren't supposed to happen. The system started to lose badly due to these "cowboy" trades. What would you do? Probably FIX THE DARN THING!...and quick!

 

If you wouldn't tolerate goofy trades in your code, why would you tolerate it in your discretionary trading? Yeah, it's all rooted in human emotions, but that too broad and doesn't nail down the real cause or cure.

 

Think about this: Emotionally, what's the difference between getting in your car and driving accross town now and when you did it for the first time? Or when Dr. DeBakey performed his first heart transplant and when he did his 5,000th. What I'm getting at is "Confidence". Having rock solid unshakable confidence in two critical (yet different) things...that performing a task will accomplish the desired result AND that you personally are knowledgable and experienced enough to perform that task.

 

For instance, I know that the Space Shuttle can take me around the moon, but I lack any level of confidence that I could get in one and perform that task. We know the Shuttle works, because we've seen it. We know a particular trading system works, because we've witnessed traders making their daily goals with it for months. So, why is it that when a trader gets "behind the wheel", so to speak, he can't trade that system for one single day with true discipline to save his life?

 

I think it all comes down to confidence. He doesn't know right down to the core of his soul that all he has to do is follow the system...follow the plan...stick to the rules...and it will literally no longer matter if any particular trade...or series of trades...win or lose. When you know that you did your job correctly and you know beyond any doubt that doing so will enable you to achieve your goals, then you are never tempted to do anything else.

 

Breaking your Trading Plan means that your belief system is impared and, that being the case, you will fail every time.

 

Building and maintaining the confidence necessary is no easy task. It takes a good system, preferrably one with minimal drawdown periods...drawdowns throw confidence in the woodchipper for most traders. But that's just the beginning. You must have Method Mastery. You can't trade that which you don't understand. This is why complicated systems have such a high failure rate. You must have Experience, too, and that's something money can't buy. However, it can be shared for considerable benefit...but it can't be replaced.

 

Traders must achieve the same level of confidence that they possess when they perform any other task they know they can do...because they've done it so many times before though maybe not always successfully. I've had some car crunches but I still drive with total confidence.

 

So, bottom line, if you still deviate from your trading plan, even just occasionally, then true discipline doesn't exist in you....yet. You don't really FEEL it because your Confidence is still in the formation stage. It's there one day and gone the next. When it's there day after day, through all the ups and downs, highs and lows, the good, bad and ugly of everyday trading experience, then you will know you are truly disciplined...you will have no urge to bust your system and only then will you begin to enjoy the goal achievement consistency you've been searching for.

[autotrader1 10]

Discipline alone will not help a trader to succeed. There are other criteria which you require in order to succeed. Among them is you must be able to control your emotions during trading; never let your emotions to control your trading. You must also determine what kind of trading that suits your style, intraday, position trading, etc.....then you have to choose a trading strategy to suit your trading style. Always adhere to your trading plan!!!!!

[realforexer 10]

If discipline include; diligence and putting in the hard work necessary to succeed and having control over emotions like greed; hen it is very vital for a successful forex career. It took discipline for me to stay awake for 3 hours every night and also enter the market 2 hours before the U.S market opens to analyse my trade for the day for me to make my first reasonable profit with Profiforex. It will be difficult for anybody without discipline to succeed in the forex market.

[wmck6167 10]

"Is Discipline Enough to Succeed?" If it's a fair game in interactive system. You only can control the lost part. You win is determined by other's lost. Therefore, discipline can only control the lost part. That may means discipline can only improve the lost less. So I think maybe "Discipline is better to prevent failure" maybe a better statement. Cheers and thanks for provide a great place to think.