The success that a trader achieves in the markets is directly correlated to one’s trading discipline or lack thereof. Trading discipline is 90 percent of the game. The formula is very simple:Trade with discipline and you will succeed; trade without discipline and you will fail.
The Wheel of Success There are three spokes that make up, what I call the ‘Wheel of Success’ as it relates to trading. The first spoke is content. Content consists of all the external and internal market information that traders utilize to make their trading decisions.
Scalp the markets
All traders must purchase value-added content that provides utility in making their trading decisions. The most important type of content is internal market information (IMI). IMI simply is time and price information as disseminated by the exchanges. After all, we all make our trading decisions in the present tense based on time and price. In order to scalp the markets effectively, we must have the most live and up-to-date time and price information seamlessly delivered to our PCs through a reliable execution platform and/or charting package. Without instantaneous time and price information, we would be trading in the dark.
The second spoke is mechanics. Mechanics is how you access the markets and the methodology that you employ to enter/exit your trades. You must master mechanics before you can enjoy any success as a trader. A simple keystroke error can result in a loss of thousands of dollars. A trader can ruin his entire day with an inadvertent trade entry error.
Once you have mastered order execution, though, it is like riding a bike. The process of entering and exiting trades becomes seamless and mindless. Fast and efficient trade execution, especially if you are trading with a scalping methodology, will enable you to hit a bid or take an offer before your competitors do. Remember, the fastest survive.
The third and most important spoke in the Wheel of Success is discipline. You must attain discipline if you ever hope to achieve any level of trading success. Trading discipline is practiced 100 percent of the time, every trade, every day. You must condition yourself to behave with discipline over and over again. Think of the exercise as praying – reminding you how to conduct yourself throughout the trading session.