Never Do Anything Out Of Habit
"So in the majority of other things, we address circumstances not in accordance with the right assumptions, but mostly by following wretched habit. Since all that I've said is the case, the person in training must seek to rise above, so as to stop seeking out pleasure and steering away from pain; to stop clinging to living and abhorring death; and in the case of property and money, to stop valuing receiving over giving."
— Musonius Rufus, Lectures
This is a tough one, when we try to compare this to trading. I have often advised people to get in the habit of turning up every day that they can, to practice and get to know their strategies inside out. Yes maybe we need to tweak a strategy on the way, through trial and error to get the best out of it, but you are still in the habit of practising and perfecting your trading skills. In the example from todays message, a worker was asked why he did something a certain way and his only answer was that it was because it had always been done this way! If you were to ask me as a trader, why I trade a strategy a certain way, my response would be because it produces results that I am happy with. If I wasn't happy with the results of a strategy over a period of time then I would look to change it, once I had given it long enough of course. I am a great believer in the saying "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!" So in summary as a trader, doing things out of habit can be advantageous, because we are not mindlessly doing it out of habit, we are fully focused and aware of what is going on when we are in a trade. If you are trading a horse race and you leave it too long hoping that it will turn back in your favour, then that is a habit that you need to break and quickly or your bank will suffer! The same can be said of trading a football match. Let's take laying over 3.5 goals as an example. We don't want an early goal, but if we get caught with a goal, we must hedge for a controlled red rather than hoping that no more goals will come until we can break even or dramatically reduce the red. If however a second goal comes while we are still in the trade, we are in a much worse position. So staying in a trade is also a habit we need to break too! I would say that in terms of trading, you can do something out of habit "IF" it works for you consistently over a period of time, because it then becomes the right habit to get into.