Rules to follow combine market laws and trading preferred actions into guidelines which help a trader not to lose the correct trajectory in difficult conditions. Or to get back into the trading routine after things have gone wrong. Trading is not a science, office duties or production line. It's more like a sport, where good overall condition is needed, concentration, ability to cope with stress, loss, misfortune or vicious fate.
Rules grow, get modified and are created on the way, because trading ability is a set of skills which requires constant practice, endless learning and attention. This is why many of my trading rules of 2010 have become so obvious and so incorporated into my methods and beliefs that they are no longer guidelines. Like in one's life, you must first set a rule not to put your hand into the fire, not to trust strangers or to brake before the obstacle. Then it becomes an unaware pattern which you don't need to describe or read up every morning.
Your current trading rules must be with you every day because they are somehow new concepts, contrary to your old beliefs or habits. They are your present steps and advice, helping you with current tasks. So you may even record them on a dictaphone and listen to them over and over while trading.
There are so many types of traders that there are human characters. Although you may find similarities in the way we operate, our goals and ways of realising plans are so different. Also a trader won't set a new rule before he perceives a new pattern, a market or his behaviour charecteristic which he wasn't aware of before.
Here come my rules of 2011
- Don't let the mainstream media influence your judgement, inspire greed or fear in you
- Inner voices and guarding angel hints are worth as much as a coin toss
- Method development capabilities are a part of traders arsenal
- Time is a healer
- Other traders have problems I don't have and never will
- Overconfidence is as bad as lack of confidence
- Reverse the tendency of avoiding easy markets and jumping into most difficult ones
- Respect yourself for the things you're doing and problems you've overcome
- Market is a force which you cannot rule, you may only subordinate yourself
- 'Dividend' investing is a great thing
- Give it time, patience will make time your asset
- Time is your friend and ally; markets have no choice - they must move in time
- Market is like an ocean, if you can swim, you will always catch something
- Rest and days away are a good thing
- Precious metals and energies : production cost goes up with price and demand
- Always have predefined stop loss and exit strategy
- Never catch the low, it simply doesn't pay
- To go with the main wave adding to positions is something I must learn in 2011
- Exterminate counter main wave trades and 'its too late to go with the flow' talk
- Don't add size and frequency when losing; stop or slow down instead
- Don't force the market to pay for your own mistakes
- Follow your plan, don't gamble
- Trader must be consistent, not intelligent
- You're not there to show the market who you are, to make it play by your rules
- 20ft mega signal, universal for all time frames
- Shaft range, evolving around the main market profile line
- Don't lose concentration because of over trading or sloppiness
- You make progress every day
- Obstacles : there are many ways to overcome them all
- Don't criticize yourself for what you do, game you're at is most difficult
- See the price action as it is, not as you believe it is
- Respect the market, be submissive and take what it gives
- Aggressiveness means lack of respect, hyperactivity and frustration
- Market is not a person who acts against you, it is a soulless and brainless force
- Nobody knows where the markets goes
