The word DISCIPLINE is overused

There are trader inspiring quotes going around encouraging or outright ordering traders to be disciplined and it seems like anything with that word in it gets liked a lot. It is as if discipline was an objective thing like the sun. Stay out of the sun. Put on sunscreen when playing in the sun. Look at that nice sunset...Yes, we all know what the sun is and how it looks like and how it feels on our skins and how it makes everything look like.

What is discipline exactly?

Discipline, no matter how you want to define it, is subjective. No two people are exactly the same or trade the same or see trading the same, so why discipline should be regarded as an analogous word that needs no personal definition?

I think discipline is just a cheap word that is thrown around to impress the reader. Whoever comes up with advice which is usually the same (Be disciplined in your trading or similar variations) makes themselves look like they have thorough knowledge of how it is to be disciplined and now that they have achieved that monumental place that only a disciplined trader can reach, they have earned the license to go tell everyone else to be like them...oh so disciplined they are...kudos you high place achievers. I wish I could have come up with that sentence of 'you must be disciplined'. Oh wait, I can come up with it any time and I will get a personal credit because I must be obviously already disciplined. Right?


Here is an scenario where being disciplined sucks. You have a trading system that works well and has for a long time. Why? Because you are disciplined and follow it like a freaking perfectionist. The market goes against you and you don't waver just like the many times that it has and you were disciplined. The market goes against you even more but you know to be disciplined and follow the rules of your perfect system. The market goes even more against you and like how you know, you hold on (Ok, don't confuse that with holding a losing trade forever. You are not just holding, you are trading with various trading steps you know to work). Then boom...the dreaded margin call comes and you were so disciplined...weren't you?

Now again, same scenario above. This time, you blink. You get scared and think things are different this time. Your system has been doing well all this time and now it is cracking under the weight of the force going against you. You remember the nice meme that said BE DISCIPLINED but you think nah...I got to do something here to save my account. You cut loose. 5 minutes later, everything comes back and you start kicking yourself that you weren't disciplined when you should have been. You stare at the meme and say god damn it, next time, I gotta be disciplined like this thing says.


Basically, this advice of being disciplined is for the birds. It is not defined, everyone has a different system and the market is just a lunatic wacko that doesn't care about your measures of discipline which is a vague and personal thing anyway. So, people, please be disciplined and don't post memes and advice about being disciplined cause it makes you look like a rookie wannabe hanging onto gibberish disguising itself as real advice.

I think i understand your line of thought. I have many elusive ideas and thoughts form and swirl regarding the trader i think ill be once im consistently profitable. Oh to be consistently profitable and how would that look for me as a trader ??
My evolution as a trader is far more dynamic than I thought it would be, and I understand discipline needs to have a slightly more variable truth. When I started trading I thought I just needed a successful system. Then, as I became more experienced I finally realised that my personality has a massive impact on my trading, so I really needed to find a system that not only worked, but suited my personality . I would say it s taken me nearly 4 years to realise this !!!! Like pairing the right horse with the right rider. Now I'm concentrating a bit more on embracing the style that suits my personality, rather than a rigid trading system.. it's all very fluid for me still, but I've had a good profitable week so keep trudging I will!! I have needed flexible discipline to achieve this, which sounds like an oxymoron yet feels truthful to me. I'm not sure if this makes sense. Simply put, in order to evolve we need to be flexible, but in order to then be consistently profitable we definitely need a measure of rigidity and discipline, and in your example a trading system that allows an unfettered move towards a margin call is not a very good system.. but i understand your analogy
Cheers helena

Yes, 'flexible' is a nice word to use here and as you say, it flies in the face of that other word; discipline. It makes most sense to be flexible. Is the market flexible? Yes, big time flexible. It stretches like a hunk of dough turned into strings of spaghetti at times and at other times, it's inflexible as a hunk of rock. That makes the market both flexible and stubborn and unyielding at the same time. So is being disciplined the right way to encounter the market? I would think not. One should respond to fire with fire and to water with water. What is the word for that? I can't think of it. Can anyone? Maybe that is why the word discipline is used in place of a word that doesn't exist. Or maybe it is used to hint at a concept that is not quite defined. Basically discipline is just the wrong word used in trading. Should we use the word 'flexible' then? That again poses similar problems. Some could interpret that word to mean 'easy going' and relaxed and do whatever you think is right at the time and so on. If someone blows their account, then someone can say it happened because they did whatever they thought was right at the time instead of being disciplined.

