Discipline, Psychology, Consistency

These may be the most over-used terms in trading.  They are in my top six of foundational, recurring themes from Market Wizards and I talk about them frequently because of that.  What's discipline?  Most of us know it simply as "follow your rules and keep emotions out of the trading process."  Psychology?  It's a mental game-maybe the ultimate one, where you are ever and always your own worst enemy.  Consistency?  You have to keep plodding along, hitting lots of singles to bat .300, and not changing bats every time you strike out.

These are tough edicts to follow, hard to pin down and even harder to quantify.  How do you measure these mostly qualitative trading performance concepts?  Mostly, all we get out of talking about them is lots of guilt and little clear direction.  They are still great concepts, but what's the solution for implementing them?  Keep a trading journal?   That works great for some.

Another solution is to quantify and code a trading system.  This solves the ambiguity of these problems immediately.  And it gives you a base of data to grow from as a trader.  No more wonder, worry, guilt, or angst.  You will have confidence and answers at your finger tips.  You will be commanding a high-performance machine with sensitive instrument readings that you can make adjustments to.  And you can build more than one.

Then you can automate them and let several co-pilots fly several planes for you.  You will be running a trading business, taking your trading to the next professional level.  You free yourself up for more creation, testing, development, and deployment of money-making systems when you are not focused on daily gyrations in markets.

Building trading systems doesn't mean you have to be automated.  But quantified, hard-coded trading systems give you an incredible edge-over the competition, over yourself, over your wealth-generating future.  Speaking of the competition, the big money pros are using automated systems for a reason and that's why they buy more lows and sell more tops while you and I are still thinking about our next move.  For those who want to take their own "discipline-psychology-consistency" mind factors out of game, systems trading is the way.

If you are a pure techno-fundamental chartist and market analyst who still does everything between your ears and you are still not convinced of the power of systems trading, consider this: the human brain is an incredible pattern recognition machine.  The software you have built in your head by bootstrapping years of trading experience and knowledge is irreplaceable.  Why not get it preserved for life on some silicon, even if you never flip the switch to run on auto?  Immediately you will have analytics of your trading approach and results at your fingertips!  You can't know how good that data will be for you until you try it.  It could be worth tens of thousands of dollars to you.

My whole purpose in this 5-part series has been to convince you of the power of building your own trading system.  Whether you choose to do it with John Joseph of NextD Systems or someone else is not as important as understanding its value and doing it.  The top 3 other guys are in the field are, from what I can tell by reading their work and listening to them speak on these topics, probably very good.  I just know JJ better, find him great to work with as a person and teacher, and know how much money he trades and what his results are with very tightly-controlled risk in wild market conditions.  One week from tomorrow, I will be sitting down in front of the master with 9 others to learn the craft over an intense two days.

To join me or learn more, go to http://www.mirusfutures.com/NextD.htm.

Call Eliot at Mirus Futures if you have any more questions (his number on that link). Tell him Cooker sent you.  And remember, if you sign up in the next few days, I will give you and will personally deliver my Masters of PROP Trader Training to you or a friend, student, client, or family member of yours.  My Probability, Risk, & Optimal Profit Trader Training is sort of an "intro" to what Joseph teaches.  It could be the most perfect vaccination against trading chaos and confusion that you have ever encountered.

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