After you enter a position, there is no such job as "making" that trade win.
Entering a position does not give you any more control over the future outcome.
Whether that trade wins or loses remains uncertain all the way to the end, even after you are in the position.
Yet many traders suddenly feel, "I need to do something," once they are in a position.
They start watching the chart more closely and wondering whether they should take profit early, move the stop loss, or find something else they can do right now.
But your job has not increased.
You have simply started taking responsibility for an outcome you cannot control.
A trader's responsibility is not to turn that one trade into a winner.
It is to execute the rules decided in advance all the way to the end, regardless of the outcome.
Your job does not change after you enter a position.
Rather than trying to control the outcome, execute only your own rules.
That is why you need to prepare a system in advance so that during live trading, you never need to think about how to change the outcome.
Turn emotional gambling into a job where all you do is "wait and click."
A step-by-step process for turning your strategy into a repeatable system with an edge👇
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To traders who say, “I want more discipline”👇
You do not lack discipline.
The reason to follow your rules simply does not yet outweigh the win or loss in front of you.
Do you only think, “I need more discipline,” after breaking your rules and losing?
Would you think the same if the exact same violation made you money?
If the answer is no, what you truly want is not discipline.
You want to avoid losing money on the trade in front of you.
That is why you want discipline after a loss and stop wanting it after a win.
If the outcome determines whether you want discipline or not, your goal is not consistency.
It is the win or loss in front of you.
And that value system is also the reason you cannot follow your rules.
Discipline is not the strength to suppress the part of yourself that wants immediate money and keep enduring what feels unpleasant.
It is the state in which “following your rules matters more than the outcome of the trade in front of you” is no longer merely an opinion, but has become a belief that determines how you act.
But writing “following your rules matters more than the immediate outcome” on paper will not make that belief yours.
Test the rules across a large sample size, then practice them through your own hands.
Experience the wins, losses, losing streaks, drawdowns, and the distribution and edge that emerge beyond them.
Only through that experience does the value of following your rules take root as a belief that determines your actions.
Once you reach that point, you no longer need to summon discipline to follow your rules.
You no longer even recognize what must be done as something unpleasant.
What you truly need is not to want more discipline.
It is to turn the value of following your rules into an unquestionable belief by testing first, then practicing through your own hands.
3/7
People often say that the stronger you visualize your goal, the more likely it is to come true, but this is often misunderstood.
If you don’t understand the path to achieve it and you simply try to believe, there will inevitably be doubts somewhere in your mind.
Instead, once the path to achieving that goal is logically understood and clearly visible, that’s when you can visualize it most strongly and be truly convinced.
If you can see the path, you can’t help but move forward.
Why can’t you maintain consistency in trading?
It’s either because the goal you envision is wrong or because you haven’t perfectly understood the path to it yet.
If you lack consistency, it’s not because your willpower is weak.
You just haven’t logically and clearly understood that your goal requires consistency, and you don’t truly want it yet.
I am a human being with emotions.
But wins and losses in trading do not move me emotionally.
Many people misunderstand this point.
I am not fighting my instincts.
I am not suppressing my emotions with strong willpower either.
You do not need to become a monk in trading, and you do not need to fight your emotions.
In fact, thinking through the route of "fight your emotions and win" is itself one reason many people fail.
I am taking a completely different route.
I have written this here many times, but much of the fear and anger that appears in trading is not a primary instinctive reaction like reacting to thunder or a loud noise.
It is a secondary emotion created by the meaning you assign to the win or loss in front of you.
A baby does not feel fear when looking at a chart.
Because the baby has not assigned meanings like "loss," "failure," "a verdict on my ability," or "anxiety about life" to the chart.
In other words, the problem is not the emotion itself.
It is your perception, understanding, and meaning that produce that emotion.
What kind of value are you placing on the short term result in front of you.
That simply appears as your emotional reaction to wins and losses.
That is why I have never told you to eliminate emotions.
I have never told you to fight your emotions and win either.
What you need is not to suppress the emotion.
You need to change the premise that produces that emotion in the first place.
When you see someone who is not afraid of flying, you do not think, "This person is a master at suppressing fear."
For that person, flying is simply not interpreted as something fearful.
Trading is the same.
If you interpret a rule based loss as "failure," your emotions will move every time you lose.
If you interpret the win in front of you as "success," your emotions will move every time you win.
As long as you place value on wins and losses, it is natural that your emotions move with wins and losses.
Trying to control emotions in that state is like pressing the accelerator and the brake at the same time.
That is why I have not chosen the path of fighting emotions.
I understand trading not as a game of wins and losses, but as a probability game.
I understand that short term results are random, and that both the wins and losses produced by following the rules are part of the system.
I understand that a rule based loss is not something bad, but a necessary cost for drawing out the edge over the long run.
And this means nothing if you only know it intellectually.
You need to test it, practice through your own hands, and experience again and again how wins and losses are distributed inside a large sample size, including losing streaks and drawdowns, before the edge eventually appears.
Then you need a way to bring rules, testing, practice, position sizing, and execution procedures together and make them function as one system.
Through the repetition of these experiences, your thought processes and beliefs change.
When your beliefs change, the emotions that arise toward the same event also change.
I have written about how to make that change here many times, and I also put it together in my book, "Trading Psychology."
And the method for bringing rules, testing, practice, position sizing, and execution procedures together and making them function as one system is written in my manual, "Trading System Architecture."
I have been showing this path all along.
That is why I am not desperately suppressing my emotions during trading.
I simply do not interpret the win or loss in front of me as my own success or failure.
If I lose according to the rules, the system simply produced a necessary loss.
If I win according to the rules, the system simply produced a necessary gain.
My job is not to react to those wins and losses.
My job is to act according to the system's instructions, keep collecting high quality samples under the same conditions, and draw out the system's edge over the long run.
Unless you understand this point, no matter how much you learn emotional control, the emotional problems you face during trading will never be solved at the root.
The emotions you feel are not created by the market in front of you.
They are created by the meaning you assign to that market and to wins and losses.
Endurance and patience are not needed in your trading.
Discipline does not mean forcing yourself to obey.
When endurance is required, it means you are holding a conflicting belief or thought process.
While you intellectually understand that following the rules is important, what you truly believe is that "the win or loss in front of me matters more."
That is exactly why following the rules requires endurance, and why people who can do it appear to have strong mentality built on patience and willpower.
That is not what is happening.
Your beliefs and thought processes can be transformed through experience.
Once you become a true trader grounded in probabilistic thinking, and can embody it not just as a concept but as action, no endurance or patience is needed at all.
For me, only the necessary process exists, and I require no endurance or patience whatsoever.
They simply do not exist.