I don't know what the right word is but I know that to keep saying' be disciplined' is a crock of huey and means nothing but to make the user sound smart and make them seem they have a firm grip on things. Even if we replace 'discipline' with 'have a firm grip', that still makes no sense because how do we define having a firm grip?

Basically, I propose to throw the word discipline into the traders proverbial trash can and maybe we can add some other advice coming from the 'discipline' advice users in there as well because they don't know what they are talking about and just saying that word isn't going to help anyone because the most important instruction of 'how' to be disciplined doesn't come with the advice and it's not worth the pixels on the screen that it occupies.

I've been thinking about discipline a lot, so I just want to add this. For me I hate DD so my trading costs can creep up simply by virtue that I have a tight SL and can swamp my trades, so it might take a few attempts to get my entry. In order to offset this, I NEED to have some bigger winning trades . To date I have lacked discipline at giving trades a chance to make the big return. I'm all too happy to pick here and there, which grinds my result down. I'm not sharing looking to have my style critiqued, it's just a simple fact. It's what I like, what I do.
Yesterday I decided to enact some discipline. I like 5min TF , and have recently tried XAUUSD. I look at battles between levels, and I utilise candlesticks. With the bearish engulfing reversal just after the hour changeover i entered 2 shorts immediately, so strongly I felt about the PA. see pic, arrow down at top horizontal line. Now it doesn't look obvious from those bear 5min candles, but that PA was quite hectic to watch, and I closed 1 of my 2 trades for a nice profit about 7min in. Then I decided it was time to have some discipline !!!! I walked away !!! I had my remaining trade BE and I swore I would give it a chance to move. This was extremely tough for me as I like to micro manage. ALso, in the evening it was sitting at $1300 profit for hours and I was ITCHING to TP. Some traders are happy to place trades and come back in a day, but not me. I stalk them and watch them and inevitably TP too soon. This am 0530 I woke to review my trade before close, and banked my single biggest trade ever. I need to be disciplined and give other trades a chance to move, even though I will be stopped out on some. This trade retraced over , what 80% of the move (see tick)???? If I had been watching I would've baulked and TP early. As it is, I was asleep and oblivious , so much better !!!!

I thought about having my TE public but no, I wont. The screenshot is real however, and I will say that trade was a MASSIVE boost to my account. HUGE. I'm not fussed if readers don't believe me. I think TEs are incredibly personal. They show our dirty laundry, and I don't want anyone picking over my dirty laundry...

Here's to being disciplined moving forward and giving some more of my trades a chance to trend, because once I have battled to have a super tight SL I NEED some better returns. I have to work my other job next week but hopefully I can fit some trading in later in the week.

I do understand your issue with the rigidity of discipline though, I guess there is a time and a place for it . I accept I have no idea where the market will go, but I still need to try maximise my returns. It's a juggle of the great unknown.

Cheers Helena

Very nice work and congrats on the huge win.

