No Excuses
"It is possible to curb your arrogance, to overcome pleasure and pain, to rise above your ambition, and to not be angry with stupid and ungrateful people — yes, even to care for them."
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
A tough one to compare today's meditation to trading, but controlling our arrogance and anger is also vital when we are trading, just as it is with everyday life.
I have touched on the importance of not trading when you are upset or angry, over the last couple of days in these daily journals. Also a good run of profitable trades can cause an air of arrogance, if we allow ourselves to become over confident and feel invincible. This can be so dangerous and you can be hit with a big loss as you can let your guard down, almost assuming every trade will continue to work in your favour! We have to be fully "in the zone" and manage every trade to completion. Be prepared for the worst case scenario, so that we can exit in a heartbeat, should we need to!
Trading is a learning curve and we can hopefully make steady progress towards our goal of becoming profitable traders. With plenty of hard work and ensuring that we stay focused on our trading strategies, by sticking to them 100%, every time we trade, we will with practice, become more confident and consistent as time goes on.
You can do this with patience, discipline and persistence, getting to know your strategies inside out and back to front; rinse and repeat!
So stick to the plan "no excuses"