In my last blog about trading, i urged traders to ignore personal motives when opening a trade. This concerned emotions like greed, eagerness, fear or doubt. Ignore your feelings, do not feel! was the message.In this blog it's getting even worse.
Now i will strongly advise you to ignore more feelings. Feelings of resistance, feelings of joy, feelings of boredom and feelings of haste or pressure. Do not feel! is again the message. Befehl ist befehl is the message here.
Who's befehl? you might ask. Who orders you to follow the rules? Who makes these rules? You off course. You make the rules that you follow when trading. And you never diverge. You develop the rules of your strategy as rigid and stern as possible. And then you follow them like a bloodhound follows a trail.
That demands discipline. But this discipline demands more of you than strictly opening and closing a trade at non-subjective signals.
Traders need to live with more discipline than normal working people. No, we are not a special breed, no super humans or androids, but trading demands a mentality that is comparable to that of top athletes.
Let's bring this into practice
In the UK timezone (GMT) we start at 7:15 with reading the economic headlines and setting up the agenda for the day, because we try to avoid trading during relevant news events. So from an hour before until half an hour after a news event we do not open a trade on the pair regarding that news event.
Then around 7:45 (after a double espresso) we analyze all the charts that we are trading on. We draw support and resistance lines, we draw the daily open line, set up the lines for marking the London session and we examine what happened overnight. After that, at eight 'o clock, trading is on.
And straight away the next challange is ahead of us. We have to eliminate all distractions if we want to profit optimally from market fluctuations. We must focus. And if you're a scalper – those are the real cowboys of trading – you shut down your phone, close your email programm and even ban this community from your monitor. Yes, you are allowed to pee once in a while.
Keep that body moving
During our morning routine of trading, we must not forget: Mens sana in corpore sano. So stand up every twenty minutes and do some physical excercises, maybe even yoga. Walk your imaginary dog, stretch your legs, step on a cross trainer, do whatever suits you to keep that body moving. It has direct influence on your ability to concentrate and focus on your trading. Do not think that these lines do not apply to you: they apply to all of us.When trading is done, or maybe even before you start your daily routine, meditate. Clear your mind of the everyday thoughts and worries.
There are many ways of meditation – mine is tai chi and some fencing excercises – that will help you perform better.
There are a lot of strange ideas about meditation. You do not have to sit in an uncomfortable position with the smell of incense crawling up your nose. Just breathing in some fresh air, reading some pages of prose or poetry, or running up and down the street may do the trick as well. As long as you get your mind of the daily business, worries and routines.
All of this has immediate effect on your results. Really. You will simply make more money at trading when you give your body and mind the right attention every day. It does not take your time, because it gives more time and results back.
Only three months of vacation per year
With a high demand of self discipline, life of a day trader is hard, but it has it's beauties. Like the working hours. Around noon (GMT) trading is done. Opportunities decline and in the afternoon US turmoil takes over. And on fridays we're free. Friday is not a good day for day traders (except between 15:30 and 16:30 GMT). And so are the the months of july and august and the weeks around Christmas, Easter and some national hollidays here and there.
So, life sucks with only three months of vacation per year and 20 hours of work per week. But the other nine months, during these twenty hours, you have to demand the utmost discipline of yourself. You are worth it.