I don't mean to be a spoiled sport but what if that trade didn't work? So many times 99 out of 100 reasons why we stay in a trade are favorable to our decision at the time. We feel really smart and the market, in this case gold, rewards us handsomely but you know, we don't know (in case of failure) why the Maharaja decided to unload his gold holdings of a bizzilion ounces of gold just when we were at the height of our game. The discipline was good, the TA was good and the chart was good but who knew that Maharaja had other ideas. Okay I'm being gloomy but you know, our following a disciplinary regiment of the grade A class really means nothing to the market. Had the things gone wrong, may I ask you this question: Would you not think that you were undisciplined for holding onto the 2nd portion of your trade?
There is a saying in sports that good players make good coaches. Good markets too make good traders. I am not sure if it was discipline that rewarded you with a big profit. If it was really discipline that rewarded you otherwise, you should have kept the entire position to the max and you then would have to always follow that rule to hold on for the big return but you know, you threw in a bit of discretion only after you hedged your risk with some profit.
I guess discipline is a hindsight thing. If you took a risk or extra risk and you succeeded, you were disciplined. If you failed, then you weren't. But to come out and say you gotta be disciplined before you know the result is a bit of voodoo guru talk. I say this cause I have been there a lot. The market behaved and I won. That is why I won. The market let me and decided not to slap me. Do I get the credit for being disciplined? Nope. The market let me have that one. Next time, it might not.

Discipline is not the key, its only one in a dozen things that will make you successful.

Everything you say is true!. I will share I made $750 profit this week, a big contributor was taking profits too soon so I was primed to "for God's sake let it move!!!". Without that trade I would've finished the week in a loss. I am very happy to concede I have NO idea where the market will go, but it can only go up/down/rangebound. Keeping it simple like that , and working towards trades BE but with a chance of big returns, is as simple as I can make it. I can only limit my losses to minimal via a tight SL, I need to give my winners a MAXIMUM chance of return, preferably by sliding SL. If it wasn't close of market for the weekend I would've tightened my SL up to say $2400 profit with a chance to wriggle more but expecting a stop out. I will never be a pivot trader riding DD, I will always battle to get a trade facing the right way, it's a strength as well as a weakness. There's lots I don't know about trading, but that's one aspect of my personality I KNOW will not change. Fascinating masochistic thing trading, hey. Earlier in the week on a couple of occasions I had TP 1/2 trades early, then been stopped out on remainder trades, so this was a 1/3 boom return. It's a dynamic learning curve.
Cheers h

It's hard to use the brain and understand the Market. And is harder to make money by trading. That's why 95% of traders fail and they invoke the penible excuse "it's discipline".

In fact they have a rudimentary understanding of the Market and when they lose they accuse the lack of discipline.

What is Discipline? The behaviour of a trader before and after a trade. The only time you have to do with discipline is when you calculate your risk per trade (greed) and after your lose a trade (fear, pain). No matter if you follow your trading system rules, soon or later your inner emotions will lead. As long as you don't overcome those two emotions, you are exposed to lose. Yes, even if you follow your rules step by step.

The problem is that majority don't have a efficient trading system with a strong foundation. And they accuse the lack of discipline. There are some emotions when you trade your own money and different emotions when you trade investor money.

It take time to become confortable with these inner emotions and masterize them. For me took around 12-14 months. I still deal with them but i made a huge progress since I'm aware of what I feel before/after a trade and I remember the cases of what happened when I listened to these emotions. This help me to take good decisions.

I don;t know why people like to accuse lack of discipline when they fail. Probable to find an excuse because they can't accept the fact they do not know how to trade.

Before involving the discipline as excuse for your fail there is a long road. So long road...

Not only it is overused, but if you think you need discipline it means you are losing.

No amount of discipline or positive thinking can influence a random outcome

Discipline is to have focus ... goals .. goals .. trade seriously attention and not open orders anyway,know wait, need organization, trader needs to be well to perform a high performance job, has to be very technical and mentally.

random is flipping a coin or useless analysis of market flow.

So each one of your trade is a winner, like 100% of the time ?

What is discipline exactly?
Discipline, no matter how you want to define it, is subjective. how and what evidence brings you to this conclusion? If one has a consistent winning strategy it should work all the time if one follows the rules of the strategy and what i mean all the time doesnt mean you dont lose a trade you just dont have a long string of losses. So its not subjective to be disiplined but OBJECTIVE otherwise every strategy is just an opinion on how to trade and thats what this forum is just a lot of opinions

Of course discipline is subjective.

