The Art of Self-Discipline

As you may have already heard, discipline is one of the key ingredients in trading success. Whether it is disciplining yourself to a trading schedules or to a trading setup, disciplining yourself is in every aspect of successful trading.

The intention of this thread is to share ideas and successful strategies/tactics on disciplining yourself.

Personally, I think having an imaginary boss/coach would be helpful. I would imagine Steve Cohen as my boss and I would think about if he would fire me for taking certain action/inaction.

Pension_Admin

 

On good days, I would buy my imaginary boss lunch and later in the day, he could drink for free.

 

Ummm...how about you just get into a cycle and repeate it constantly that is discipline.


On the other hand you can join the marines.
Or even better, whip yourself everytime you do not perform under the discipline......it works for my dog!

 

You could put a poster of George Costanza, (a.k.a. Jason Alexander), on your wall with a name tag that says, "Hello, my name is Steve Cohen" on the left pectoral. It would make for compelling motivation to trade profitably.

 

Your dog whip's itself?
Holy crap, thats one tough dog.

Interesting the word "art" in conjunction with such a topic, that would be the very antithesis of discipline, would it not?

 

That is the question, how do you get into the cycle? Personally, my aim is to wake up at 4am in the morning to try and catch some actions in the currency market before I head out to my full-time job. I find it very difficult to do that. The best I could do is waking up at 5am and by that time I missed most of the actions.

Another discipline that I need is to trade my own set-up. This is a tough one because 1) I need to discipline myself to avoid all the noises, and 2) I need to discipline myself to actually not be afraid to enter into a trade when my set up appear. These are the things that is really difficult to get into a cycle of.

Pension_Admin

 

I lack discipline. It shows.

 

Seems like you got a good boss. Wouldn't he be too lay back sometimes, especially after a few drinks?

Pension_Admin

 

"This is a tough one because 1) I need to discipline myself to avoid all the noises, and 2) I need to discipline myself to actually not be afraid to enter into a trade when my set up appear. These are the things that is really difficult to get into a cycle"

Avoid the noises? Au contraire, bring 'em on. Know them, love them, embrace the noise and one by one you won't notice them. Numero 2? The bogeyman of fear. Understanding may conquer fear quicker than discipline. What don't you understand re your set up, that would make you afraid? These might be a questions you could ask yourself.