Patience and self discipline are the two ingredients that a master trader must have to stay profitable. I'm sure that most traders know that, it sounds easy enough, but when it comes down to it, It's not human like. My search for patience and self control/discipline has lead me to believe that one has to make these qualities a habit, like going to the gym 5 days a week as I do. 5 days a week at the gym has been extremely difficult for me until I made it a habit, now I don't miss or if I do miss a day, I make it up. With trading, profitable trading must become a habit. A profitable trading habit overcomes our human nature to forego being patient and or loss control of our self discipline, ex. not taking your stop loss when price hits.
Recently I've made two decisions that have taken my trading to new highs, the first was to make it to the gym 5 days per week, the 2nd was walk 3 miles daily during lunch time on Wall Street. Going to the gym and walking daily have become habits which has caused me to focus and trade just the mornings from 9:30 am - 11:15 am. Since I've been out walking I've taken no late lunch time trades and over time I've just decided that If I could not make a profit by 11:15 am, my chances are worse as the day progresses, so I almost never take an afternoon trade anymore. My results? I've been profitable every week since the start of April. I'm close to becoming profitable daily which is just around the corner as I can see my trading improving.
My last revelation that I'd like to share at this time is that I've realized that good trading days and bad trading days tend to trend together. For example, if Monday is a rough losing day, expect Tuesday to be the same, and if Tuesday is tough, expect more of the same on Wednesday. I've been using this new revelation to control my aggressiveness while picking my trading plays with outstanding results. I keep expecting more of the same from the market until otherwise noted. Last week I had a tough Tuesday and was down a "Risk" unit. Wednesday I expected a tough trading day which was confirmed with a scratch day. I figured Thursday would be more of the same, and it was, I had another scratch day even thou I felt I was more aggressive taking plays. Going into Friday, I had my guard up expecting more of the same when I found myself a beautiful 2 risk unit trade that moved my P & L into the black for the week. How many times have you seen a trader have a losing day and attempt to make the loss up the next day and then have a worse losing day. This would happen to me all the time but since I realized what was going on I've been using this knowledge with excellent results.