Lets assume there is a guy who hasn't exercised for years and now wants to get in shape. He wants to start easy and decides that he will go for a 30 minute walk every day. He wants to be disciplined about it and he makes sure to make time for that walk every day. Then it rains hard one day, so he doesn't go. Then another day he is way too busy with work and doesn't go but then he goes for 3 weeks straight and so on.

Another guy, goes for long runs every day through rain and snow and even in 45 degree hot summer days.

They are both disciplined relatively but only according to their own standards. That makes being disciplined a subjective matter. An Olympic marathon runner might run 4 hours a day and still not be happy with it.

If the marathon runner was to follow the same discipline of the 2nd runner, it would lead to a huge failure. So, just like running and individual goals and abilities are varied, trading for everyone and how they deal with particulars of it is individualized. The guru might as well say: Hey, don't lose money. Or: Don't get into DD or many generic advice that we already know.

did you see what you did you redefined disipline. If one FOLLOWS THE RULES thats disipline which he does OBJECTIVELY if one doesnt follow he has no disipline. heres definition train (someone) to obey rules or a code of behavior so if the person makes an excuse as to not follow the rules like not go out and walk because its raining he lacks disipline to follow the rules. if you think this aint true talk to a soldier and ask him if he had to walk in the rain was an option not to do

A trading system or strategy does not work well by itself. You make it happen. Consistently doing so, with limited losses, requires 'your' hated word, discipline. Lol.

Trade safe mate.

KP

I don't see how I redefined discipline. My brain works on analogies and examples in real life. I am going to use another one:

So, 10 people who have never traded go to a trading school or take a course and their teacher is the best there is and teaches them not only many trading strategies but also tells them about discipline. After finishing the course, the traders go trading for themselves using real accounts and come back for a reunion and discussion. I am guessing the results would be quite different from each other because everyone's goal and commitment and view of the events and charts are different. They were all told that they needed to be disciplined but discipline is subjective.

The only way that the results would have been near same is if the teacher kept tabs on every student's trades and kept correcting their mistakes and kept bringing their accounts in line with each other. In that case, the discipline is basically fed to the students. Maybe after months and months of this, they can almost follow the teachers line of thinking without supervision. In this case the 'how' to be disciplined is hammered in case by case by case. But to go out and throw the phrase 'be disciplined' is pure nonsense. I mean it sounds good and probably a good mantra but it is empty.

so you and Webster's definitions are different why should I use your definition? look when we are trained to follow rules no matter what the task that person is disciplined period basic linguistics I trade everyday with a set of rules that I follow to the T and though I make money everyday I wouldn't if I didn't follow the rules

No one says a manual strategy works by itself. Someone has to make the decision to get in and out. The fact that I think 'be disciplined' is just an empty advice, doesn't mean I believe in 'don't be disciplined'. It's just a useless piece of advice equal to saying 'be successful' or 'don't lose money' and so on. Do you take advice like that and go become successful and that works for you? If it does, here is a piece of advice from me: Go make a billion. Yes go on. Now you are set. Report back to me when you are done and make sure you have a bank draft for 10% as advice fee for me in your hand.

I am thinking of a practical implementation of discipline in trading and not Webster's definition whatever that is.
There are a lot of things in life that require the same rules to make sure things work. For example, if I cut wood for my job every day. I must have eye protection and make sure the blade guard is on and when I move large planks of wood I should make sure I don't hit anyone with it and so on. The table saw is the same, the tasks are more or less the same and the discipline for safety protocols are probably laid out and maybe even enforced. On the other hand, trading is not the same. Going back to the carpentry thing, one day the the table saw looks like a giraffe, next day it is a goose feather pillow and the next day it is an atomic bomb. Ya go be disciplined. That tells you a lot. If that is the only manual you need to fluff your pillow and transport the atomic bomb, then hey kudos, it works for you and that is great.