Discipline is highly overrated
Traders fail not because of lack of effort. In fact most traders make extra ordinary effort to be successful and they still fail.
They spend long hours, try hundreds of things, spend thousands of man hours and spend money and they still fail.
So let us be clear things like discipline and focus and stuff is not key.
Discipline is highly overrated.
I know a lot about discipline. For 10 years I was in a school whose motto was Discipline Builds Character. It was a boarding school modeled on British Boarding school. Evey single thing was about discipline. Every waking hour of your life in the school was driven by discipline and rules. Consequences of not following discipline were severe.
Most of the things which we did with great discipline were perfectly useless activities like polishing door knobs, shining your shoes for 20 minutes everyday to get mirror shine, making your bed. Enormous energy was spent by the Masters on making sure the discipline was not broken.
Discipline only will get you so far. Most people who believe focus or discipline is their trading problem are chasing their own tail. It is not the solution to any of your problem.
If you have enduring edge and you are successful in trading you will be motivated to be disciplined. If your methods have edge and they are working you do not need to make extra efforts to be disciplined or focused. The returns which you get itself will motivate you to be disciplined.
To build an enduring edge you need deep understanding of market structure
Most traders fail because they do not have structural understanding of the market and they chase methods, scans, indicators, patterns and alerts.
Most traders do not survive long enough to reach a stage where they can understand market structure.
Most traders do not start out by an objective of understanding market structure.
Some are lucky to find a method based on market structure early in their career.
Some survive long enough and figure out market structure.
If you want to build enduring edge first and foremost understand market structure.
You must know how market operates and why it operates in that manner.
If you can understand that then you can build many ways to benefit from that understanding.
Key to competence is in consciously being aware of your skills , edge, and competency.
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